Valuing the Environment: Methodological and Measurement Issues: 2 (Environment, Science and Society, 2) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792326024 ISBN 13: 9780792326021

Publisher: Springer, 1994

Synopsis

During the last decades, environmental economics as a science has been very successful in improving our understanding of environment-economy interdepen­ dence. Using conventional economic methodology, environmental aspects have been explicitly incorporated into economic models making use of the concept of externality. This concept was already familiar to economists long before evidence of severe environmental deterioration found its way into the headlines and peo­ ple's awareness. But before that time, external effects were not considered as being empirically very relevant, they seemed to be -like the example of the bees and the fruit trees - somewhat bucolic in nature. All that changed dramatically when it was no longer possible (or easy) to ignore the large-scale environmental disruption with its negative feedback on consumers and producers caused by growing pollution and excessive use of environmental resources. In diagnosing the discrepancy between private and social cost as the cause of the problem, the externality paradigm proved very useful. The correct diagnosis implies the straightforward cure to internalise all external cost, namely the damage cost of pollution. But it is one thing to identify the qualitative nature of the problem at an abstract conceptual level and quite another thing to place specific money values on pollution damage and society's valuation of the environment, respectively, in the context of specific pollution (control) problems. Very often it is controversial not only how inefficient the no-policy situation is but also what exactly the net benefit of any public action of reducing pollution is.

About this title

Synopsis

This book contains a collection of papers on environmental valuation resulting from the authors' joint research work in the program 'Environment, Science and Society' conducted under the auspices of the European Science Foundation, with whose cooperation the book has been published. In the first part, this book focuses on conceptual issues of environmental valuation involving the stock-flow dynamics of pollution, environmental services as productive factors, the appropriateness of the expected utility approach for unlikely high-damage risks, the concept of option value, and the valuation of environmental health effects.Turning to measurement issues, a comparative analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of several valuation methods is carried out - with a special emphasis on survey techniques. Energy-related valuation procedures are also discussed, and their potential for environmental valuation is demonstrated. Rather than applying valuation techniques in specific case studies this book scrutinizes the foundations of valuation methodology and assesses the validity and reliability of available techniques.

It is therefore of great interest for both researchers and teachers in the field of environmental valuation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0792326024
• ISBN 13: 9780792326021
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 370
• Editor: Pethig Rüdiger