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This research develops a difference-in-differences (DID) model to explore the relationship between environmental policy (The Measures for the Administration of Permits for the Discharge of Key Water Pollutants in the Huaihe and Taihu River Basins, MAPD) and the performance of firms involved in the paper and paper products industry (MPP) in China. Cost and innovation are introduced as mediators to explore the mediating effects. A firm-level dataset from 1998 to 2007 is adopted for empirical study. The findings support the positive role of the MAPD, and the average treatment effect is 0.016.The heterogeneity analysis shows that the MAPD exerts a positive impact on non-state-owned and small-scale enterprises, with coefficients of 0.018 and 0.021, respectively. Moreover, MAPD increases enterprise costs harming firm performance. On the other hand, it can promote firm performance by improving innovation ability.

While participation in the international division of labor has led to rapid economic development, it has also resulted in pressing environmental issues in China. In the context of “building a resource-saving and environment-friendly society” and the current sustainability requirements, research on the environmental impact of Chinese paper companies from the perspective of Environmental Information Disclosure (EID) policy and trade has not yet reached a consensus. This study constructs an analytical framework for the EID policy impact mechanism and trade on the environmental effects of the paper industry and enterprises. It explores the direct and indirect effects of EID policy and import-and-export trade on the paper industry environmental effects using the Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences (PSM-DID) model. EID positively impacts the pollution reduction of enterprises mainly through the technical effect. Export trade positively impacts the reduction of enterprises’ emissions through the technology effect. However, the demand of the international market increases the pollution from the paper industries, which has a negative impact. Importing will enable enterprises to obtain greater price advantages which can alleviate and transfer the costs brought by EID. This study analyzes the impact of trade on the environmental effects of Chinese paper enterprises and identifies the impact of China’s EID policy and trade on enterprises’ pollution emissions. It provides a theoretical and practical foundation for the Chinese government to formulate environmental and trade policies.

The disruptive force of the COVID-19 pandemic is lessening in power and plans are being made for the postcrisis period, among which increasing the sustainability of higher education is of significant importance. The study aims at establishing students’ existing environment-related routines during their home confinement, as a basis for applying green measures to campus living once academic life is resumed with the physical presence of students. The collected data rely on self-reported information provided by 816 students from Politehnica University of Timisoara (Romania), collected via an online, anonymous survey. The novelty of the approach is that household environment-related routines are investigated during a crisis period, with the possibility to build upon the results to implement tailored measures to encourage or diminish environmentally relevant consumption by young, highly skilled individuals. The students display a moderate awareness of environmental issues and indicate consumption routines that may be steered towards an increased sustainability-conscious campus life, through the combined intervention of the university, city administration, and stakeholder involvement. The findings are used to explore the possible directions for action towards increasing or contributing to the territorial sustainability in the socio-ecological context of Timisoara, the largest university city in the western part of Romania via educational, managerial and policy interventions.

This opinion paper focuses on the role of eco-toxicological tools in the assessment of possible impacts of emerging contaminants on the aquatic ecosystem, hence, on human health. Indeed, organic trace pollutants present in raw and treated wastewater are the pivot targets: a multidisciplinary approach allows defining the basic principles for managing this issue, from setting a proper monitoring campaign up to evaluating the optimal process treatment. Giving hints on trace pollutants fate and behaviour, attention is focused on the choice of the bioassay(s), by analysing the meaning of possible biological answers. Data interpretation and exploitation are detailed with the final goal of providing criteria in order to be able to select the best targeted treatment options. The manuscript dealswith conventional and innovative analytical approaches for assessing toxicity, by reviewing laboratory and field assays; illustrative real scale and laboratory applications integrate and exemplify the proposed approach. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This is the approach paper for the forthcoming evaluation of the Inter-American Development Group's environmental and social safeguards systems. The paper lays out the evaluation's objectives and scope, the evaluation questions and the methodology which OVE will apply to conduct the evaluation as part of its 2017-18 work program.

Recent years have seen increasing demand for wider application of strategic environmental assessment (SEA), especially SEA of major policies, as a powerful instrument to safeguard the environment during the rapid industrialization and urbanization in China. Debates on SEA are concentrated on its feasibility and effective implementation in practice. This study applies Emergy analysis within the framework of social–economic–natural complex eco-system theory to overcome the limitations of methods used for assessing regional sustainability so far. This established model is tested in the case of Chinese paper industry to assess the sustainability of 5 policy scenarios. The results show that Emergy-based Indices (EbI) are more effective to measure the sustainability of industry complex ecosystem, thus EbI approach is very useful in SEAs on policy scenarios of a given complex ecosystem.

