Towards an operational sustainability criterion

This paper examines the concept of sustainability and its implications for environmental policy analysis. It builds on the premise that present society holds a moral obligation to pass on a world of undiminished life opportunities to members of future generations. Maintaining life opportunities, in turn, can be achieved by maintaining or improving a diverse set of resources and capabilities that support a person's freedom to define and pursue her own conception of the good life. On an operational level, this framework points to the following guideline for environmental policy: Protecting the rights of future generations requires either the conservation of environmental resources or compensatory measures (including the provision of substitute technologies) that ensure the fair and proportionate sharing of net benefits over intergenerational time scales. In this framework, resource depletion is permissible only if (with reasonable certainty) it would generate a Pareto improvement relative to a baseline scenario involving strict resource conservation.     

Socially responsible investment in an environmental overlapping generations model

One of the problems associated with the conservation of the environment is that short-lived individuals fail to account for the long-term effects of pollution, which implies that future generations bear the costs imposed by the current generation. Such inter-generational externalities are usually tackled by (Pigovian) taxes, fiscal policy or environmental regulation. Alternatively, we propose that socially responsible investment funds create a role for the stock market to deal with intergenerational environmental externalities. We analyze the role of the stock market in an environmental overlapping generations model of the Diamond-type, in which agents choose between investing in “clean” government bonds or “polluting” firm equity. We show that although socially responsible investors are short-lived, the forward-looking nature of stock prices can help to resolve the conflict between current and future generations.     

Transboundary Marine Resources and Trading Neighbours

The importance of space in analyzing issues pertaining to renewable resources can hardly be overstated. Many such resources are mobile and spatially heterogeneous with respect to bio-economic variables, with important implications for both domestic management regimes and for international externalities and policy interactions. This paper uses a simple general-equilibrium framework to show that acknowledging the inter-jurisdictional mobility of a resource such as fish has the potential to alter or qualify some of the conservation and welfare results obtained in the canonical models. The previous literature on trade and renewable resources has focused on cases where national resource stocks are independent. Brander and Taylor (Can J Econ 30(3):526?C552, 1997a; Resour Energy Econ 19(4):267?C297, 1997b; J Int Econ, 1998a; Am Econ Rev, 1998b) find that trade leads to resource stock depletion for an open-access resource-exporting country, while the non-resource exporter is necessarily diversified. In contrast, we find that the country with a comparative advantage in the resource good may gain from a conservation standpoint, while its partner can specialize in the manufactured good and may incur conservation and even welfare losses from trade.     

Uncertainty over future environmental taxes

Besides static efficiency properties, environmental policies should be evaluated in terms of their longer-run impacts on investment and technological change to reduce pollution and degradation of natural resources. Using a stochastic dynamic programming approach, this paper analyzes how uncertainty about a future environmental tax on a polluting input alters investment in resource conservation and how such investment affects future demand for the polluting input. The impact on investment depends crucially on price elasticities of demand and on the manner in which investment shifts and rotates the demand schedule for the polluting input in the future. The expectation of a higher tax does not necessarily create stronger incentives for investment in resource conservation. More uncertainty about future policies does encourage investment if it makes a firm more responsive to future price changes and discourages investment if it makes a firm less responsive to price changes.     

Open-access renewable resources and pollution: Trade and policy implications in a two-country model

We examine the interaction between the relative inter-industry pollution externality and resource stock externality of harvesting in deciding trade patterns and welfare gains from trade in a two-country model (less-developed countries) with renewable resources in the absence of resource management. This paper focuses on the impacts of trade policies on resource conservation and welfare outcomes in two countries with different environmental management regimes. Differences in pollution management standards between both countries determine the direction of trade flow and gains from trade in a diversified production case. The country with a lower pollution intensity parameter, an exporter of resource goods, certainly experiences welfare loss in the post-trade steady-state and may also suffer a decline in utility throughout the transition path. However, a country with higher pollution intensity and importers of resource goods tend to gain from trade. Under national open-access resources, given that pollution is regulated up to a certain point in both countries, this study finds that implementing better restrictions on only one externality factor is not optimal from a post-trade welfare perspective. Lastly, from the point of view of policy suggestion, this paper offers an optimal trade policy that the economic and environmental effects of enforcing import tax on resource goods are likely to be Pareto-improving consequences compared to the implications of using an export tax.     

