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Competing claims about the economic, social and environmental impacts of bitumen projects make Alberta's oilsands industry highly contentious. This paper uses a case study of a major bitumen project, Shell Canada's Jackpine mine expansion, to examine the evidence considered by government decision-makers in the project approval process. The project was determined to be “in the public interest” based primarily on its economic benefits, despite significant adverse environmental and social impacts. The paper evaluates the evidence that was presented to support this decision, using three criteria drawn from ecological economics: efficient allocation, just distribution, and sustainable macroeconomic scale. It finds that the evidence presented is, in fact, insufficient to justify the project on any of the three criteria. Furthermore, other studies of the bitumen industry cast doubt on the likelihood that the project would satisfy these criteria if further analysis were conducted. It concludes by recommending several measures that could help to improve decision-making on bitumen projects in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institutional change induced by payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes is a ‘messy’ process. The uptake and outcomes of PES schemes cannot be fully explained from a rational choice perspective. The notion of ‘institutional bricolage’ is needed to analyse how actors assemble or reshape their actions by combining new institutions such as a PES scheme within other locally embedded institutions. A case study from Japan is used to illustrate how a PES scheme designed to conserve the habitat of a charismatic and endangered flagship species, the Oriental White Stork, has been reshaped by social actors to fit the locally dominant ‘institutional logic’. We also show how the resulting institutional change is not only able to subvert policy makers' original assumptions, for instance about how to target and distribute the payments, but can also contribute to the reproduction of unequal power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advancing urban sustainability requires an implementation of various measures such as environmental policy, behavioral change, and technological developments, which have to be taken at various spatial scales. However, choosing the right measures demands considering their potential contribution in reducing the environmental impact and advancing urban sustainability. In recent years, some attempts to assess the contribution of implementing various measures have been advanced by various researchers focusing on different components of urban environmental interactions. While these studies make a significant contribution towards the understanding of the impact of various measures taken for a specific environmental issue, they mostly ignore the diversity and complexity of the urban interface with the environment at different spatial scales, as well as the ecological economics perspective, which approaches the city as a system. This paper uses the UBSI index published recently in this journal, to evaluate the urban biophysical sustainability of the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Israel) in 2014. Based on this data, future scenarios are developed, which examine the potential contribution of various policy measures and different technological processes to the city's sustainability. This examination is conducted while considering population growth and changes of consumption patterns as they are expected to occur until 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural fires are a double-edged sword that allow for cost-efficient land management in the tropics but also cause accidental fires and emissions of carbon and pollutants. To control fires in Amazon, it is currently unclear whether policy-makers should prioritize command-and-control or incentive-based instruments such as REDD +. Aiming to generate knowledge about the relative merits of the two policy approaches, this paper presents a spatially-explicit agent-based model that simulates the causal effects of four policy instruments on intended and unintended fires. All instruments proved effective in overturning the predominance of highly profitable but risky fire-use and decreasing accidental fires, but none were free from imperfections. The performance of command-and-control proved highly sensitive to the spatial and social reach of enforcement. Side-effects of incentive-based instruments included a disproportionate increase in controlled fires and a reduced acceptance of conservation subsidies, caused by the prohibition of reckless fires, and also indirect deforestation. The instruments that were most effective in reducing deforestation were not the most effective in reducing fires and vice-versa, which suggests that the two goals cannot be achieved with a single policy intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a detailed review of the basis and prospects for United Kingdom (UK) proposals for the most ambitious mainstream social, economic, and environmental policy program of the 21st century: the Green New Deal (GND), providing critical reflection for its implementation at a local or regional level. Through a review of academic, policy and book publications we examine the key proposed features of a UK GND, identifying five core elements: financial reforms; green infrastructure investment; financing the GND; ownership structures; and economic, social and climate justice. We subsequently review these policy areas through the lens of multi-level governance (MLG) to understand what scales of policy action are required for these aims to be achieved. We find that, whilst core elements of a UK GND, such as reforms to the financial system, and expansionary fiscal and monetary policy require policy change at national and supra-national level, the majority of GND investments require implementation at the local level. We suggest that, in the context of contemporary UK MLG, there are challenges for fully funding and delivering a GND without a national programme, while highlighting emerging options for coordinating and implementing a GND by local government actors, in the absence of national support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental justice is a more sustainable constraint on polluting behavior than administrative instruments. Previous literature has explored the impact of various administrative instruments applied to environmental regulation on green innovation but has neglected the possible role of environmental justice. This paper examines the effect of environmental justice on green innovation using the multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) approach by taking the establishment of the Chinese environmental court as a policy shock, thus filling the gap in previous studies. We conclude that: first, the establishment of environmental courts