The merits of different types of regulatory tools in eliminating pollution and at the same time inducing innovation have long been an interest of researchers in both environmental economics and industrial organization. Although there is a substantial theoretical literature investigating the potential for various environmental policies to attain these dual goals, this is a challenging empirical problem because every industry has its own inherent characteristics that play an important role in determining the performance of different regulatory tools. The majority of the work to date focuses on pollution abatement while leaving pollution prevention understudied. In most of the literature firms are also assumed to be symmetric. Asymmetries among firms add another degree and level of complexity to their strategic interactions, and affect the performance of different regulatory tools. This paper investigates the performance of two alternative regulatory tools, an emissions performance standard and an emissions tax, in reducing pollution and inducing pollution prevention and abatement R&D in the US pulp and paper industry. We construct a model representing the industry in an asymmetric Cournot duopoly framework, calibrate the model to disaggregated industry data, and run scenarios to replicate the behavior of the firms in an imperfectly competitive output market. Our results suggest that pollution prevention R&D can respond quite differently than abatement R&D to different policy instruments. The results indicate that R&D spillovers among firms play crucial role in technology development and strategies of the firms. Our results also suggest that strategic interactions between firms in an imperfectly competitive industry can have significant impacts of the levels of both types of R&D.

The vision of a sustainable and safe use of chemicals to protect human health, preserve the environment and maintain the ecosystem requires innovative and more holistic approaches to risk assessment (RA) in order to better inform decision making. Integrated risk assessment (IRA) has been proposed as a solution to current scientific, societal and policy needs. It is defined as the mutual exploitation of environmental risk assessment (ERA) for human health risk assessment (HHRA) and vice versa in order to coherently and more efficiently characterize an overall risk to humans and the environment for better informing the risk analysis process. Extrapolating between species which are relevant for HHRA and ERA requires a detailed understanding of pathways of toxicity/modes of action (MoA) for the various toxicological endpoints. Significant scientific advances, changes in chemical legislation, and increasing environmental consciousness have created a favourable scientific and regulatory environment to develop and promote the concept and vision of IRA. An initial proof of concept is needed to foster the incorporation of IRA approaches into different chemical sectorial regulations and demonstrate their reliability for regulatory purposes. More familiarity and confidence with IRA will ultimately contribute to an overall reduction in in vivo toxicity testing requirements. However, significant progress will only be made if long-term support for MoA-related research is secured. In the short term, further exchange and harmonization of RA terminology, models and methodologies across chemical categories and regulatory agencies will support these efforts. Since societal values, public perceptions and cultural factors are of increasing importance for the acceptance of risk analysis and successful implementation of risk mitigation measures, the integration of socio-economic analysis and socio-behavioural considerations into the risk analysis process may help to produce a more effective risk evaluation and consideration of the risks and benefits associated with the use of chemicals.

本研究は, わが国の環境問題・政策の推移を客観的な数値データとして捉えることを目的としている. 具体的には日本の環境白書を基にしたEICネット環境年表を使用し, 年表の記載事項4, 845件を対象にキーワードとセンテンスに着目した分析を行なう. キーワード分析では環境政策の視点が如何に変化したか, センテンス分析ではキーワード分析だけではカバーできない政策の目的や様態の実態を明らかにする. なお, キーワードおよびセンテシスは統一ルールに基づいて独自に設定し判断を行なった. 政策の重点は衛生と公害分野から自然保護, 気候変動, 循環型社会へと移り変わっていることが示された. 政策自体年々増加していることと, その内容が多様化し複雑になっていることも示された.

Until the Covid-19 pandemic, Bangladesh had reported consistent improvements regarding its food and nutrition security (FNS) status, and yet, the country still features poor FNS outcomes among parts of its population. In rural coastal regions of the Ganges–Brahmaputra-Meghna delta, farming households’ vulnerability is particularly exacerbated by a range of environmental hazards, increasing challenges for agriculture to contribute to higher FNS levels. In the context of existing literature on the trade-offs between subsistence agriculture and cash-earning livelihood activities, vis-à-vis food and nutrition security outcomes, this article assesses the relative contribution of crop diversification vis à vis other factors on the households’ Food Consumption Score (FCS) in specific livelihood contexts. We provide differentiated analyses between primarily export-oriented shrimp farming and non-shrimp farming households, so policy makers can better address FNS targets. Quantitative data from 1,188 sample households across the delta were analysed through descriptive and linear regression analyses. Results show that households cultivating shrimp have a significantly higher dietary diversity than households that do not. Among shrimp farmers, crop diversification has the relatively strongest significant positive effect on dietary diversity, suggesting part of the aquacultural crops are geared towards subsistence. By contrast, crop diversification seems to have a negative effect on dietary diversity among households that do not produce shrimp, especially when different agricultural crops are combined. Importantly, both for shrimp and non-shrimp farmers, crop diversification systems combining agriculture with aquaculture, and agroforestry seem to improve diverse diets among households. While by no means a panacea to solving FNS challenges among rural households, we suggest that promoting specific crop diversification systems could be a beneficial pathway to improved FNS outcomes.

