Financial Mechanisms for Conservation in Brazil

Abstract:  I reviewed some of the financial mechanisms for biodiversity conservation activities in Brazil. There is a heavy dependence on the public sector, but macroeconomic policies aimed at reducing government spending have resulted in reduced budgets dedicated to public conservation measures. The financial constraints for environmental protection have also increased because of a reduction in foreign aid. Positive signs for the immediate future, however, come from new initiatives that create economic instruments to finance conservation. The most important initiatives include conservation criteria for tax redistribution; environmental compensation; water charges; royalties for electricity, petroleum, and natural gas; tradable obligations for forest reserves; and voluntary measures on the part of the business sector. Resources created from these initiatives have different origins and are managed by different public agencies according to varying laws and policies, so their efficient implementation will require that the institutions involved in biodiversity conservation in Brazil establish a minimum set of common priorities and objectives.     

Analysis of the current situation of environmental policy of China and establishment of distributed environmental policy framework

In this study, China’s current macro-environmental policies as well as their implementation and management tools are analyzed. By using the basic economic methodology, detailed studies are conducted focusing on the implementation effect of contemporary China’s typical environmental policy of the total pollutant discharge quantity control type, and also the two types of environmental management tools are compared from the perspective of implementation costs and policy uncertainty. By introduction of distributed management tools into the implementation of environmental policies, market-oriented means and the methods of economic analysis are introduced into environmental policy decision-making mechanisms, which could afford a new method for changing the current relatively low efficiency of environmental policy, solving the problem of “government failure” in environmental policy implementation, and providing a new way to make environmental policy system more flexible and more efficient. It is of great practical significance to solve China's current structural, complex and accumulative environmental problems.     

Development of environmental policy,objectives, and targets

This paper describes a process to develop and establish an environmental policy and its associated environmental targets, objectives, and management programmes. The environmental policy is defined in a statement which addresses the company expectations for programmes that are important to assure adequate environmental protection and define its future commitment towards preventing pollution and continuously improving the effectiveness of its environmental protection programmes. A set of environmental objectives, derived from the policy, define the overall goals which will ensure that the company's environmental performance will remain consistent with the commitment identified in its policy when its environmental management system (EMS) is implemented, Environmental targets reflect the requirements and standards that the company must strive to achieve each objective and minimize any harmful environmental impacts from its production and manufacturing processes or other activities. In addition to defining specific targets, environmental management programmes are also used to guide EMS implementation. These programmes, however, must provide the company with the necessary flexibility to select the most appropriate technologies to enhance its own processes and prudently allocate its available financial resources in areas that return the greatest overall environmental benefit.Though they are expected to allow some discretion in the allocation of resources targeted towards environmental protection, EMS programmes must also provide assurance that the corporation environmental policy, objectives, targets, and management programmes do not result in a facility failure to adhere to all of its certification requirements. The principle and factors described in this article should be considered to the extent that they are necessary and practical.     

The effectiveness of cluster approach to improve environmental corporate performance in an industrial district of SMEs: a case study

This paper aims to assess the effectiveness of the so-called ‘Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) cluster approach’ when applied to environmental policies, by focusing on the case history of the industrial paper production cluster located in the Province of Lucca (Italy). The Lucca cluster represents approximately 20% of Italian paper production, and Italy is the fourth leading paper producer in Europe. In the last 10 years, environmental policies have been developed under the common ‘umbrella’ of a strong public and private partnership based on stakeholder networking within the application of the EU EMAS Regulation. This article evaluates the outcome of such an approach, by comparing the environmental performance indicators for the Lucca’s paper industry using data collected from more than 40 plants before and after the adoption of this voluntary tool. The results show considerable improvements for many environmental performance indicators, consistently with the implementation of the cluster approach.     

Review of challenges and strategies for balanced urban–rural environmental protection in China

With the rise of environmentalism in China, great efforts have been devoted to environmental protection over the past several decades. Compared with urban environmental protection, rural environmental protection has not been attached enough importance in China due to the dual-track structure of socio-economic development. As a result, rural China is shouldering disproportionally heavy environmental burdens partly because of the differences and biases between urban and rural environmental protection seen in environmental policies, environmental rights and interests, environmental protection investment, and the environmental protection awareness of people. To eliminate the gap between rural and urban environmental protection, and achieve the goal of “balanced urban–rural environmental protection” (BUREP), government should consider mapping out proper policies and strategies. In this paper we put forward an innovative strategy of BUREP against the background of China’s urban-rural environmental protection. First, we review the current status of rural environmental protection status and its challenges compared with urban environmental protection in China. Secondly, we analyzed the main driving factors and reasons deeply, and then we put forward the BUREP strategy base on the unequal status between urban and rural environment. Finally, we proposed the framework of BUREP. This study may serve as a scientific reference regarding decision-making in coordinating urban and rural environmental protection and in constructing the new countryside of China.     