significantly contributes to the level of green innovation. This finding holds after a series of robustness tests. Second, environmental justice pushes polluters to engage in green innovation through the mechanism of pollution control. Third, the effect of environmental courts on green innovation is not significant in resource-based cities, which depend more on high-polluting industries for development. Fourth, a better legal environment can help improve the effectiveness of environmental justice in promoting green innovation. This paper not only supplements the existing literature on the factors influencing green innovation and explains the operational mechanisms and effects of environmental justice, but also provides theoretical support for promoting green innovation in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of the expected impacts from climate change is an essential input for agencies engaged in fostering adaptation of local social-ecological systems. However, data is seldom available at the required scale. This study overcomes this hurdle by gathering data via an expert elicitation protocol. We report experts' judgements about two topics: i) the impacts from climate change on crop yields in three communities located in the Bolivian Altiplano; and ii) the effectiveness of specific irrigation techniques in mitigating the impacts from climate change in the communities under study. Our gathered data allow us to document heterogeneity of expected impacts across communities –with one community expected to experience an increase in yields under wet climate change scenarios. Experts judge irrigation as an effective mitigation tool under most of the dry climate change scenarios presented to them. We believe that our data collection strategy represents a promising decision support tool for a wide range of public policy issues. Particularly, when monetary and time constraints converge with the lack of scientific information. In addition, the information gathered with this methodology can be incorporated into participatory methodologies gathering information from local social-ecological systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to show that, along with the concepts of common property and common-pool resources, the concept of common patrimony can be relevant for analyzing collective natural resource management. We proceed in three steps. First, we present the concept of common patrimony and we distinguish it from common property and common-pool resources. We show that the notion of common patrimony allows identity, historical, territorial and institutional dimensions to be taken into account as it places social dimension at the center of the analysis. Second, we illustrate the common patrimony concept by using the case of water management policy in France. Third, we place common patrimony within the framework of social ecological economics and we identify links with other approaches addressing institutional dimensions of water resource management. We outline some research questions that can be developed to contribute to a better understanding of collective natural resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception of risks associated with climate change appears to be a key factor for the support of climate policy measures. Using a generalized ordered logit approach and drawing on a unique data set originating from two surveys conducted in 2012 and 2014, each among more than 6000 German households, we analyze the determinants of individual risk perception associated with three kinds of natural hazards: heat waves, storms, and floods. Our focus is on the role of objective risk measures and experience with these natural hazards, whose frequency is likely to be affected by climate change. In line with the received literature, the results suggest that personal experience with adverse events and personal damage therefrom are strong drivers of individual risk perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) faces a shortage of incentives to motivate the scale of conservation activities necessary to address and reverse the decline of at-risk species. A recent policy proposal attempts to change this by allowing landowners to generate credits for voluntary prelisting conservation activities. We explore the proposed policy from the perspective of potential participants. We find that uncertainty present in species listing processes complicates the decision to undertake conservation activities, leading to less conservation being supplied than when a listing decision is certain, while also delaying implementation until late in the listing determination process. Incentives created by the prelisting policy may likewise push species status closer to a listing threshold and thus exacerbate uncertainty in the listing process. To counter this tendency and encourage a more efficient allocation of conservation activity, early-actor bonuses, weighted credits, or limited windows of eligibility could be used to target or place increased premiums on early conservation activity. Though these findings are most directly applicable to the specific prelisting policy considered here, they are nonetheless relevant to a wider array of conservation policies that seek to encourage voluntary early action in advance of a regulatory alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop an Israeli version of the Multi-Year Water Allocation System (MYWAS) mathematical programming model to conduct statewide, long-term analyses of three topics associated with agricultural reuse of wastewater. We find that: (1) enabling agricultural irrigation with treated wastewater significantly reduces the optimal capacity levels of seawater and brackish-water desalination over the simulated 3-decade period, and increases Israel's welfare by 3.3 billion USD in terms of present values; (2) a policy requiring desalination of treated wastewater pre-agricultural reuse, as a method to prevent long-run damage to the soil and groundwater, reduces welfare by 2.7 billion USD; hence, such a policy is warranted only if the avoided damages exceed this welfare loss; (3) desalination of treated wastewater in order to increase freshwater availability for agricultural irrigation is not optimal, since the costs overwhelm the generated agricultural benefits. We also find the results associated with these three topics to be sensitive to the natural recharge of Israel's freshwater aquifers, and to the rate at which domestic-water demand evolves due to population and income growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's crop production sector faces severe water scarcity issues. Previous research has shown that effective water conservation policies exert strongly negative impacts on agricultural production and farmers' income, which make them politically unfeasible under Chinese conditions. To highlight ways out of this dilemma, the present study tests three alternative water policies complemented by supportive