A COST‐BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF WATER QUALITY PROTECTION IN THE CATAWBA BASIN1

ABSTRACT: The primary objective of this study was to perform a cost‐benefit analysis of maintaining the current level of water quality in the Catawba River basin. Economic benefits were estimated using a stated preference survey method designed to value respondents' willingness to pay for a management plan to protect water quality in the Catawba basin over time. From the surveys conducted with 1,085 area residents, we calculated an annual mean willingness to pay of $139 for the management plan, or more than $75.4 million for all taxpayers in the area. Over the five‐year time horizon in which respondents were asked to pay for the management plan, this resulted in a total economic benefit of $340.1 million. The Watershed Analysis Risk Management Framework model was used to estimate the amount of management activities needed to protect the current level of water quality in the basin over time. Based on the model results, the total cost of the management plan was calculated to be $244.8 million over a ten‐year period. The resulting cost‐benefit analysis indicated that the potential benefits of this management plan would outweigh the costs by more than $95 million.     

环境经济学在中国的发展

本文讨论了环境经济学在中国的发展过程,并对新时期环境经济学面临的理论和现实问题进行了展望。在新的时期,环境经济学应更加注重以环境问题表现的社会利益结构和利益均衡的实证分析,并对满足可持续发展要求的宏观经济政策变革和微观环境管理提供理论支持。     

生态产品价值实现机制的理论基础：热力学，景感学，经济学与区块链

当前，生态产品价值实现探索实践中面临生态系统服务度量难、核算难、货币化难、交易难等基础性难题，导致生态产品价值核算体系不统一、生态产品市场交易机制不完善、各类生态产品交易平台不规范、绿色金融滞后、绿色发展市场化激励机制不足等问题。本文从最关键的生态产品价值理论出发，梳理生态产品价值实现困境的根源和理论基础，并尝试提出可能的多元核算方法与热力学、景感学、经济学相结合的实践解决路径，形成不同单位的统一核算标的物。通过探索利用区块链、大数据等科技赋能生态产品价值实现，提出构建生态资产加密数字货币化的可能性，并进一步形成不同生态产品的价格形成机制、成本监审制度和价格调整机制，完善生态产品市场交易机制，建立统一的生态产品交易平台，促进绿色金融发展，推动自然资源管理能力现代化。     

Rapidly assessing cobenefits to advance threat-management alliances

Conservation strategies aimed at reducing threats to biodiversity can have significant implications for multiple sectors in a socioeconomic system, but these cobenefits are often poorly understood. For example, many of the threats to native species also impede agricultural production, yet agriculture is typically perceived as in competition with conservation objectives. Although a comprehensive, multiobjective decision analysis is usually beyond the scope and capacity of conservation decision makers, failing to incorporate key socioeconomic costs and benefits into conservation decision-making processes can result in missed opportunities for diversifying outcomes and creating cost-sharing multisectoral partnerships. We devised a straightforward and readily interpretable approach to incorporate cobenefits into a threat-management prioritization approach. We used it to analyze the agricultural cobenefits of implementing 9 invasive animal management strategies designed to ensure the persistence of 148 threatened species across Australia's Lake Eyre Basin over 50 years. A structured elicitation process with 24 participants (scientists, land managers, agriculturalists, and other stakeholders) was used to collect information on each strategy, including costs, technical and social feasibility, benefits to native threatened species, and cobenefits to agricultural production systems. The costs of targeted invasive animal management to save threatened species across the basin (AU$33 million/year) outweighed the overall benefits to the agricultural industry (estimated AU$226 million/year). The return on investment for these management strategies varied substantially when agricultural cobenefits were considered alongside threatened species benefits and showed synergies and challenges. Our approach demonstrates the value of incorporating cobenefits of conservation actions into cost-effectiveness analyses to guide potential investment and partnerships and to diversify implementation pathways.     

An ecological economics approach to the management of a multi-purpose coastal wetland

Three interrelated management problems—eutrophication of multiple use shallow lakes, sea level rise and flood risk mitigation and tourism pressures—are analysed in the context of an internationally important wetland area, the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads in the UK. The ecological-economic research findings presented should provide essential information to underpin the regulatory and management process in this internationally important conservation area. The relevant authority somehow has to integrate the maintenance of public navigation rights, nature conservation, and tourism promotion in a highly dynamic ecosystems setting. Because of the stakeholder conflicts, potential and actual, a more inclusionary decision-making procedure is required, and is currently being implemented.     

