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on Environmental Economics |
| By: | Lopez, Ramon; Islam, Asif |
| Abstract: | Trade, the exchange of goods and services across countries, is often viewed as an engine of economic growth. Benefits of liberalized trade include access to a larger variety of goods and services to consumers, easier access to foreign technologies, access to larger markets for producers, and increased efficiency in resource allocation. The impact of trade on the environment, however, is a contentious issue; air and water pollution, the degradation of natural habitats and loss of species, and global pollutants, particularly carbon dioxide emissions, are major concerns. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade, |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:umdrwp:45982&r=env |
| By: | Bryan, Elizabeth; Akpalu, Wisdom; Yesuf, Mahmud; Ringler, Claudia |
| Abstract: | "Global climate change poses great risks to poor people whose livelihoods depend directly on the use of natural resources. Mitigation of the adverse effects of climate change is a high priority on the international agenda. Carbon trading, under the Kyoto Protocol as well as outside the protocol, is growing rapidly from a small base and is expected to increase dramatically under present trends. However, developing countries, in particular Sub-Saharan Africa, remain marginalized in global carbon markets, with Africa's market share constituting less than 1 percent (excluding South Africa and North African countries). The potential for mitigation through agriculture in the African region is estimated at 17 percent of the global total, and the economic potential (i.e. considering carbon prices) is estimated at 10 percent of the total global mitigation potential. Similarly, Africa's forestry potential per year is 14 percent of the global total, and the avoided-deforestation potential accounts for 29 percent of the global total. Appropriate climate-change policies are needed to unleash this huge potential for pro-poor mitigation investment in Sub-Saharan Africa. Such policies should focus on increasing the profitability of environmentally sustainable practices that generate income for small producers and create investment flows for rural communities. Pro-poor investments, community development, new research, and capacity building can all help integrate the agriculture, forestry, and land-use systems of developing countries into the carbon trading system, both generating income gains and advancing environmental security. Achieving this result will require effective integration, from the global governance of carbon trading to the sectoral and micro-level design of markets and contracts, as well as investment in community management. Streamlining the measurement and enforcement of offsets, financial flows, and carbon credits for investors is also needed. This review paper begins with an overview of global carbon markets, including opportunities for carbon trading, and the current involvement of developing countries, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. This is followed by an assessment of the mitigation potential and options involving agriculture, land use, and forestry. The major constraints to the participation of Sub-Saharan Africa in global carbon markets are discussed, and options for integrating the region into global carbon markets are proposed." from authors' abstract |
| Keywords: | Climate change, mitigation, carbon markets, Clean Development Mechanism, |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:832&r=env |
| By: | Kevin Ummel; David Wheeler |
| Abstract: | A climate crisis is inevitable unless developing countries limit carbon emissions from the power sector in the near future. This will happen only if the costs of lowcarbon power production become competitive with fossil fuel power. We focus on a leading candidate for investment: solar thermal or concentrating solar power (CSP), a commercially available technology that uses direct sunlight and mirrors to boil water and drive conventional steam turbines. Solar thermal power production in North Africa and the Middle East could provide enough power to Europe to meet the needs of 35 million people by 2020. We compute the subsidies needed to bring CSP to financial parity with fossil-fuel alternatives. We conclude that large-scale deployment of CSP is attainable with subsidy levels that are modest, given the planetary stakes. By the end of the program, unsubsidized CSP projects are likely to be competitive with coal- and gasbased power production in Europe. The question is not whether CSP is feasible but whether programs using CSP technology will be operational in time to prevent catastrophic climate change. For such programs to spur the clean energy revolution, efforts to arrange financing should begin right away, with site acquisition and construction to follow within a year. |
| Keywords: | Solar energy, Africa, climate change, energy technology |
| Date: | 2008–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:156&r=env |