agricultural policies to reduce the trade-offs between water conservation and rural development policy goals. Using the case of the extremely arid Aksu-Tarim Region in northwest China, a regional supply model is developed which serves as the analysis framework. Applied as stand-alone water policies, irrigated area tax, water quota and water pricing differ clearly in effectiveness and efficiency. Combined with agricultural policies (subsidies) into multiple policy instruments, the price-based and quota-based instruments mitigate the negative impacts on rural development goals. Targeting a water conservation rate of 20%, the tested multiple policies perform alike on the level of the entire study region; cotton production decreases by 15%, cereals production remains stable, and regional income decreases by 13%. However, at the sub-regional level, the impacts on water conservation, production and income differ significantly between the alternative policy instruments and sub-regions, constituting a crucial challenge for practical water policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether and how word choice can affect individual perceptions about a proposed Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program when objective outcomes are similar. From a traditional economic perspective, this type of manipulation would be considered unlikely to affect perceptions and behaviour, especially in the presence of pecuniary incentives and repeated decisions among sophisticated agents. From a behaviourally informed perspective, however, psychological and political theories of wording argue that word choice can have a significant impact on economic behaviour. To substantiate this discussion, we conduct a survey experiment that tests the impact of the words ‘payment’ and ‘compensation’ on favorability ratings of a proposed PES program. These preliminary findings suggest that the words used to describe public policies can be influential non-pecuniary interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a hybrid simulation model (‘SimPachamama’) designed to explore the complex socio-environmental trade-offs of alternative policy bundles and policy sequencing options for stemming deforestation and reducing poverty in tropical countries. Designed and calibrated to the initial conditions of a small forest village in rural Bolivia, the model consists of: (a) an optimising agricultural household module of heterogeneous agents that make individually optimal land-use decisions based on factor endowments and market conditions; (b) an encompassing general equilibrium ‘shell’ module that endogenously determines wages and links the agricultural labour market and rural-urban migration rates; and (c) a novel user-controlled policy-maker module that allows the user to make ‘real time’ choices over a variety of public and environmental policies that in turn impact land use, welfare, and migration. Over a 20-year simulation period the results highlight trade-offs between reductions in deforestation and improvements in household welfare that can only be overcome either when international REDD payments are offered or when decentralized deforestation taxes are implemented. The sequencing of policies plays a critical role in the determination of these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People in several countries are overwhelmed with green tips in order to encourage them protecting the environment. The effectiveness of these tips, however, highly depends on the context and the person targeted by the tips. In particular, we contend that some green tips may do more harm than good when individuals have cognitive and behavioral biases. Without purporting to be exhaustive, we explain some of these biases and mechanisms by which green tips may lead to a net environmental degradation. We also emphasize that it is possible to complement green tips with debiasing strategies to guarantee their performance. We present some of these strategies, notably the foot-in-the-door technique, commitment strategies, the strategic use of small changes and individuals' pursuit of identity. Finally, several policy implications are developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient climate policy is based on cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and equates marginal abatement costs across all forcing agents affecting climate change. In CBA, the agents' contributions to radiative forcing (RF) must be consistently priced (i.e. the social cost of RF, occurring at a specific time, must be the same regardless of the agent causing it). We present a concept that enables doing so. The Social Cost of Forcing (SCF) is the monetary value of the social damage caused by marginal RF at a given instant (Wm − 2 ). Any forcing agent whose temporal decay profile and radiative efficiency are known can be priced based on it. Prices obtained for distinct agents are consistent in CBA, as long as the same SCF and discounting assumptions are applied. Hence, the SCF is a concise way to communicate social cost information: mutually consistent prices for any set of forcing agents can be obtained based on a single Integrated Assessment Model output, the SCF. We explain the theoretical foundations of the concept and illustrate its practical applications with two examples: (1) we derive SCF-based prices for CO 2 and CH 4 , and (2) we estimate the social cost of albedo changes in a boreal forest stand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a consistent dataset for eighteen EU countries, six economic sectors, and six pollution indicators, we analyze decoupling of production–based emissions from GDP growth from 1995 to 2008. Computing decoupling factors as defined by the OECD (2002), we find that in almost all sectors and by almost all pollutants the median EU country had at least some decoupling. However, considerable heterogeneity in its magnitude can be observed across countries, sectors, and pollutants. For most pollutants and sectors, median decoupling performance improved from 2001–2008 compared to 1995–2001, while between–country disparities increased simultaneously. In a second step, we investigate country–level changes in decoupling states between the two sub–periods based on Tapio (2005). We find high diversity across countries and over time. To explain these differences across countries and sectors, we assess the impact of environmental policy stringency, and find tentative evidence that stricter policy encourages decoupling, however the effects are small and imprecise, differ by economic sector and pollutant, and take several years to materialize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Droughts are a specific type of natural hazard. Economic assessments of drought impacts require a framework capable of accounting for its unique and particular characteristics. Traditional conceptual frameworks used to assess the impacts of natural hazards do not adequately capture all of the factors that