Environment as the Stage for Economic Actors

The relative importance of economics and environment in debate may soon be reversed due to the influence of three fac- tors. Firstly, in the global economy it is hard to hide the unwanted products of economic processes. Secondly, huge advances in sci- ence will reduce the imperfect knowledge of markets, making some monitoring and analyzing tools show the design of sensible and equitable livelihood in communities, which is more important than the motivation of maximising profits for some individuals or firms. Thirdly, China, as the last major player on the planet to take on economic growth, comes from traditions fundamentally differ- ent from those economies that have experienced the Industrial Revolution previously. Its challenges with sustainability and en- vironmental conservation predate Western economics by millennia, and it is implementing policies domestically and starting to work on the world stage that acknowledges that the surroundings are the host for any economic and socio-political system.     

灾害防御工程的经济效益评价原理及方法—以水坝震害防御工程为例

本文根据“价值工程”理论和“成本—效益”理论,在作者提出的防灾工程“功能函数”、“成本函数”、“价值函数”、“效益函数”等灾害经济学基本函数及数学模型的基础上,结合地质灾害防御工程实例,探讨了防灾工程经济效益的评价原理及方法。     

AGRICULTURAL WATER MODELING AND ECONOMIC INFORMATION NEEDS UNDER THE MODEL WATER CODE1

ABSTRACT: Economic information for efficient water allocation is difficult and costly to acquire under administrative water systems evolving under the Model Water Code. One approach to obtaining more information is to use a simulator like the Florida AGWATER model. The advantage of AGWATER is the potential for realistic prediction, because it operates at the field and day levels, using detailed information for each crop and tract. Unfortunately, such simulators are complex and require large amounts of costly input data. A better solution to the information problem may be to use markets for the marketable goods associated with water, because information is inherent in such a process. This approach will allow limited modeling and management resources to be put into using water models to generate information for the goods dependent on water that are difficult to market, like wildlife services.     

Eight years of annual no-till cropping in Washington's winter wheat-summer fallow region

The tillage-based winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)-summer fallow (WW-SF) cropping system has dominated dryland farming in the Pacific Northwest USA for 125 years. We conducted a large-scale multidisciplinary 8-year study of annual (i.e., no summer fallow) no-till cropping systems as an alternative to WW-SF. Soft white and hard white classes of winter and spring wheat, spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), yellow mustard (Brassica hirta Moench), and safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) were grown in various rotation combinations. Annual precipitation was less than the long-term average of 301 mm in 7 out of 8 years. Rhizoctonia bare patch disease caused by the fungus Rhizoctonia solani AG-8 appeared in year 3 and continued through year 8 in all no-till plots. All crops were susceptible to rhizoctonia, but bare patch area in wheat was reduced, and grain yield increased, when wheat was grown in rotation with barley every other year. Remnant downy brome (Bromus tectorum L.) weed seeds remained dormant for 6 years and longer to heavily infest recrop winter wheat. There were few quantifiable changes in soil quality due to crop rotation, but soil organic carbon (SOC) increased in the surface 0–5 cm depth with no-till during the 8 years to approach that found in undisturbed native soil. Annual no-till crop rotations experienced lower average profitability and greater income variability compared to WW-SF. Yellow mustard and safflower were not economically viable. Continuous annual cropping using no-till provides excellent protection against wind erosion and shows potential to increase soil quality, but the practice involves high economic risk compared to WW-SF. This paper provides the first comprehensive multidisciplinary report of long-term alternative annual no-till cropping systems research in the low-precipitation region of the Pacific Northwest.     

21世纪矿产资源经济展望

简要阐明了矿产资源经济、矿产经济和矿业经济基本概念和相互关系 ,在对我国内外矿产资源特点与需求分析基础上 ,探讨了21世纪矿产资源经济的基本问题 ,提出我国21世纪的矿产资源勘查评价的科学问题。