Sustainable consumption: the effects of knowledge,cultural values,environmental advertising,and demographics

As a result of human lifestyles and unsustainable consumption patterns, the environment continues to deteriorate and thus inhibit sustainable development. In order to curb this situation and promote a sustainable economy, one of the solution is to reduce conventional products consumption and shift to green products. Over the past 20 years, marketing managers keenly seek to understand the green market; however, inadequate information on how to promote consumers’ green behavioral intentions is slowing the growth of green markets and becomes a barrier for firms when developing segments and communicating strategies for effective promotion of green products in countries like Malaysia where the trend is fairly new. Therefore, this study attempts to examine the impact of environmental knowledge, cultural values, and environmental advertising and determine the moderating effect of income level, education level, and gender on consumers’ green purchase intentions. A survey was administered, and a total of 405 valid questionnaires were obtained. Structural equation modeling technique was used to evaluate the causal model by using SmartPLS 2.0 software. The finding results suggest that cultural values and environmental advertising are the main influences in building green purchase intentions, while environmental knowledge is not significantly related. The results also indicate that education level and gender have a significant positive moderation effect while income did not. This suggests that green purchase intentions’ motivational factors are greater among highly educated individuals, with females in particular. The discussions and implications of these findings are further elaborated.     

Voluntary corporate environmental initiatives and shareholder wealth

Researchers debate whether environmental investments reduce firm value or actually improve financial performance. We provide some compelling evidence on shareholder wealth effects of membership in voluntary environmental programs (VEPs). Companies announcing membership in EPA's Climate Leaders, a program targeting reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, experience significantly negative abnormal stock returns. The price decline is larger in firms with poor corporate governance structures, and for high market-to-book (i.e., high growth) firms. However, firms joining Ceres, a program involving more general environmental commitments, have insignificant announcement returns, as do portfolios of industry rivals. Overall, corporate commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions appear to conflict with firm value maximization. This has important implications for policies that rely on voluntary initiatives to address climate change. Further, we find that firms facing climate-related shareholder resolutions or firms with weak corporate governance standards – giving managers the discretion to make such voluntary environmentally responsible investment decisions – are more likely to join Climate Leaders; decisions that may result in lower firm value.     

Voluntary corporate environmental initiatives and shareholder wealth

Researchers debate whether environmental investments reduce firm value or actually improve financial performance. We provide some compelling evidence on shareholder wealth effects of membership in voluntary environmental programs (VEPs). Companies announcing membership in EPA's Climate Leaders, a program targeting reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, experience significantly negative abnormal stock returns. The price decline is larger in firms with poor corporate governance structures, and for high market-to-book (i.e., high growth) firms. However, firms joining Ceres, a program involving more general environmental commitments, have insignificant announcement returns, as do portfolios of industry rivals. Overall, corporate commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions appear to conflict with firm value maximization. This has important implications for policies that rely on voluntary initiatives to address climate change. Further, we find that firms facing climate-related shareholder resolutions or firms with weak corporate governance standards – giving managers the discretion to make such voluntary environmentally responsible investment decisions – are more likely to join Climate Leaders; decisions that may result in lower firm value.     

基于环境逸度模型的化学物质暴露与风险评估研究进展

工业化学品通过各种迁移转化过程后在环境区间中广泛分布,同时新化学品正被大量的生产并进入环境,使得对于化学品管控的需求和压力不断增加。基于这一背景,多国政府颁布了相应的政策法规对化学品进行管控。除了用相应的政策法规进行预先管控之外,使用基于逸度概念的多介质环境模型来表征化学品的行为与归趋是一个相对简单而有效的方法,不仅适用于环境中存在的现有化学品的暴露评估,也成为各国化学品管理中对新化学品的环境暴露进行预测的有力工具。本文综述逸度概念与方法、相关环境模型、建模过程、应用验证等方面的国内外研究进展,希望能够对我国化学品环境暴露评估与风险评估的模型构建、优化与方法应用提供信息和借鉴。     

Emissions standards and ambient environmental quality standards with stochastic environmental services

