Market System to Curtail Emission Magnitudes Evolved from Electricity Generation

The recent resolution of the seventh Conference of the Parties to the Climate Convention (COP7) indicates that if a country is required to comply with the pollution limit, part of the required reduction in levels of emission will have to be achieved domestically. With this status quo, policy practitioners may opt to design emission level standards along with the provision of allowing access to the international permit market that may facilitate carbon offset crediting to the country. In policy formulation cognate to electricity generation through coal combustion, it is suggested that end-users will pay emission compliance costs in terms of the price of electricity usage and the companies will offer a rebate on reduction to those who curtail the level of usage of electricity. Under the scheme proposed, the generating company(s) will face the consequences if it fails to comply to domestic emission standards. In practice, the proposed method can ensure Pareto efficiency and exhibit Pareto improvement in two-party cases where both parties have joint interest in profit maximization, but they may have dichotomy in their activities. In dealing with domestic greenhouse gas issues, the proposal becomes appealing to parties for reducing the level of emissions. Moreover, it may produce a greater degree of abatement of CO₂ emissions over the levels of abatement resulting from policies of consumer or producer liability assignments.     

不完全竞争行业中的环境工具有效性研究:一个理论框架

各级政府贯彻落实绿色发展的理念,实现经济增长与环境保护的共赢,才能真正实现"绿水青山就是金山银山"。在经济"新常态"背景下,防治环境污染是个复杂而系统性的工程,需要进行经济追因与综合治理,其中,制定实施有效的环境政策工具尤为关键。本文把微观经济学中的双寡头产量竞争模型作为基准模型拓展用于环境经济分析,并把环境税、环境规制、排污权交易这三类主要环境工具对企业生产决策的影响纳入基准模型,旨在对比研究不完全竞争行业中环境工具的有效性问题。结果表明:主要基于市场机制的环境经济政策比行政色彩浓厚的环境规制更有效率。提高环境税率或排污权价格均能显著削减行业污染物排放量,如果环境税率恰好等于排污权价格,则环境税与排污权交易这两类环境工具的效力相等。这对进一步建立和完善我国尚处于探索或初始实施阶段的环境工具,促进石化、电力、钢铁等不完全竞争行业的主要污染物减排,具有一定参考价值和借鉴意义。     

External benefits of environmental regulation: Resource recovery and the utilisation of effluents

Summary Since 1977, stringent environmental regulation has been progressively imposed on Malaysia's most polluting industry, the palm oil mills. The impact of the regulation on international trade and producer welfare has been quite small compared to the relative benefits to society in terms of changes in the levels of dissolved oxygen in the industrial effluents. External benefits from pollution abatement have been derived. This paper presents a preliminary evaluation of the derived benefits which have a long- term potential of recycling valuable resources while maintaining competitiveness in the international palm oil trade.Dr Khalid Abdul Rahim is a member of faculty in the Department of Natural Resource Economics at the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia. Wan Mustafa Wan Ali is a research assistant in the Department. This paper is based on part of the "Intensification of Research in Priority Areas" (IRPA) project 1991–95, funded by the Government of Malaysia.     

Global environmental change: the contribution of social science research to policy in the UK

Research into global environmental change in the United Kingdom, has sought to influence public policy. It has also served to refashion the social sciences themselves, forcing them to consider sustainability as a dimension of all social and economic behaviour. This paper describes the way in which the principle of enhanced sustainability might become a point of reference in social science research. It discusses, some of the lessons that have been learned from the Global Environmental Change Programme and then considers the relationship between this work and research on the environment undertaken within the natural sciences.This paper was presented as a keynote delivery at the Global Forum '94 Conference Towards a sustainable Future: Promoting Sustainable Development, Manchester, UK.     

Engaging Economic Development Agencies in Environmental Protection: The case for embedded autonomy

This article examines the role of economic development agencies in strengthening the environmental performance of industry within rapidly industrialising East Asian economies. Three case-study examples are considered, namely, the role of the Industrial Development Board in reducing industrial pollution in Taiwan, pollution control in the palm oil industry in Malaysia, and the role of the Economic Development Board in influencing environmental performance of industry in Singapore. The concept of embedded autonomy is developed to consider the ways in which agencies of economic development can work with firms and industries while simultaneously remaining autonomous from these firms with respect to setting and enforcing performance standards. The three cases suggest that a form of policy integration that more directly integrates economic and environmental goals within agencies of economic development may be feasible, but only where there exists a strong autonomous government bureaucracy and where there is strong societal commitment to improving the environmental performance of industry.     