contribute to the economic impacts of droughts, such as: the importance of the level, and composition, of hydraulic capital; the dispersion of economic impacts across different economic activities and agents; the temporality of drought events; and the critical importance of policy-making in shaping the short and long-term economic impacts of droughts. Nor do traditional frameworks take account of the complex interaction between factors within the domain of decision-making and underlying climate conditions. We propose a new conceptual framework based around two sources of economic impact: ‘green water’ and ‘blue water’, and argue that because each source of drought impacts the economy in different ways, they must be differentiated in any assessment of economic impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental policies are increasingly informed by behavioral economics insights. ‘Green nudges’ in particular have been suggested as a promising new tool to encourage consumers to act in an environmentally benign way, such as choosing renewable energy sources or saving energy. While there is an emerging literature on the instrumental effectiveness of behavioral policy tools such as these, their ethical assessment has largely been neglected. This paper attempts to fill this gap by, first, providing a structured overview of the most important contributions to the literature on pro-environmental nudges and, second, offering some critical considerations that may help the practitioner come to an ethically informed assessment of nudges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its developing country status, Mexico ranks 10th worldwide in total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, Mexico's vulnerability to climate change impacts is a major motivating factor behind its announced intended contributions at COP21 to cut its baseline emissions by at least 25% in 2030. We analyze the macroeconomic impacts of the Climate Action Plan (CAP) process undertaken in the Mexican border state of Baja California (BC). We adapt a state-of-the-art regional macroeconometric model to analyze the BC economy-wide impacts of 22 GHG mitigation policy options recommended in the Baja California CAP. The combined effects include an average annual increase of 1680 new jobs (or about 0.11% of the average annual employment in the baseline economic forecast) and a Gross State Product (GSP) increase of $9.85 billion pesos in NPV over the 2015–2030 planning horizon. Although the main objective of GHG mitigation is to reduce atmospheric concentrations, and hence future potential damages of these pollutants, the stimulus to the BC economy from the implementation of its CAP represents a valuable co-benefit. Moreover, it is a tangible one that will take place in the near-term, in contrast to the more long-term and more uncertain benefits associated with reducing climate change damages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments across the globe are exploring ways to reduce the environmental and human health impacts created by shale energy production. In active areas, environmental regulations tend to be limited. We apply established instruments to empirically estimated environmental impact abatement cost curves for the development of 56 sites in Pennsylvania, USA. We compare the cost to industry of setting a cap on environmental impacts from land-clearing and building of surface infrastructure under two regulations: cap and trade versus a uniform, inflexible regulation. Greatest differences in cost are achieved when firm-level permits are allocated to reduce market-wide potential impacts by 36%. Cap and trade achieved this cap at a cost of 0.05% of not developing and allowed all development to proceed. The uniform, inflexible regulation cost 32% of not developing for a similar outcome and prevented 18% of firms from developing. Cap and trade's performance depended on the regulator's ability to accurately allocate firm-level permits that reflect developers' options. In extreme cases, inaccurate allocations made cap and trade perform worse than other the approach. We conclude that, where developers differ in their ability and cost of minimizing impacts, cap and trade should be explored as an inexpensive alternative to traditional approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis that unequal societies are harmful to the planet was defended by Boyce (1994) in a framework based on the unequal bargaining power between rich and poor. Our study reinvestigates this theory by removing any reference to power in order to study the conditions under which it can still occur. We show that a middle-class collapse can aggravate or alleviate the burden on the planet, depending on income disparities and weight of upward vs. downward mobility. Moreover, the paper shows how an appropriate Environmental policy can increase the political acceptability of a Social one designed for mitigating the deleterious effects of a middle-class collapse through the reduction of (ex-post) income disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes and impacts of climate change require adaptation through what can be described as horizontal and vertical structures of actors' integration. In climate adaptation and natural resource management literature, this structural component is often related to social capital, which is defined in various ways but usually refers to a public good that is built and fostered within a network of social relations. While hypotheses about social capital in networks are well studied in network literature, here, I argue that they should be reflected and tested in the particular context of climate change adaptation policy. I ask: how do communities affected by climate change and the broad range of actors involved in the design of climate adaptation policies build social relationships? And, how do they manage to maintain those relations over time? To answer these questions, climate adaptation policies in six Swiss mountain regions are investigated via social network analysis. Hypotheses about the creation and preservation of weak versus strong ties under the particular setting of Swiss federalism and climate-affected local communities are tested. Results confirm that the creation of weak ties, such as one-way information transfer, can lead to the establishment of mutual collaboration relations over time. Such mutual and reciprocal relations can then more easily be activated by local communities to produce both short-term responses and long-term solutions to climate change impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-point source pollution is deteriorating water quality throughout the world. New Zealand is addressing this issue by regulating land-based nutrient losses, with debates over how to allocate limits across a heterogeneous landscape. We develop a spatially explicit economic land use model to investigate efficiency and equity issues from seven approaches to allocate