| By: | Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris); Mouez Fodha (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the environmental tax policy issues within an overlapping generations models framework. The objective is to analyze whether an environmental tax policy can respect the two equity principles simultaneously, the vertical as well the horizontal one. We characterize the necessary conditions for the obtaining of a Pareto improving shift when the revenue of the pollution tax is recycled by a change in the labor tax rate or by a change in the distributive properties of the labor tax. We show that, depending on the production function elasticities and on the heterogeneity characteristics of labor supply, an appropriate policy mix could be designed in order to leave each workers' class unharmed by the environmental tax reform. It will consist in an increase of the progressivity of the labor tax together with a decrease of the minimal wage tax rate. |
| Keywords: | Environmental tax, double dividend, tax progressivity, overlapping generations model. |
| Date: | 2008–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00348891_v1&r=env |
| By: | Yesuf, Mahmud; di Falco, Salvatore; Deressa, Temesgen; Ringler, Claudia; Kohlin, Gunnar |
| Abstract: | "This paper presents an empirical analysis of the impact of climate change on food production in a typical low-income developing country. Furthermore, it provides an estimation of the determinants of adaptation to climate change and the implications of these strategies on farm productivity. The analysis relies on primary data from 1,000 farms producing cereal crops in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. Based on monthly collected meteorological station data, the thin plate spline method of spatial interpolation was used to interpolate the specific rainfall and temperature values of each household. The rainfall data were disaggregated at the seasonal level. We found that climate change and climate change adaptations have significant impact on farm productivity. Extension services (both formal and farmer to farmer), as well as access to credit and information on future climate changes, affect adaptation positively and significantly. Farm households with larger access to social capital are more likely to adopt yield-related adaptation strategies." from authors' abstract |
| Keywords: | Adaptation, Climate change, farm level productivity, rainfall, |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:828&r=env |
| By: | Saravanan S |
| Abstract: | This paper identifies the idealistic images driving the watershed programmes as a major stumbling block in sustainable natural resource management. It calls for building on the existing governance instruments that are diverse from regulation to consensus building for addressing natural resource crisis in dry lands of India. |
| Keywords: | development, idealistic, watershed, programmes, natural resource, management, dry lands, India, governance, |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:1782&r=env |
| By: | Mandell, Svante (vti – Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute) |
| Abstract: | Transportation within the EU, as in most of the industrialized world, shows an increasing trend in CO2 emissions. This calls for measures both to decrease the amount of transportation and/or to increase the efficiency in the vehicle fleet. The present paper addresses the latter by providing a simple and transparent analytical model that illustrates how different policy measures address different parts of an interlinked system, which determines the composition of the future car fleet. Apart from being simple, and thereby providing an intuitive framework, the model highlights the difference between initial responses to policies and the outcome in equilibrium both in the short and the long run. |
| Keywords: | Vehicle; fuel-efficiency; policy; CO2 |
| JEL: | Q48 Q54 R48 |
| Date: | 2008–12–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:vtiwps:2008_012&r=env |
| By: | Jovanovic, Boyan |
| Abstract: | Aside from the equilibrium that Hotelling (1931) displayed, his model of non-renewable resources also contains a continuum of bubble equilibria. In all the equilibria the price of the resource rises at the rate of interest. In a bubble equilibrium, however, the consumption of the resource peters out, and a positive fraction of the original stock continues to be traded forever. And that may well be happening in the market for high-end Bordeaux wines. |
| Keywords: | wine, exhaustible resource, bubble, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, |
| Date: | 2008–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aawewp:45830&r=env |
| By: | Mark Weisbrot; Luis Sandoval |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that the Eastern lowland states of Bolivia that have recently held “autonomy” referenda also have the highest concentrations of land ownership, and receive disproportionate shares of natural gas revenues. These states also have a much smaller indigenous population than the rest of the country. |
| Keywords: | Bolivia |
| JEL: | O O5 O54 O1 Q Q3 Q34 Q38 |
| Date: | 2008–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:epo:papers:2008-22&r=env |
| By: | Nkonya, Ephraim; Pender, John; Kaizzi, Kayuki C.; Kato, Edward; Mugarura, Samuel; Ssali, Henry; Muwonge, James |