Market dynamics, dynamic resource management and environmental policy in the context of (strong) sustainability

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between market dynamics, dynamic resource management and environmental policy. In contrast to static market entry games, this paper draws attention to the effects of market dynamics on resource dynamics et vice versa, because (1) we show that feedback processes are necessary for obtaining a better understanding of what drives the dynamics between the evolution of common-pool resources and the number of harvesters and more importantly, (2) this analysis provides an environment discussing sustainability in an appropriate inasmuch dynamic way. The paper makes the following points: based on a co-evolutionary model, which incorporates resource and market dynamics simultaneously, it is shown that an increasing number of harvesters does not necessarily imply a lower stock of the common-pool resource in the long run. Further it is shown that a tax-scheme establish an output-sharing solution for coping with the overuse of common-pool resources. This results is in contrast to the prevailing literature, which mainly discusses tax-schemes and out-sharing as substitutes rather than as complements for solving the commons-problem. This conclusion holds even if we additionally assume harvesting-cost-reducing technological progress. On the other side if policy interventions ceased, strong resource sustainability in the sense of resource conservation is not possible, given technological progress is a relevant issue.     

Renewable Resources,Pollution and Trade

Detrimental spillovers from industrial activity onto resource‐based productive sectors are very common, yet their effects remain understudied. While international trade often creates conditions for the over‐exploitation of open‐access renewable resources, it also provides opportunities for separating different productive sectors spatially. The existing literature suggests that a diversified exporter of the renewable resource good tends to lose from trade in both welfare and conservation terms as a result of over‐depletion, while the exporter of the non‐resource good gains. However, the resource stock externality of harvesting and the inter‐industry pollution externality often coexist in reality. In a small open economy framework, this paper shows that acknowledging their interaction changes the nature of the autarkic equilibrium and enriches the set of resource conservation and welfare outcomes from trade. Depending on the relative damage inflicted by the two industries on the environment, which in turn are functions of the pollution intensity and bioeconomic parameters, it is possible that the inter‐sectoral pollution externality persists and specialization in manufacturing is not optimal from a welfare perspective.     

Environment,Directed Technical Change and Economic Policy

We study the effects of an economic policy in an endogenous growth general equilibrium framework where production of consumption goods requires two resource inputs: a polluting non-renewable resource and a non-polluting labour resource. The use of the former contributes to the accumulation of pollution in the atmosphere, which affects welfare. There is a specific research sector associated with each of those resources. We provide a full welfare analysis, and we describe the equilibrium paths in a decentralized economy. We go on to study the effects of three associated economic policy tools: a tax on the polluting resource, and two research subsidies. We show that the optimal environmental policy has two main effects; it delays the extraction of the resource and with it the level of polluting emissions and it reallocates research efforts, decreasing the amount put into “grey” research to the benefit of “green” research. We also show that the environmental policy is grey-biased in the short-term, and green-biased in the long-term. Finally, we compute the optimal values for these tools.      

洞庭湖流域生态环境与资源保护存在的问题与建议

保护和改善洞庭湖流域生态环境和资源,为子孙后代造福是我们义不容辞的责任和历史使命,根据流域（或区域）生态学系统原理,结合洞庭湖流域存在的生态及环境问题,提出了流域生态环境、生态资源保护和改善的初步设想与建议。     