Many important environmental policies involve some combination of emission controls and ambient environmental quality standards, for instance SO₂ emissions are capped under Title IV of the U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments while ambient SO₂ concentrations are limited under National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). This paper examines the relative performance of emissions standards and ambient standards when the natural environment provides stochastic environmental services for assimilating pollution. For receiving media characterized by greater dispersion in the distribution of environmental services, the optimal emissions policy becomes more stringent, whereas the optimal ambient policy generally becomes more lax. In terms of economic performance, emissions policies are superior to ambient policies for relatively non-toxic pollutants, whereas ambient standards welfare dominate emissions standards for sufficiently toxic pollutants. In the case of combined policies that jointly implement emissions standards and ambient standards, we show that the optimal level of each standard relaxes relative to its counterpart in a unilateral policy, allowing for greater emissions levels and higher pollution concentrations in the environmental medium.     

Review on environmental policies in China: Evolvement, features, and evaluation

This article reviews the development of current environmental policies in China and the great progress made during 1979–2006. Applying lessons learned from industrialized countries to its own situation, China’s environmental policies have the following main features: (1) to explore command and control measures to their fullest extent, (2) to strive to raise funding for environmental protection, (3) to identify who should take accountability for environmental protection; (4) to encourage strategies of “combination of prevention and control” and “integrated utilization”, (5) to embrace openness in the field of environmental policy and early international cooperation. During the past 30 years, China’s environmental policies have evolved and deepened: status expanded the national basic policies of environmental protection by adding a sustainable development strategy, focus changed from pollution control to a combination of pollution control and ecological protection, method changed from end control to source control, scope changed form point source control to watershed and territory pollution control, and management style changed from primarily using executive power to using legal and economic measures. This article introduces how they are evaluated by the international community and provides the prospects of the policies.     

Clustering economic sectors in China on a life cycle basis to achieve environmental sustainability

To improve material efficiency, industrial structure optimization becomes a focal point in Chinese industrial and environmental policies. It is crucial to cluster economic sectors and determine their priority for industrial and environmental policy implementation. Integrating a set of criteria, a hybrid input-output model and the hierarchical cluster analysis, this study clusters China’s economic sectors and determines their priority on a life cycle basis. China’s economic sectors are clustered into three clusters. Industrial structure changes (industrial policy) should encourage the development of sectors in cluster 1 and limit the development of sectors in cluster 2. Technology development and materials recycling (two environmental policies) should mainly focus on sectors in clusters 1 and 2. Future industrial policies in China should limit the development of two sectors named Manufacture of metal products and Extraction of petroleum and natural gas. Instead of limiting some industries by command-and-control, the best policy option is to remedy environmental standards and law enforcement. Enterprises belonging to the identified key sectors from the viewpoint of direct production impacts should be concerned to achieve enterprise sustainability. To achieve sustainable production chains, the identified key sectors from the viewpoint of accumulative production impacts should be concerned. For sustainable consumption, the identified key sectors from the viewpoint of consumption impacts should be concerned to transform consumption styles. Most of environmental pressure can be alleviated not only by technical improvements and material recycling, but also by the development of economic sectors in cluster 1.     

国外的环境移民问题及启示

工业的发展、人口的不断增长、经济全球一体化、气候变化等,导致生态环境的持续恶化,环境移民已成为困扰世界社会经济可持续发展的严重问题之一。国际社会的环境移民状况表明,环境移民主要是自发性的移民,缺乏政府的主导,容易形成环境难民和种族冲突,移民的人权难以得到保证,也不具有可持续发展性;可持续的环境移民要以政府为主导,以国内迁移为主实施移民工程;环境移民工程需要借鉴世界银行工程移民的经验,关键是做好迁人地的选择和评估。未来气候变化和突发环境灾难将不断加大人口的迁移范围和规模,需要给予特别的关注。总结国外环境移民的经验和教训,对我国实施有效的环境移民具有十分重要的意义。     

Tourism policy,biodiversity conservation and management: a case of the Kruger National Park,South Africa

Management of Kruger National Park (KNP) has recently made considerable progress in developing new policies to address biodiversity conservation and management challenges. These include tourism, water provision and elephant management policies. This study examines the integration of these three policies with regard to biodiversity conservation and management. Findings indicate that in their current fragmented form, the three policies actually undermine opportunities for effective biodiversity conservation and management in the KNP. This can be reversed by adopting a new management approach based on an environmental matrix organizational framework. Such a framework provides a mechanism for integrated policymaking and implementation and for improving biodiversity conservation and management in the KNP. The study concludes that an integrated approach is necessary due to the interlinkages between policies that affect biodiversity conservation at the KNP.     