| Abstract: | "Agriculture is vital to the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa: two-thirds of the region's people depend on it for their livelihoods. Nevertheless, agricultural productivity in most of the region is stagnant or declining, in large part because of land degradation. Soil erosion and soil nutrient depletion degraded almost 70 percent of the region's land between 1945 and 1990; 20 percent of total agricultural land has been severely degraded. If left unchecked, land degradation could seriously threaten the progress of economic growth and poverty reduction in Africa. Within this context, most African countries strive to achieve poverty reduction and sustainable land management. In designing policies to achieve these objectives concurrently, a clear understanding of their linkage is crucial. Nonetheless, the relationships between poverty and land management are complex, context specific, and resource specific, and empirical evidence to demonstrate their linkage has been limited. This analysis seeks to improve the understanding of this linkage by examining how poverty (broadly defined to include limited access to capital, infrastructure, and services) influences land-management practices, land degradation, crop productivity, and household incomes. In particular, the study focuses on how factors susceptible to policy initiatives—such as education, agricultural technical assistance, and credit— affect households' land management decisions. Uganda was chosen to serve as a case study of these issues, for several reasons. Of all Sub-Saharan African nations, Uganda has some of the most severe soil nutrient depletion in Africa: about 1.2 percent of nutrient stock stored in the topsoil is depleted by farmers each year. Also, the country contains a wide variety of agroecological zones (AEZs), making it an appropriate microcosm of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Ugandan government has also been conducting ambitious poverty-reduction and conservation efforts, and a study such as this one serves to measure those efforts. Working with the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), the authors drew on Uganda's 2002–03 National Household Survey, as well as a specific survey conducted to collect poverty, land management, and land-degradation data at the household and plot levels." from text |
| Keywords: | Poverty, Land management, Soil degradation, |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:resrep:159&r=env |
| By: | M. Sarwar Jahan (Bangladesh Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (BCSIR) Laboratories); Bernhard G. Gunter (Bangladesh Development Research Center (BDRC)); A. F. M. Ataur Rahman (North South University (NSU)) |
| Abstract: | Bangladesh is facing an acute shortage of fibrous raw materials for the production of pulp and paper. On the other hand, the demand for paper and paper products is increasing day by day. This study reviews the availability and suitability of nonwood raw materials for pulp production in Bangladesh. It shows that Bangladesh has a huge amount of unused jute fiber, which is highly suitable for papermaking in Bangladesh. Other agricultural wastes like rice straw, dhaincha, golpata fronds, cotton stalks, corn stalks, and kash are also available and may be used for some pulp production. Given the different properties of these different nonwood fibers, jute pulp can be used as a reinforcing agent with other nonwood pulps for the production of high quality paper in Bangladesh. |
| Keywords: | Bangladesh, natural fibers, jute, paper making, pulp |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bnr:wpaper:4&r=env |
| By: | SHARACHCHANDRA LELE |
| Abstract: | Building upon a larger research project at four sites in the Western Ghats of peninsular India, this study examines the link between stream flow, agricultural water use and economic returns to agriculture. The study attempts to simulate the likely impacts of regeneration of a degraded forest catchment on stream flow and the consequent impact on irrigation tankbased agriculture in a downstream village. |
| Keywords: | India, agricultural water, irrigation, agriculture, catchment, research, crop, governance, ecologically, environmentally, crops, western ghats, forest, village, agriculture, india, |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:1820&r=env |
| By: | Mark Weisbrot; Nichole Szembrot |
| Abstract: | This paper examines television news coverage of proposed drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive zones in the United States. It finds that these broadcasts almost completely ignored data, and conclusions, from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency (EIA). The EIA finds that the benefits from such drilling would be too small to have a significant effect on the price of oil. There is no legitimate reason for this omission in the media. Just as economic reporting regularly uses data (unemployment, inflation, GDP, trade) from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, or Bureau of Labor Statistics, reporting on energy relies on data from the EIA. |
| JEL: | Q Q4 Q41 Q43 |
| Date: | 2008–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:epo:papers:2008-24&r=env |