The way people access food in Nigeria is of central relevance for food security, health and sustainability. One key trend is the shift from household-based to primarily out-of-home food consumption as an increasing majority of the urban poor derive their daily nutrient intake from street foods. However, few studies have yet explored the role of the ready-to-eat food vending sector in urban food systems and the diets of the urban poor. This paper investigates the interrelations between these practices and the diversity of food groups provisioned among the urban poor in developing city contexts. A social practice approach is employed to explore differentiation among informal-ready-to-eat food vending practices in the city of Ibadan, Nigeria, in terms of their daily activities, competences and resources. Applied methods include GIS mapping, food log diaries, in-depth interviews and participant observation to map and classify informal-ready-to-eat food vending practices according to the nature of food provisioned and explore the everyday performances of different informal-ready-to-eat food vending practice initiatives and their relation to dietary diversity. The results reveal three key categories among these practices: traditional, processed and unprocessed—with varying levels of diversity in the food groups on offer. Traditional food vendors offer more diversified food compared to processed food vendors and unprocessed food vendors. The results reveal that material infrastructure, cooking bargaining and purchasing skills and nutritional knowledge are key to the diversity of food groups provisioned. The paper concludes by considering the wider relevance of these findings for urban food science and policy.

In the policy-making process concerning energy and environmental issues, cooperation between government and firms is a means to create a more efficient energy and environmental policy. Intermediary organizations can play an important role in this policy-making process. Aim of this study is to get insight into the role of one specific intermediary organization: the industry association. In this paper, we focus on the Dutch paper and board industry. Important policy themes for this industry are waste water, waste, and energy efficiency. We distinguished four types of governmental policy instruments: top-down regulation, interactive regulation, negative economic instruments, and positive economic instruments. We analyzed the role of the industry association in the policy-making process for all of these four instruments. The results clearly show different (relative) roles of the industry association in different steps of the policy-making processes and for different types of instruments.

Innovations may have positive societal effects such as improved environmental performance, and they are often portrayed as solutions to environmental problems. However, the mechanisms through which innovations develop and the ways in which public incentives support improved environmental performance of innovations are complex. This paper uses empirical cases to examine how environmental policies, market factors and technological push affect process and product innovations in the Nordic pulp, paper and packaging industries. The results show that environmental improvements in technologies and products are simultaneously driven by all three of these factors. Environmental innovations are often developed in anticipation of future policy or as side-effects of existing policies. However, while environmental policy directly influences process innovations, its connection to product innovations is less clear. The study points towards the importance of gradually tightening and predictable environmental policies that are flexible enough to allow the exploration of new technological developments. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

This paper assesses the degree to which the British Government's recent Environment White Paper has changed the country's energy and environmental policies. It is concluded that the process by which the White Paper was produced may be of greater long term significance than the document itself. There has recently been a considerable change in the rhetoric of environmental policy and environmental issues are now taken seriously across all Whitehall departments. However, potential conflicts between environmental objectives and energy issues, notably electricity privatisation, mean that it has been difficult for the Government to establish a proactive environmental policy. Consequently, many challenges remain to be faced during the 1990s.

A report for the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), prepared by the Cleaner Production Promotion Unit, UCC offering an up-to-date review of the Environmental Policy Integration literature in both academic and policy debates. The report provides an overview of the theory and conceptual development; methodologies outlined and presents examples of current applications in policy across Europe and internationally.