nutrient discharges across two New Zealand watersheds. We find that the preferred allocation differs across land use, land characteristics, and regulation stringency; and that there is no universal ‘best’ allocation option. Therefore, decision-makers should focus on, at least, efficiency and equity, and on how to compensate those most affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience has either been assessed on system or individual scale so far. Ignoring the other scale may potentially change the interpretation of resilience in socio-ecological systems (SES). Thus, this paper argues that the co-evolution of both resiliencies must be studied to capture multi-scale complexity. We attempt to close this gap by assessing resilience at both scales of a village community in Thaba Nchu, South Africa. Villagers use a commonly managed rangeland for beef cattle production. An agent based model of household interaction coupled with a biophysical model of the rangeland measures the resiliencies of the SES towards a shock, a stress and a policy intervention. Currently, the SES remains in a stable attractor in terms of SES resilience. Household resilience, however, degrades in a process of structural change. A drought scenario shows improved SES resilience but structural change at household level accelerated. An increase in the number absentee herders increases the likelihood for SES collapse by eroding social embededdness. Finally, an introduced basic income grant demonstrates that the SES is able to cope with an increased number of appropriators. However, interaction of the policy intervention with an exogenous stress translates into an increased probability of SES decoupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The approach to governance of protected areas has been in transition over last decades, partly driven by evolving policy discourses that shape the ways in which conservation is thought to be delivered. The most influential discourses are the “fortress” approach, “community conservation” and “back-to-the-barriers” How different discourses translate and are instituted on-ground are, however, complex and disputed. Inclusive policy strategies in relation to local involvement in developing countries are of particular concern. The study analyses how conservation policy discourses have become manifested, taking the case of Mount Elgon National Park (MENP), Uganda. It outlines main conservation policy discourses, analyses actor's interests and power relations and further examines how institutions for park governance have evolved and changed according to the different discourses. The results indicate that conservation discourses—and donor support—come and go, while MENP seems to outlast all. The worrying reality is that MENP administration, strongly influenced by the interplay of path-dependent institutional forces rooted in the “fortress” discourse, simply “sticks to its guns”—maintaining the application of law enforcement as key management instruments in its approach to governance, especially to local people interactions. There is an apparent gap between rhetoric and reality in protected area governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a detailed dashboard of goals, targets and indicators. In this paper we investigate alternative methods to relate the SDGs to overall measures of sustainable wellbeing that can motivate and guide the process of global societal change. We describe what a Sustainable Wellbeing Index (SWI) that connects with and complements the SDG dashboard might look like. We first investigate several options for how to construct such an index and then discuss what is needed to build consensus around it. Finally, we propose linking the SDGs and our SWI with a comprehensive systems dynamics model that can track stocks and flows and make projections into the future under different policy scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive reforestation may be required to avert dramatic loss of biodiversity, system resilience and ecosystem services from Brazil's Atlantic Forest, and is legally required by Brazil's Forest Code. Restoration on farmland however threatens agricultural output and the livelihoods of small family farmers, leading to weak enforcement of the law and a national debate over the Code which resulted in revisions in 2012 that significantly reduced legally mandated restoration. To inform the design of effective environmental policies, we interviewed 60 typical dairy family farmers utilizing pasture-based agroecological grazing practices to assess their perceptions and knowledge of the pre-2012 Forest Code, its impacts and their willingness to comply. Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) identified three distinct clusters: farmers who understood the forest code and its ecological impacts and were willing to comply; farmers who understood the ecological benefits of restoration, but were unwilling to comply; and those with little knowledge of benefits or interest in compliance. We evaluate three policy options for promoting restoration, paying particular attention to their impacts on farmer livelihoods and on their intrinsic willingness to restore and preserve forest cover. We conclude that payments for ecosystem services in the form of subsidies for agroecology practices are promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifying and mapping ecosystem services is increasingly employed to guide policies in their search for environmental sustainability. In this study, we present a method for mapping aesthetic values as an ecosystem service, combining insights from landscape research and ecosystem service mapping practices. We review or method through a comparison to existing aesthetic value mapping approaches and verify the results through a comparison to a revealed landscape preferences indicator. Disagreement between the methods arises from many factors, including the type of ecological/landscape features that are assumed to contribute to the provision of aesthetic values, the use of context-specific or generic aesthetic value estimates, the scale of landscape evaluation and the level of integration of the landscape preference analysis. We argue that the approach presented here is a suitable generically applicable methodology for context-sensitive mapping of aesthetic landscape values for a number of reasons: (i) a careful and transparent selection process of landscape attributes, (ii) the use of primary preference data, (iii) an integrated evaluation of landscape attributes introducing trade-offs between specific features in the agricultural landscape and (iv) application of visual landscape scale manipulated photographs for the elicitation of preferences as a surrogate for a real landscape experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a practical analytical framework which can help government agencies determine an optimal surveillance strategy for invasive weeds, including cases of slow-growing