Jeroen C.J.M. Van Den Bergh - Böcker

The extensive destruction of wetlands across Europe represents a significant loss of biodiversity along with its related economic, cultural, ethical and scientific benefits. This volume addresses the critical issues surrounding this environmental change process, employing a range of analytical methods drawn from a variety of disciplines which bridge the social and natural science divide. The authors begin by exploring the various methodological approaches to the analysis of the causes and consequences of wetland loss in Europe. The findings reveal that a formal decision-support process can be defined which can assist in the search for a more sustainable approach to wetland management. The methods and tools advocated are interdisciplinary and require co-ordinated action by experts from a variety of different fields. The authors move on to present a series of case studies from which a number of general conclusions can be drawn. In particular, they identify conflicts concerning use, value and interest groups to be the most common in the context of wetland management versus development. Consequently, they argue that scientific analysis requires support from the social sciences in order to better understand and implement more participatory approaches to environmental management.Given the ongoing depletion of wetland ecosystems throughout the world, this novel interdisciplinary approach to their sustainable management is a timely and valuable exercise. Students, researchers and scholars of environmental economics, environmental science, ecology, geography and environmental politics will find this book to be a useful addition to the literature. It will also help policymakers, international agencies and NGOs to preserve these valuable environmental resources.

The loss of biodiversity has put increasing pressure on the stability and continuity of ecosystems, and their ability to provide goods and services to mankind. This valuable new book addresses this issue and presents an integrated ecological-economic perspective on the analysis of biodiversity loss and conservation. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach and attempts both to provide a definition of biodiversity benefits as well as investigate alternative perspectives on biodiversity. The book also presents a classification of biodiversity values and effectively illustrates which economic valuation methods can best measure which type of biodiversity value. The distinguished authors move on to discuss the utility of the application of the economics-ecology interface and integrated modelling for the assessment of biodiversity values. In doing so, they consider the use of multi-criteria evaluation and meta-analytical methods to deal with the aggregation of information from multiple disciplines and past valuation studies, respectively. The book concludes by addressing the role of biodiversity indicators and monetary information for policy design and biodiversity management, devoting special attention to the certification and the ecolabeling of biodiversity benefits.The integration of economic and ecological theories and methods, and the strong methodological orientation will be of immense benefit to students, academics and researchers of environmental economics, environmental science and ecology. Policymakers involved with nature policy and management will also find this volume to be of great practical value.

The extensive destruction of wetlands across Europe represents a significant loss of biodiversity along with its related economic, cultural, ethical and scientific benefits. This volume addresses the critical issues surrounding this environmental change process, employing a range of analytical methods drawn from a variety of disciplines which bridge the social and natural science divide. The authors begin by exploring the various methodological approaches to the analysis of the causes and consequences of wetland loss in Europe. The findings reveal that a formal decision-support process can be defined which can assist in the search for a more sustainable approach to wetland management. The methods and tools advocated are interdisciplinary and require co-ordinated action by experts from a variety of different fields. The authors move on to present a series of case studies from which a number of general conclusions can be drawn. In particular, they identify conflicts concerning use, value and interest groups to be the most common in the context of wetland management versus development. Consequently, they argue that scientific analysis requires support from the social sciences in order to better understand and implement more participatory approaches to environmental management.Given the ongoing depletion of wetland ecosystems throughout the world, this novel interdisciplinary approach to their sustainable management is a timely and valuable exercise. Students, researchers and scholars of environmental economics, environmental science, ecology, geography and environmental politics will find this book to be a useful addition to the literature. It will also help policymakers, international agencies and NGOs to preserve these valuable environmental resources.

This study offers a unique evolutionary economics perspective on energy and innovation policies in the wider context of the transition to sustainable development. The authors include:an analysis of the environmental policy implications of evolutionary economicsa critical examination of current Dutch environmental and innovation policies and policy documentssystematic evaluation of three specific energy technologies, namely fuel cells, nuclear fusion and photovoltaic cells, within the evolutionary-economic framework.Their analysis results in a number of very specific policy recommendations, which to some extent may be in conflict with current policy advice and practice.Evolutionary Economics and Environmental Policy will appeal to researchers, undergraduate and graduate students in environmental economics, environmental science, public economics and technology studies. It will also be valuable to policy advisors and policymakers whose decisions affect the environment either directly or indirectly.