节能环保产业政策工具评述与展望

节能环保产业是打赢污染防治攻坚战的重要支撑,也是推动经济发展的新兴绿色动能。本文利用瓦当设计的政策工具三分法,对当前节能环保产业政策工具进行了分类研究。当前,影响节能环保产业政策的工具主要包括管制型工具、经济型工具、信息型工具三个类型。管制型工具包括指标控制、强制性标准和监督考核等;经济型工具包括财政支持、税收优惠、价格政策、金融政策等;信息型工具包括技术推广机制、产品推广机制等。尽管我国已经初步建立了政策支持体系,但当前政策工具仍然存在一系列不足,管制型工具、经济型工具、信息型工具都有较大的改进调整空间,应当进一步形成规范、合理的管制型制度,以普惠为主而非补助为主的经济型制度,以提供信息服务为主的信息型制度,并以此促进节能环保产业健康、有序发展。     

Economic, social, and environmental sustainability in development theory and urban planning practice

In ten years, more than half the world's population will be living in cities. The United Nations (UN) has stated that this will threaten cities with social conflict, environmental degradation and the collapse of basic services. The economic, social, and environmental planning practices of societies embodying urban sustainability have been proposed as antidotes to these negative urban trends. Urban sustainability is a doctrine with diverse origins. The author believes that the alternative models of cultural development in Curitiba, Brazil, Kerala, India, and Nayarit, Mexico embody the integration and interlinkage of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Curitiba has become a more livable city by building an efficient intra-urban bus system, expanding urban green space, and meeting the basic needs of the urban poor. Kerala has attained social harmony by emphasizing equitable resource distribution rather than consumption, by restraining reproduction, and by attacking divisions of race, caste, religion, and gender. Nayarit has sought to balance development with the environment by framing a nature-friendly development plan that protects natural systems from urban development and that involves the public in the development process. A detailed examination of these alternative cultural development models reveals a myriad of possible means by which economic, social, and environmental sustainability might be advanced in practice. The author concludes that while these examples from the developing world cannot be directly translated to cities in the developed world, they do indicate in a general sense the imaginative policies that any society must foster if it is to achieve urban sustainability.     

Engaging Economic Development Agencies in Environmental Protection: the case for embedded autonomy

This article examines the role of economic development agencies in strengthening the environmental performance of industry within rapidly industrialising East Asian economies. Three case-study examples are considered, namely, the role of the Industrial Development Board in reducing industrial pollution in Taiwan, pollution control in the palm oil industry in Malaysia, and the role of the Economic Development Board in influencing environmental performance of industry in Singapore. The concept of embedded autonomy is developed to consider the ways in which agencies of economic development can work with firms and industries while simultaneously remaining autonomous from these firms with respect to setting and enforcing performance standards. The three cases suggest that a form of policy integration that more directly integrates economic and environmental goals within agencies of economic development may be feasible, but only where there exists a strong autonomous government bureaucracy and where there is strong societal commitment to improving the environmental performance of industry.     

Evaluating aquacultural use of thermal effluents: An application of system dynamics to environmental problem solving

Given the ecological burden imposed by power plants located in the coastal zone, efforts to improve the marginal benefits realized from their operation are warranted. Indeed, if this source of environmental pollution can be utilized to compensate for past ecological damage, then the benefits will be magnified many-fold.This study addresses the economic feasibility of utilizing heated effluent water from power plants to invigorate the growth of oysters raised under controlled conditions. The preliminary findings indicate that given proper combinations of system capacity, supplemental nutrient supplies, sea water flow and temperature gradients, such an operation is feasible.This is also a demonstration of a viable application of a sophisticated computer modeling approach to environmental problems. System Dynamics a technique pioneered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is applied to evaluate the physical, biological, and economic interrelationships of the aquacultural system variables. It offers many advantages for the environmental manager and researcher, a number of which are realized in the present investigation.     

Environmental sustainability: Balancing pollution control with economic growth

This article will discuss in some detail how prescribed command-and-control pollution abatement and economic growth must work together rather than in opposition. How a balanced environment can and must tolerate acceptable levels of pollution and how economic growth from added value pollution prevention in unity with pollution control technology can and does work.© 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A proposed process scheme for recovering metal values from pigment manufacturing waste streams

 Effluents from pigment manufacturing operations contain highly toxic substances. These substances in their pure form are highly valuable industrial raw materials and their loss in the effluents is not only a pollution problem but also one implying economic loss. This article describes an approach, which highlights a policy that can allow elimination of a pollution problem with simultaneous economic benefits through recovery of the pollutants in readily marketable forms. This approach converts serious "liabilities into substantial assets" and is worth adopting in many cases. The case considered here is that of the effluent from a plant manufacturing the pigment, phthalocyanine green (PG). This effluent is highly acidic and contains copper and aluminium in chloride form. There is a serious disposal problem concerning this effluent. The work reported here was focussed on recovering the metal values in this effluent in a form which can be readily marketed. Particularly important is the fact that the aluminium value can be recovered in the form of zeolite 4A, which is an environment friendly additive in modern detergent formulations. Received: 1 July 1998 / Accepted: 30 September 1998     

