Environment and Development Economics

M. Shirley (ed.), Thirsting for Efficiency: The Economics and Politics of Urban Water System Reform. Elsevier Press, Oxford, 2000, xxi +376 pp., US $100, ISBN 0080440770 - Volume 9 Issue 5 - ROBERTO MARTINEZ-ESPINEIRA

Clóvis Cavalcanti (ed.), The Environment, Sustainable Development and Public Policies: Building Sustainability in Brazil, Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2000. ISBN 1 84064 018 9. - Volume 7 Issue 2 - Charles Mueller

Michael A. Toman (ed.), Climate Change Economics and Policy: An RFF Anthology. Resources for the Future, Washington DC, 2001. ISBN 1 891853 04 - Volume 7 Issue 3 - Mick Common

Jörg Köhn, John Gowdy, Friedrich Hinterberger and Jan van der Straaten (eds.), Sustainability in Question: The Search for a Conceptual Framework, Edward Elgar, 1999. ISBN 1 84064 050 2. - Volume 6 Issue 3 - Mick Common

Cairo A.R. Robb, International Environmental Law Reports, Volume 1, Early Decisions. Cambridge University Press 0521 64397X £40 - Volume 7 Issue 1 - Jon Lovett

Simon A. Levin, Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons, Perseus Books, ISBN 073820319X - Volume 9 Issue 4 - Jon Lovett

Jyoti Parikh and Hemant Datye (eds), Sustainable Management of Wetlands: Biodiversity and Beyond, Sage, 2003, ISBN 0761996028 - Volume 9 Issue 4 - Pushpam Kumar

William Ascher (1999), Why Governments Waste Natural Resources: Policy Failures in Developing Countries, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. ISBN 08018 60962. - Volume 6 Issue 3 - Rasmus Heltberg

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Ecological and Economic Foundations, edited by KumarPushpam, 2010, London and Washington: Earthscan, ISBN 978-1-84971-212-5 (HB) Price £49.99 [Earthscan have offered a 20% discount off the book for EDE readers. To receive the discount enter ‘EDETEEB’ into the voucher code box at the checkout on the Earthscan website at http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=102480] - Volume 16 Issue 2 - Anastasios Xepapadeas

This essay introduces a special section of this issue containing a set of papers on the dynamics of coupled human and natural systems. We frame this introduction by setting out some of the major issues confronting researchers who wish to incorporate both economic and biophysical dynamics in their analysis. We contrast the three papers contained in this section in terms of how they respond to these different issues. We conclude that these papers provide important new insights on both how to model and analyze dynamic coupled human and natural systems and how to define policies that will lead to improved human well being and environmental conditions.

William D. Nordhaus and Joseph Boyer, Warming the World: Economic Models of Global Warming. MIT Press, Cambridge Mass., 2000. ISBN 0 262 14071 3. - Volume 7 Issue 3 - Mick Common

James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, Reframing deforestation: global analysis and local realities: studies in West Africa, Global Environmental Change Series, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0–415–18591–2 - Volume 5 Issue 3 - JAMES K. A. BENHIN

This article investigates the linkages between economic growth, energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in India by analysing the structure of production and consumption in the Indian economy. We begin with an examination of the consumption pattern of six different income classes, three each in urban and rural India, and then estimate the direct and indirect energy and CO2 emission coefficients for supporting production in various sectors. This provides us with a basis for estimating the energy and emission content of the consumption baskets of the different income classes in India. CO2 emissions are projected to increase from 0.18 tonnes of carbon (tC) per capita in 1990 to about 0.62 tC per capita in 2020 under the reference scenario which corresponds to a GDP growth rate of 5.5% per annum. We then analyse scenarios of technology improvement in which emissions are reduced to 0.47 tC per capita in 2020. Our projection methodology takes into account the changes in aggregate consumption pattern due to mobility of the population across the income classes and from rural to urban areas, besides the increase in per capita consumption of all classes.

Technological modernization is widely believed to contribute positively both to economic development and to environmental and resource conservation, through improvements in productivity and strengthening of business competitiveness. However, this may not always be true, particularly in the short term, as it requires substantial investments and may impose financial burdens on firms undertaking such investments. This study empirically examines the effects of technological modernization in China's iron and steel industry in the 1990s on conventional economic productivity (CEP) and environmentally sensitive productivities (ESPs). We employ a directional distance function that can handle multiple inputs and outputs to compute relative production efficiencies. We apply these models to the data covering 27 iron and steel firms in China between 1990 and 1999 a period when the Chinese iron and steel industry modernized rapidly. We find that ESPs have continuously improved, even in the period when the CEP declined.

Ekko C. Van Ierland, ed.,International Environmental Economics: Theories, Models and Applications to Climate Change, International Trade and Acidification,Elsevier, 1994, ISBN 0-444-82042-6 - - Volume 2 Issue 3 - LEO SCHRATTENHOLZER

MunasingheMohan and ShearerWalter, eds., Defining and Measuring Sustainability—The Biogeophysical Foundations, Washington, DC, The United Nations University and The World Bank, 1995, ISBN 0-8213-3134-5 - Volume 1 Issue 4 - Jill Jäger