Environmental regulatory edicts within the EU, such as the regulatory framework for chemicals REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals), the Water Framework Directive (WFD), and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) focus mainly on toxicity assessment of individual chemicals although the effect of contaminant mixtures is a matter of increasing concern. This discussion paper provides an overview of the field of combined effects in aquatic ecotoxicology and addresses some of the major challenges related to assessment of combined effects in connection with environmental risk assessment (ERA) and regulation. Potentials and obstacles related to different experimental, modelling and predictive ERA approaches are described. On-going ERA guideline and manual developments in Europe aiming to incorporate combined effects of contaminants, the use of different experimental approaches for providing combined effect data, the involvement of biomarkers to characterize Mode of Action and toxicity pathways and efforts to identify relevant risk scenarios related to combined effects are discussed.

The effect of investments on environmental variables has been discussed through the win–win rhetoric, specifically in micro-level analysis. On the macro-level the win–win rhetoric has been replaced by the arguments for and against the substitutability of natural and manufactured capital. Here these two concepts belonging to different levels of analysis are linked by looking at the environmental and economic effects of chosen investment strategies in a traditionally capital-intensive industry over time. The paper shows that, rather than generalise the existence of win–win situations or the substitutability of capital, these positions are determined by purely situational factors. As a result, in the assessment of substitutability, the specific operating context of the industry needs to be taken into account. This implies also that environmental policy needs to be designed to be adaptive and responsive to those situational factors to create beneficial outcomes for the economy and for the environment.

Globalization has severe impacts on international transport, which in turn affect local and global environmental issues. This study presents an approach to studying these relationships. It identifies four world scenarios based on a distinction between OECD and other countries, and then traces the implications of these for international transport and environment. The proposed method is applied to a specific transport-intensive sector in the Netherlands, namely the paper industry.

The author presents a methodology which is used first to model a product-manufacturing-and-distribution system, and then to predict the resulting changes in environmental impact from changes either in taxation or in costs of inputs. A case study of the paper sector in the eastern and central United States is developed, derived from the 1993 US Commodity Flow Survey. From an analysis of five scenarios, two central findings arise: (1) the model is found to be unresponsive to even large changes in transport taxation, so an environmental policy which considers both transportation and production aspects at the same time is favored, and (2) fluctuations in raw-material costs can have an influence on environmental impact as great as or greater than that of changes in taxation levels.

Will paper recycling reduce the environmental impact of the European pulp and paper sector? If so, is maximal paper recycling the best policy to optimize the life cycle of the pulp and paper sector? We explore these questions using an approach that combines materials accounting methods and optimization techniques. Environmental impact data are inputs for a linear programming network flow model to find optimal configurations for the sector. These configurations consist of a mix of different pulping technologies, a geographical distribution of pulp and paper production, and a level of recycling consistent with the lowest environmental impacts. We use the model to analyse scenarios with different recycling strategies. Recycling offers a reduction in environmental impact in regions with a high population and a large production of paper and board products. Regions with a large production of graphic products should focus on cleaner virgin pulp production with energy recovery. We conclude that relocation of paper production also offers a reduction in environmental impact. However, the severe effects on the economy make this policy less attractive than a combination of recycling, cleaner pulp production and energy recovery.

In this paper, we propose a methodology, based on materials accounting and operational research techniques, to assess different industry configurations according to their life cycle environmental impacts. Rather than evaluating a specific technology, our methodology searches for the feasible configuration with the minimum impact. This approach allows us to address some basic policy-relevant questions regarding technology choice, investment priorities, industrial structures, and international trade patterns. We demonstrate the methodology in the context of the European pulp and paper industry. We are able to show that current environmental policy's focus on maximising recycling is optimal now, but that modest improvements in primary pulping technology may shift the optimal industry configuration away from recycling toward more primary pulping with incineration. We show that this will have significant implications for the amount and type of environmental damage, for the location of different stages in the production chain, and for trade between European member states. We caution policy makers that their single-minded focus on recycling may foreclose investment in technologies that could prove environmentally superior. Finally, we hint that member state governments may be fashioning their environmental policy positions at least in part on some of the trade and industrial implications we find.

As part of the shift in emphasis in environmental policy from clean-up to avoidance, environmental policy instruments that specify preferred technological directions for an industry are increasingly being used. Take-back requirements and mandatory recycling are cases in point. These directly affect the mix of materials and the technologies used by an industry. These effects reverberate throughout the industry and influence market conditions for everyone both up- and downstream in the supplier/client chains. As these chains frequently cross international frontiers, environmental policy-making is becoming increasingly significant in influencing competitive structures and international trade patterns. Concerns are that policy-making may lock in inappropriate technologies and that the policy process may be manipulated for industrial or trading advantage. Using fibre recycling in the European pulp and paper sector as a case study, it is shown how these concerns are manifest and also that materials accounting and operational research techniques exist to mitigate them. It is concluded that there is a need to establish agreed environmental impact evaluation methodologies to provide guidance on the robustness of policy-making and a basis for consistent, predictable and defensible policy-making.