Environmental functions as a unifying concept for ecology and economics

Summary In spite of the increased awareness about many environmental problems, degradation and pollution of the natural environment by human actions still continue on a large scale. Some of the main reasons for man's continued abuse of the natural environment are the short-term nature of the economic planning process, which largely ignores the negative long-term effects of economic production on the environment (e.g. pollution), and the fact that the pricing system mainly concentrates on man-made goods and services while considering most natural resources to be free goods.This paper argues that environmental functions (i.e. natural goods are services) are at least as important to human welfare as man-made goods and services and should, therefore, be included in economic accounting procedures. To this end, it is suggested to replace the term natural resources by the concept of environmental functions and, efforts should be undertaken to increase our understanding of the ecological and socio-economic benefits of environmental functions to human society. Only when ecological principles become an integral part of economic planning and political decision-making is there a chance of achieving a happy global village based on harmony between man and nature.Rudolf S. de Groot is an environmental consultant and a Ph.D candidate in environmental planning and management in the Nature Conservation Department of the Agricultural University Wageningen. As a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Planning he is involved in the activities of the European Committee for National Conservation Strategies, to implement, monitor and update National and European Conservation Strategies.     

THE COSTS OF CONFLICTING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY: A CASE STUDY IN MILWAUKEE1

ABSTRACT: The history of the Milwaukee water pollution abatement program is examined as a case study to investigate the costs of conflicting environmental policy. The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning the Milwaukee case is described as a milestone in U.S. water pollution abatement policy which will help preclude the type of environmental policy conflict which has been found to be so costly to Milwaukee. The implications to U.S. water pollution abatement policy of the 13-year history of conflict in Milwaukee are presented.     

Collective action: an alternative institutional arrangement for reducing water pollution in an industrial estate in India

This study explores the possibility of collective action as an alternative option for reducing water pollution for a cluster of small-scale industries. A case study of the Nandesari Industrial Estate in Gujarat, India, demonstrates the roles played by different agents, such as affected parties, polluters, non-governmental organizations, regulators and the court. The study empirically estimates the 'benefits' and 'costs' of water pollution abatement for a cluster of 250 small-scale industries at Nandesari, and uses these estimates for a social cost-benefit analysis. Benefits are estimated using the contingent valuation method, with a 'willingness to accept' format for the rural areas, and a 'willingness to pay' format for the urban area of the nearby Vadodara city. The article considers costs of command and control, market-based solutions and the option of common effluent treatment as alternative scenarios. It discusses how collective action and joint abatement at a common effluent treatment plant (CETP) by the 250 industries efficiently comply with the State Pollution Control Board norms, which had not been possible for the factories acting individually over the last 20 years. Finally, a detailed social cost-benefit analysis has been undertaken to estimate the net present social benefits with and without CETP. The cost-benefit analysis shows the economic advantage and social desirability of 'collective action' (joint treatment with CETP institutional arrangement) for water pollution abatement with respect to all possible scenarios comprising shadow prices of investment, foreign exchange, unskilled labour and equity considerations.     

Qualitative Stakeholder Analysis for the Development of Sustainable Monitoring Systems for Farm Animal Welfare

Continued concern for animal welfare may be alleviated when welfare would be monitored on farms. Monitoring can be characterized as an information system where various stakeholders periodically exchange relevant information. Stakeholders include producers, consumers, retailers, the government, scientists, and others. Valuating animal welfare in the animal-product market chain is regarded as a key challenge to further improve the welfare of farm animals and information on the welfare of animals must, therefore, be assessed objectively, for instance, through monitoring. Interviews with Dutch stakeholder representatives were conducted to identify their perceptions about the monitoring of animal welfare. Stakeholder perceptions were characterized in relation to the specific perspectives of each stakeholder. While producers tend to perceive welfare from a production point of view, consumers will use visual images derived from traditional farming and from the animals natural environments. Scientists perceptions of animal welfare are affected by the need to measure welfare with quantifiable parameters. Retailers and governments (policy makers) have views of welfare that are derived from their relationships with producers, consumers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and scientists. All interviewed stakeholder representatives stated that animal welfare is important. They varied in the extent to which they weighted economic considerations relative to concern for the animals welfare. Many stakeholders emphasized the importance of communication in making a monitoring system work. Overall, the perspectives for the development of a sustainable monitoring system that substantially improves farm animal welfare were assessed as being poor in the short term. However, a reliable system could be initiated under certain conditions, such as integrated chains and with influential and motivated stakeholders. A scheme is described with attention points for the development of sustainable monitoring systems for farm animal welfare in the long term.     