The measurement of green finance index and the development forecast of green finance in China

This paper proposes a green finance index that may help policymakers and investors take more favorable actions based on the development of green finance. After analysis and organization of the development process of green finance and related green finance and index concepts, this paper uses the improved fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to construct a measurement model suitable for measuring the development level of green finance based on the principle of fuzzy mathematics. The index weight adopts the entropy method and improved Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) joint determination. At the same time, using the relevant statistical indicators of China's green credit from 2011 to 2019, and using the constructed model, the level of China's green finance development during this period was evaluated. Finally, the obtained data and classical gray model methods were used to predict China's green development level from 2020 to 2024. The research results show that: This model is a good measure of the level of development of green finance, and China's green finance index has generally shown a rapid growth trend over the past nine years, with the fastest growth rate between 2013 and 2014. From the perspective of the weight of each index affecting the green financial index, the weight of new energy, green transportation projects and new energy vehicles ranked in the top three, and the impact of these three indexes on China's green financial index is significant. In the future, China's green financial development level will continue to improve.

     

Green markets, eco-certification, and equilibrium fraud

Consumers voluntarily pay significant price premiums to acquire unobservable environmental attributes in green markets. This paper considers the performance of eco-certification policy under circumstances where consumers cannot discern environmental attributes in goods, but are able to form rational expectations regarding the extent of illicit activities in the green market. The main results are: (i) fraud is less prevalent in green markets when entry barriers limit the number of firms; (ii) conventional environmental policies on polluting techniques increase the incidence of fraud, and can even preclude the use of non-polluting techniques which would otherwise emerge in green markets; (iii) voluntary eco-certification policies can decrease fraud, increase output, and raise profits per firm; and (iv) in cases where the socially optimal resource allocation can be supported, the optimal policy involves negative unit certification fees, positive fixed certification fees and is revenue-generating for the certifying agent.     

Book reviews and notices

This study aims to examine the mediating role of the customer environmental satisfaction in the effect of environmental friendliness of products and the company on customer loyalty in using green products in Malaysia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis is performed to test the proposed hypotheses among 200 full time university students with purchasing experience at least once a week green products like organic vegetables. SEM results showed that customer environmental satisfaction significantly affected customer loyalty. This pair of relationships has the highest standardized beta coefficients, signifying the most important aspect of consideration by respondents among the rest of the proposed hypotheses. Next, customer environmental satisfaction partially mediated the relationship between environmental friendliness of products and customer loyalty in using green products. The results confirmed that customers are satisfied with their decision to purchase green products as they consume the least amount of resources and energy which results in minimum environmental damage and are also easy to recycle, disassemble, decompose, and reuse. Marketers should focus on creating effective marketing strategies and green promotional activities to attract customers for their green products. Marketers should control and enhance the quality of green products, as well as emphasizing their environmental satisfaction and increasing customer loyalty levels. This empirical study advanced marketers’ and policy makers’ understanding of the identification of customer environmental satisfaction as a mediator in the relationship between environmental friendliness of products and customer loyalty has been inspected in Malaysian context.     

Accepting market failure: Cultural worldviews and the opposition to corrective environmental policies

To explore whether and why people sometimes reject environmental policies that improve individual and collective outcomes, we create an experimental market in which transactions generate a negative externality. Market participants endogenously determine whether to implement corrective policies. We consider three policy instruments (Pigouvian taxes and subsidies, and quantity regulation) and two levels of policy efficiency (full and half). We then explore how individual cultural worldviews might contribute to the rejection of policies that correct the market failure. Our results indicate that people often oppose policies that improve their material outcomes, and we find that such opposition is significantly explained by cultural worldviews. Interesting connections emerge between individual worldviews and specific policy instruments.     

Development of environmental management system in China’s financial sector

The establishment of the environmental management system in the financial sector can be effectively promoted through the introduction of the environmental protection concept and its implementation by the financial sector. The impact of a sustainable development system on the sector is analyzed in this article from three aspects: environmental risk assessment, financing support for environmental protection projects, and financial services to environmentally friendly corporations and individuals. Influential factors on the development of the environmental management system in China’s financial sector are discussed from the perspective of various entities such as financial institutions, financial regulation authorities, environmental protection departments, corporations, and the public. It is pointed out that China’s financial sector is now in the transitional phase from a defensive attitude to a preventive attitude. Strengthening governmental guidance, the supervision of regulators as well as public awareness of environmental protection should be used to enhance the initiative in the development of the environmental management system in the Chinese financial sector.