or ‘sleeper weeds', and for all weeds at early stages of invasion where quantitative information is scant or rough. The framework consists of three key components: (a) a simple rule that can determine weed surveillance zones or where early detection is desirable, (b) a function that maps surveillance effort to early detection probability, and (c) a schedule to determine an optimal surveillance budget. A calibration to Hawkweed in Australia provides an example of the framework and shows that the optimal annual surveillance budget for this sleeper weed is substantial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropical forest conservation is considered a low-cost option for climate change mitigation. But mitigation cost assessments have featured opportunity costs, neglecting policy implementation costs. Here we use official data to identify the Brazilian federal government's operational and institutional budgets related to forest conservation policies implemented from 2000 to 2014. We distinguish the allocated and executed budgets of these policies, and provide scenario-based estimates of their cost-effectiveness. On average, Brazil spent US$ 1 billion/year on forest conservation policies at the federal level. Brazil's substantial reduction in annual forest loss after 2004 was accompanied by a higher operational budget execution of disincentive-based policy instruments, and an absolute increase in both allocated and executed institutional budgets. The post-2004 successful mitigation effort represented additional implementation costs to the Brazilian federal government of US$ 308–923/ha of avoided deforestation, or US$ 0.87–2.60/tCO 2 of avoided emissions. Factoring in also approximate municipal and state expenditures, these costs increase to US$ 385–1153/ha or US$ 1.09–3.25/tCO 2 . We conclude that implementations costs are non-trivial in size, including compared to estimates of land users' opportunity costs. This has important implications for REDD + policy design, in the sense that implementation costs need to be adequately considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest ecosystems play a critical role in protecting water resources; yet the neoclassical stated preference assumption is that willingness-to-pay (WTP) for forest conservation is solely a function of the ecosystem services provided by these lands. Thus, little attention has been paid to the importance of policy processes as potentially influential drivers of WTP. Using a statewide web-based survey in Florida US and a relatively novel valuation approach (i.e., Best-Worst Choice), we examine public preferences for clean water benefits (e.g., recreation, drinking water resources) as well as common conservation policy processes, such as land acquisition and financial assistance for landowners. We found forest/water protection programs provide an annual average of $154–230 million in clean water benefits, and a significant portion of that value was associated with the policy process. Attitudes and beliefs about whom forests should be managed for, and who should manage forests, were also found to influence WTP behaviors. We conclude that including policy process information in the valuation survey allows respondents to better determine changes in utility among realistic policy alternatives. Our findings have important implications for WTP estimation techniques and public participation in environmental policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence of continued environmental degradation has led to a questioning of the traditional vision of unlimited economic growth in favour of sustainable development. Although several explicit environmental strategies were designed at the supranational level, the pursuit of environmental sustainability remains an aim driven by political concerns at the country level. This study aims to investigate the role of both “internal” (cognitive and motivational factors) and “external” (social forces and macro-economic conditions) contexts in influencing the propensity of political leaders regarding environmental matters. The findings indicate that cognitive and motivational factors tend to shape the environmental intentions of political leaders, whereas the “external” context does not have a significant impact. Our results suggest that the political leaders' propensity for addressing environmental matters is largely affected by the desire of leaders to establish or confirm an individual status (through political processes) or to conform to group norms. However, younger political leaders demonstrate a higher environmental propensity than do older leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Common-pool resource experiments in the field have not yet fully explored cooperative decision-making in its dependence on established past behavior, explicit rules and environmental context. The purpose of this paper is to analyze these factors and their single as well as combined influence on cooperative behavior. The results show that rule enforcement changes the influence of past action as a determinant of cooperation: Past action retains relevance for decision-making but reveals a partly contrarian influence as long as rules are strong. Further, the introduction of explicit rules does not change the influence of personal relationships among participants, but renders the influence of leadership insignificant. Furthermore, the experiments show that context plays a decisive role, which suggests the possibility of tailoring experiments to specific uses: If the context-specific behavior of locals is relevant to policy decisions, then experiments can help capture these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) can use many design features. We investigate the impact of payment conditionality types, i.e. different specifications when to pay and when not to pay, for PES on deforestation and agricultural production in a lab-in-the-field experiment. Our experiment also tests variations in contract period and payment volatility. We designed a highly visual simulation game to characterize the decision situation of a cattle rancher in Brazil. The player can expand extensive pasture by deforestation or intensify existing pasture. The model includes both a land and a capital constraint. We applied the game in an economic, framed lab-in-the-field experiment in Tocantins, Brazil. Payments conditional on forest carbon stock lead to slow, but steady deforestation, while payments conditional on forest carbon stock-change suppressed deforestation more strongly. But payments conditional on stock increase cattle production while payments conditional on stock-change have no effect on production. Thus, depending on the level of leakage, either type of conditionality can be more cost-effective in reducing global carbon emissions. Contracts with limited periods lead to strong deforestation after the end of the payment period. Payment volatility had no significant effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market-based environmental policies frequently include offset provisions that allow polluters who are not subject to a binding cap to participate in trading programs. When offsets are used for compliance, it is important that they are additional in the sense that the payment from the trading program induces environmental benefits that would not occur without the program. In this paper we analyze a water quality trading program in Ohio, U.S., to estimate the extent to which the offsets are additional. Using data from the program and a farmer survey, we estimate the number of additional conservation practices that are adopted by farmers who participated in the trading program relative to the counterfactual outcome without the program. Using matching methods, we find no statistically significant increase in the number of conservation practices due to the trading program. We also examine whether the trading program may have crowded out government funding. We also do not find significant evidence for such crowding out, instead finding some evidence that the trading program may have led to greater participation in federal cost-share programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Important intermediate ecosystem services (ES) such as crop pollination and biological control of pests, which underpin the final ES agricultural yields, are mediated by mobile organisms that depend on availability of habitat and its arrangement in the landscape. It has been suggested that landscape-scale management (LSM) of habitat in a multi-farm setting results in higher provisioning of such ES compared to farm-scale management (FSM). However, to achieve the LSM solution, farmers' land-use decisions need to be coordinated. To this end, we develop rules based on novel landscape composition and configuration indices. We model farmers' interdependencies through ES in an agent-based model (ABM) and optimize land use at both the farm and landscape scales for comparison. Our analysis is based on a simple artificial landscape with homogeneous soil quality and uses crop pollination as an illustrative ecosystem service. We consider habitat configuration at the field scale. Our rules demonstrate that the coordinated solution is characterized by a higher degree of habitat availability and a configuration of habitat that is dispersed rather than agglomerated. We tested these rules over a range of assumptions about ecological parameter values and suggest that such rules could be used to improve governance of ES in agricultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the occurrence of the ecosystem services (ES) concept in public policies in Poland by providing a systematic content analysis of national environmental policies. A detailed analysis of the legal acts, national strategies, and decrees using the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services codes, which embraces a full range of ES, shows that the ES concept is reflected in the investigated documents. However, it is mainly depicted in an indirect, latent form. We further explore the ES concept occurrence in the Polish legislation with in-depth interviews of experts. From the interviews we identify two general groups of barriers to the ES concept implementation in environmental policy: (a) a limited understanding and acknowledgement of the concept among individuals involved in policy making; and (b) sectoral divisions within environmental governance that hinder the spread of the concept. Analysis reveals that the concept of services for society provided by nature had already been perceived in Polish national environmental policies before the emergence of the ES concept and the implementation of the EU biodiversity policy. However, the concept is referred to mostly in a latent form, before and after its emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim was to examine how psychographic profiles affect willingness to pay for ecosystem services in Mediterranean high nature value farmland. We combined psychographic analysis and economic valuation to: i) identify different psychographic profiles based on attitudes towards the economy and environment, rural development and agricultural intensification, food quality and consumption, and agri-environmental policy; and ii) measure the economic value that the psychographic profiles assign to key ecosystem services in different agricultural policy scenarios. We analysed two populations in Spain (the general population and the local residents of the study area). We identified two psychographic profiles in each population focusing on productivist and conservationist attitudes. Respondents in all profiles were highly concerned about forest wildfires, followed by the availability of quality products for those with productivist profiles, the biodiversity maintenance for the general conservationists and a more human-intervened landscape for the local conservationists. The willingness to pay for ecosystem services altogether differed between the psychographic profiles, from 88€ of general productivists to 334€ of local conservationists. We demonstrated that attitudes concerning ecosystem services have a strong influence on their willingness to pay. We argued that psychographic differences should be considered when designing and legitimising EU agri-environmental and conservation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical Abstract Unlabelled Image [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solid waste can cause serious environmental and ecological damage. However, the capital market attitude towards solid waste treatment policies remains unclear. Using an event study method, this paper examined the stock price reactions in Chinese listed firms in pilot construction and demolition waste (C&DW) treatment cities after the policy implementation and found that the pilot city firm stock prices were significantly and negatively affected, with this response being more negative when the firm had not previously been under environmental policy supervision. The cross-sectional analyses indicated that pilot city C&DW stock and treatment capacities, the proportion of state-owned shares, and the firms' political connections all negatively affected market reactions. The study of the capital market signaling effects towards solid waste policies can provide timely assistance to firms that need to adjust their strategic deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eco-labeling (or environmental certification) is often promoted as a regulatory instrument capable of incentivizing sustainable resource use, even in the absence of stringent government environmental regulations. Despite slow uptake in developing countries and high producer costs, a growing body of case study evidence suggests that producers benefit in varied ways from certification. A qualitative meta-synthesis approach is applied to this body of evidence in order to assess the type and