Towards a new system of environmental governance

Summary Planning, the visible hand of government, is the resource allocation sphere that has the potential to prevent destructive conflict over resources, by creating a long term, rational, ethics-based and participatory decision-making process. Other public decision-making systems (the market, legal and political arenas), by their very nature, cannot adequately protect the environment or ensure sustainable development. However, as presently conceived, Planning⁺ cannot do so either. Reform has been impeded by an ideological bias which defines Planning as diametrically opposed to the market, such that creative alternatives to the two systems of social choice have not been developed.To address this problem, a new tri-partite structure of environmental governance is proposed. Based on an ecofeminist paradigm, it is primarily designed to constrain the potential for the abuse of power, and allow society to address environmental (ethical) as well as social (distributional) and economic (efficiency) issues. In a sense, it rationalises the social decision-making system by re-aligning rights, wants and needs with the appropriate decision-making forum (representative democracy, the market and Planning respectively). The model exposes the need to redesign all these institutions so that they better correspond to their logical functions within the resource allocation system. However, this paper focuses on the Planning system itself.Janis Birkeland was an attorney, architect and planner in San Francisco, USA. She now teaches at the Department of Architecture, University of Tasmania. This article is drawn from a longer 1990 paper Myths and Realities of Planning and Resource Allocation (Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania), which was presented at the Socialist Scholars' Conference, Melbourne, 18th July, 1991.     

Elephants,people, parks and development: the case of the Luangwa Valley,Zambia

New ideas about conserving wildlife are emerging to compete with conventional national park policies. But methods of analyzing wildlife conservation problems in Africa are inadequate for the analysis of complex issues of policy. Much of the analysis of conservation policy attempts to be apolitical on issues charged with social conflict. Analyses are too often ahistorical when history can say a great deal about the origins of present-day ecological problems. Further-more, problems are commonly analyzed within narrow discilinary frameworks which predetermine the nature of conclusions and lead to professionally biased proposals. This case study of the Luangwa Valley, Zambia, is used to demonstrate a method which attempts to remedy these weaknesses,In the first part of the article we examine the role of the Luangwa National Parks in the context of the Zambian political economy, and identify social groups which compete for the resources of the national parks. Next we trace the historical origins of present-day ecological changes. These analyses lead toward a model of the Parks and some of their relationships with the national economy. We end with a proposal for communal use of wildlife which attempts to resolve some of the contradictions inherent in current policy.     

Agricultural water pollution control: An interdisciplinary approach

Regulation and control of agricultural water pollution is unique and difficult to accomplish. Water quality standards are often proposed without adequate consideration of the overall economic impact on agricultural production. This article illustrates how economists and physical scientists can cooperate to develop appropriate control strategies for agricultural water pollution. Data provided by physical scientists and economists are used in a linear programming model to describe salt discharge as a function of water management, production levels, and an associated effluent charge. Four water management activities were chosen on the basis of different costs of production (including a parametrically varied effluent charge), water requirements, alfalfa yields, and levels of salt discharge. Results indicate that when the effluent charge is low (<$0.20/metric ton salt discharged), maximum production with maximum salt discharge is most profitable. As the effluent charge is increased ($0.20–$0.40/metric ton salt discharged), it becomes progressively less profitable to produce alfalfa at maximum levels of pollutant discharge. When the effluent charge is >$0.40/metric ton salt discharged, alfalfa production is no longer economically feasible. An important aspect of this approach is that it permits policy makers to identify explicitly the relationship between the environmental standard and the effect on agricultural production.     

Environmental accounting: Neo-classical framework or alternative?

Summary Traditional environmental accounting framework is based on a neo-classical economic theory that treats environmental assets and liabilities as if their contribution to economic acitivity were similar to that of conventional, marketed assets and liabilities. The environment is viewed as a producer of outputs consumed by other productive economic sectors. It is proposed in this article that the environment is not only a producer of outputs, but also an output itself. The environment requires not only its protection, but importantly its continual improvement. Under this framework environmental accounting as a discipline is split into two categories: corporate environmental accounting and social environmental accounting. Two information streams exist under this framework: products-oriented information and environment-oriented information.Dr Simon S. Gao is a Senior Lecturer in the Accounting and Finance Division of the Business School at Staffordshire University. He obtained a BA in Economics in 1993, and an MA in Accounting and Finance, in 1987, both from Shaanxi Institute of Finance and Economics, China. He was recently awarded a PhD from Faculty of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands). His research intersts include among others, environmental accounting and reporting, environmental cost and risk analysis, and environmental asset management. He has published papers widely on accounting and finance issues.