This book addresses the problem of how to make a large-scale socio-technical transition to renewable energy, so as to realize an environmentally sustainable economy in the long run. Transition thinking has in a short time managed to occupy a central position in the policy debate on sustainable development. The transition approach offers an innovative view on the role and content of public policy, compared with traditional views from economic, administrative and political sciences. The main motivation for using this notion is that while it links up with the system-wide approach of sustainable development, it has the advantage of shifting the attention from a vague end goal (blueprint) to the processes leading towards this goal. These processes in turn provide a concrete basis for thinking about appropriate public policies, taking account of the complex relations between technologies, institutions and behaviours. This book offers perspectives from a wide range of disciplines, addressing macro, regional and local scales. Contributions come from mainstream economics, evolutionary economics, sociology, political sciences, innovation studies, spatial economics and decision theory. Important lessons are also drawn from historical transitions.Managing the Transition to Renewable Energy will appeal to academics and researchers in environmental science and economics, environmental and technological policy advisors, evolutionary economists and researchers on technological innovation.

This insightful volume presents a multidisciplinary perspective on environmental planning. Drawing on the most important works in the environmental and social sciences, this collection places special emphasis on spatial dimensions and pure planning and covers such topics as: regulatory instruments and institutions; policy under bounded rationality; urban environmental planning; regulation of diffuse sources and land; location and trade and ex-post evaluation planning. In addition to many classic papers, the editor has included some recent surveys and papers which offer an original viewpoint. The book will be an essential source of reference for scholars and practitioners alike.

The effectiveness and scope of operational analysis of sustainable development is explored in this major new book. Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development offers an integrated treatment of theory, methods and applications for economic-ecological analysis taking into consideration all the relevant interactions between economic, development and physical and biological processes.An overview of different theoretical perspectives, based on insights from economics, ecology and thermodynamics, is followed by discussion of the dimensions of sustainable development including ethics and intergenerational equity, sustainable and multiple use, and spatial sustainability. The second part of the book discusses methods for analysis, covering the choice of indicators, natural resource accounting, and integrated static, dynamic and spatial modelling, and evaluation, including multi-criteria and cost-benefit analysis. Attention is also given to decision support and the choice of policy instruments.Combinations of the various methods are applied in the final part of the book, using case studies which cover a range of ecosystems and regions, as well as a variety of issues and problems. These studies clearly show the potential of policy-oriented integrated economic-ecological analysis for sustainable development.

This major reference book comprises specially commissioned surveys in environmental and resource economics written by an international team of experts. Authoritative yet accessible, each entry provides a state-of-the-art summary of key areas that will be invaluable to researchers, practitioners and advanced students. The handbook contains 79 chapters distributed over 10 main sections:introductioneconomics of natural resourceseconomics of environmental policyinternational aspects of environmental economics and policyspace in environmental economicsenvironmental macroeconomics• economic valuation and evaluationinterdisciplinary issuesmethods and models in environmental and resource economicsprospectsAside from being the most extensive survey of environmental and resource economics available today, the handbook contains several special and unique features. Five of the ten main sections cover topics that are addressed marginally or not at all in previous handbooks or other surveys. Moreover, in addition to overviews of the standard (neoclassical) approach, the book covers core elements of ecological economics in the section on interdisciplinary issues, with a separate chapter comparing neoclassical and ecological economics. The first section includes an introduction and summary of the handbook, as well as a chapter with a historical survey of environmental economics. The final section covers future areas of research from both monodisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives. At a chapter level the handbook addresses, in addition to standard topics, both less common and recent topics in environmental and resource economics. These include cartels in resource extraction, trade in resources, indicators of resource scarcity, endogenous risk, policy in imperfect markets, transaction costs, the double dividend of ecotaxation, distribution issues, ethics and policy, ethics and valuation, strategic trade, endogenous locations, endogenous growth theory, environmental Kuznets curves, sustainability and sustainable development, the meaning of thermodynamics, analysis of materials flows, the relevance of ecological theory, multi-criteria analysis, computable general equilibrium models, decomposition methods, and ecological economics. Traditional topics are surveyed as well, for instance, externalities, instrument choice, nonrenewable resource extraction, fishery economics, water use, the growth debate, valuation methods and cost-benefit analysis. A final main advantage of the handbook is that the extensive sub-divisions into topics means that the surveys offer an advanced treatment whilst being concise, authoritative and accessible.