extent of producer benefits reported in case studies of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification, in developing countries. While benefits from price premiums and market access appear to be limited, less tangible benefits were more common, including learning, governance, community empowerment, and reputational benefits. These benefits may justify the cost of certification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the prospects of voluntary ecological sufficiency for environmental and climate policy under the constraints implied by political liberalism. We find that freedom of choice restricts sufficiency to rather wealthy societies and that a sufficiency threshold cannot be derived by referring to the poor. Sufficiency can be in conflict with the demands of social justice, i.e. if the sufficiency threshold is below the social minimum implied by social justice. Benefits from sufficiency are highly related to individual perceptions. Such benefits cannot be expressed in a standard preference framework. Consequently, alternative measures of welfare and inequality are required if sufficiency is a significant phenomenon in society. ‘Standard’ environmental policies can have a pronounced interaction with voluntary sufficiency, i.e. if ‘quantity regulation’ is present. Overall, the voluntary notion of sufficiency causes a dilemma as sufficiency is largely a matter of civil society. However, voluntary sufficiency is expected to make important contributions to the preservation of ecological resources if properly balanced with social and environmental policies and framed by public discursive control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper expands the BOP-constraint growth model and Kaldorian regimes (productivity and demand regimes) in order to include some of the concerns raised by ecological economics in post-Keynesian models for open economies. The demand regime is modified by taking into account Porter's hypothesis, which suggests that environmental innovations, spurred by environmental policies, can foster competitiveness. As a result, the equilibrium BOP-constrained rate of growth increases, leading to a different version of Thirlwall's Law, which opens room for analyzing the impact of environmental innovations on convergence between developing and developed economies. The productivity regime in turn considers the growth and employment implications of innovations in labor productivity (standard innovations) and environmental efficiency (environmental innovations). It is argued that the fiscal policy and composition of public expenditure matter for long run growth, employment and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Ecosystem services” is a phrase with many meanings, yet very few studies have primarily focused on comparing different definitions of the term. Ecosystem services are now generally used in identifying an appropriately wide range of environmental variables for policy and management as well as better understanding the benefits provided by those aspects of the environment. A review of the dominant definitions of ecosystem services reveals the term is comprehensive in its scope and requires further specification for most purposes. Analysis further reveals that there are four main categories of conceptual definitions. The paper concludes that ecosystem services can be identified at various points along the spectrum of nature-human interaction depending on which specific definition is chosen and that the term was not created to identify a novel set of environmental objects or processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of information in environmental and economic policy has been a theme for over 100 years but standards for integrating environmental and economic information were not adopted until 2012, through the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). For 20 years the technical ‘push’ to develop accounts proceeded largely independently of the ‘pull’ from the intended or likely end-users of accounts. Consequently governments have little knowledge of the accounting or how it might be used. We examine why public policy imperatives have not yet pulled environmental accounting into the mainstream and explain how accounting can help reshape government decision-making. As part of this a model showing the place of accounts in the information system and the policy cycle is presented along with a research agenda and principles for the decision-centred design of accounts. We conclude that a phased implementation of the accounts as well as additional research into their applications will be needed to build practical understanding and political acceptance of the accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents alternative measures of environmental inequality in the 50 U.S. states for exposure to industrial air pollution. We examine three methodological issues. First, to what extent are environmental inequality measures sensitive to spatial scale and population weighting? Second, how do sensitivities to different segments of the overall distribution affect rankings by these measures? Third, how do vertical and horizontal (inter-group) inequality measures relate to each other? We find substantive differences in rankings by different measures and conclude that no single indicator is sufficient for addressing the entire range of equity concerns that are relevant to environmental policy; instead multiple measures are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the implications for jurisdictional welfare of sharing environmental rents between private and public consumption. An integrated model is developed from research literatures on jurisdictional competition, the “double dividend,” and on the design of tax-refund instruments. This model shows that jurisdictional welfare increases as environmental rents are initially allocated towards public consumption, yielding a “double dividend”, but that this dividend may or may not continue as all rents are shifted to public finance. When the double dividend occurs, the rent allocation both improves the efficiency of the tax system and reduces the private–public consumption distortion that decentralized jurisdictional decision-making creates. In some parameter configurations, there is an optimal rental allocation between the private sector and the local government. At this optimum, environmental and fiscal policies are set at their first-best levels and decentralized jurisdictional decision-making is globally efficient. If less rents are allocated to public finance than this optimum, fiscal and environmental policies will be suboptimal, whereas, if too much rent is allocated for public consumption, fiscal and environmental policies will be set at levels above the global efficiency standard. These results illustrate the crucial importance of environmental rent sharing for the efficiency of jurisdictional decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]