Internalizing environmental costs is a necessary condition for an effective environmental policy. Since the majority of socio-economic activities cannot be free of environmental impacts, the noninternalized (external) environmental costs impose a peculiar thievery of welfare. Charging environmental costs through environmental taxes and other economic instruments is a necessary condition for avoiding welfare thievery. In this context, the anti-tax approaches emerging within ecological economics are found to be misleading and directing away from an effective environmental policy. Environmental responsibility is a different issue from the charging of the environmental costs. Therefore, environmental taxes should not be considered as an induction to less environmental responsibility and, hence, to environmental degradation.

Dit rapport maakt deel uit van de voorbereiding van de derde Global Environment Outlook van UNEP. Het illustreert schaal en soort van de milieu-effecten die GEO in beeld zou moeten brengen. De efecten worden gekwantificeerd door materiaal dat is ontleend aan recente studies over men of meer vergelijkbare scenarios. Omdat het de bedoeling is dat GEO-3 de milieu-onderbouwing levert voor de Rio+10 milieutop in 2002 wordt in dit werkdocument de suggestie gedaan om de analyse voor GEO-3 te richten op de mogleijkheden voor synergie tussen milieubeleid en ontwikkelingsbeleid. Verder worden drie samenvattende indicatoren voorgesteld. De kwantificering in dit werkdocument heeft betrekking op onderwerpen als demografische transitie en afhankelijkheidratio in de bevolking; watertekorten; veranderingen in gewasopbrengst; de kans op landdegradatie; en de achteruitgang van biodiversiteit. Speciale aandacht is besteed aan regionale verschillen en aan informatie die van belang is voor het schatten van veranderingen in kwetsbaarheid.

Dit rapport maakt deel uit van de voorbereiding van de derde Global Environment Outlook van UNEP. Het illustreert schaal en soort van de milieu-effecten die GEO in beeld zou moeten brengen. De efecten worden gekwantificeerd door materiaal dat is ontleend aan recente studies over men of meer vergelijkbare scenarios. Omdat het de bedoeling is dat GEO-3 de milieu-onderbouwing levert voor de Rio+10 milieutop in 2002 wordt in dit werkdocument de suggestie gedaan om de analyse voor GEO-3 te richten op de mogleijkheden voor synergie tussen milieubeleid en ontwikkelingsbeleid. Verder worden drie samenvattende indicatoren voorgesteld. De kwantificering in dit werkdocument heeft betrekking op onderwerpen als demografische transitie en afhankelijkheidratio in de bevolking; watertekorten; veranderingen in gewasopbrengst; de kans op landdegradatie; en de achteruitgang van biodiversiteit. Speciale aandacht is besteed aan regionale verschillen en aan informatie die van belang is voor het schatten van veranderingen in kwetsbaarheid.

In recent years a broader utilization of environmental taxes has been included in the political agenda in many European States in an effort to overcome the limits of an environmental policy structurally based on command-and-control measures and also to provide the Treasury with the necessary means to cut other taxes with distortionary effects on the economy, such as income taxes with very high marginal rates or social security contributions, mainly those levied on unskilled or low-skilled workers. This kind of manoeuvre could provide a double benefit to the economy, that is known in the literature as the double dividend.1

This paper presents empirical results on coronavirus infection and fatality rates from cross-country regressions for OECD economies and a sample of middle- and high-income countries. We include environmental, economic, medical, and policy variables in our analysis to explain the number of corona cases and deaths per million. We find a significant positive impact of local air pollution on infection rates in the whole sample and on fatality rates for OECD countries. Obesity rates have a positive effect on cases and deaths across the different estimation equations. The strategy of aiming to achieve herd immunity has a significant positive effect on infections as well as on death rates. The first affected countries have significantly higher mortality rates, revealing the lack of experience and medical capacity to deal with the pandemic in an initial phase. Postponing – and fighting - the pandemic could save lives in many countries and generate considerable economic benefits. Other medical and policy variables discussed in the public sphere do not show a significant impact in the regression analysis. Our results suggest that improving air quality and fighting obesity helps reduce the negative effects of a coronavirus pandemic significantly. Policy options for fighting a second epidemic wave should take into account the results from this study in order to optimize global epidemic policy., International Economics and Economic Policy, 17 (4), ISSN:1612-4804, ISSN:1612-4812