节能减排政策传导机制及效果研究——以重庆市节能减排政策体系为例

"十二五"期间,节能减排作为调结构、扩内需的重要方式以及可持续发展的重要举措,被提上了议事日程。作为老工业基地之一的重庆市,资源消耗量与废物排放量持续增加,形势不容乐观。拟对重庆市现行节能减排政策传导机制及效果进行深入研究,以期推动重庆市经济的可持续发展。研究发现,重庆市促进节能减排以实施命令控制型政策和排污收费政策为主,市场化手段仍不成熟,如排污权交易活跃度低、相关税收政策缺失等。基于这些问题,结合西方国家经验与重庆市资源环境市场特点,提出构建绿色税收体系,加快排污权交易市场建设,完善市场机制等建议。     

资源拼凑：起源、研究脉络与理论框架

资源拼凑是企业将手头资源进行组合应对新问题、利用新机会，以化解制度和资源约束的有效途径。作为创业研究的新兴领域，资源拼凑正成为学界研究热点。总结资源拼凑起源和概念内涵，运用文献分析法和科学知识图谱，对1972-2018年中英文文献进行系统梳理，围绕资源拼凑重要主题和前沿热点构建理论分析框架，并讨论未来研究方向及中国情景下的本土研究主题。研究结论有助于国内学者拓展资源拼凑研究整体性视角，促进国内资源拼凑研究与国际前沿接轨。     

可持续发展的代际资源管理

资源在代际之间的永续利用是可持续发展的核心问题。这一问题在当代人利益激励和后代人主体缺位的条件下是不可能自然实现的。所以,对世代赖以生存的自然资源进行公平合理的代际管理和分配,是实现可持续发展的必由之路。     

Institutional Resource Regimes: Towards sustainability through the combination of property-rights theory and policy analysis

Although the concept of sustainable development is gaining increasing political acknowledgement, despite the implementation of environmental policies specifically intended to solve problems in this area, environmental degradation resulting from the recurrent problems associated with the over-exploitation of natural resources remains an important concern for most countries. How can this situation be explained? This article postulates that a combination of approaches from the political sciences (in particular policy analysis) and institutional economics would enable the identification of the most relevant regulatory dimensions which can explain the (un)sustainable uses of resources. Based on this starting point, it develops an innovative theoretical framework, i.e. that of the Institutional Resource Regime (IRR).The adopted approach facilitates the analysis of the regulatory measures and resource management practices associated with complex and competitive heterogeneous use situations from a perspective of sustainability. Indeed, the two dimensions of “extent” and “coherence” enable the definition and categorization of the IRR of a given resource. The extent of an IRR refers to the total number of goods and services in use that are actually regulated by the regime at a given time, while the coherence measures the degree of coordination of the various user-actors within the regime. One of the major contributions of the IRR framework is its ability to describe the different configurations of regimes, both theoretically and empirically, and to predict their effect on the sustainability of a resource based on the hypothesis that high levels of regime extent and coherence are necessary preconditions for sustainability.By doing this, the IRR framework also enables the analysis of the actual use rights to the goods and services provided by resources as the result of the political strategies of actors who mobilize different legal provisions, which stem either from formal property rights to resources or from policies that regulate the use and protection of these resources.Having developed the central research hypotheses and the empirical research procedure, we present the lessons drawn from the first campaign of field research which was mainly conducted in Switzerland from 1999. Based on the evidence from these initial findings, it is suggested that the scope of the IRR framework could be far broader than evidenced by its application in the case of Switzerland where it was initially developed.     

Mathematical modelling as a tool to aid R&D investment decisions in a sustainable development policy climate

By its very nature, investment in R&D is a challenging proposition. It is a decision made today for an uncertain return in the future. Moreover, it has become more complex with the introduction of sustainable development considerations into the decision-making process. In this paper, the effect of environmental policy on the economic framework within which new technologies must compete is discussed, and analytical techniques which help assess these complexities are described. The return on an R&D investment is determined by the competitiveness of the resultant innovation at the time of its eventual application. A new technology is competitive relative to a given economic framework (which includes such factors as alternative technologies, availability of investment capital, trained human resources, etc).Government involvement in establishing goals and timetables for environmental protection signficantly affects the evolution of the economic framework in which new technologies must perform. To be successful in the 'sustainable development' age, the R&D investor must be able to anticipate the effect and development of government environmental and economic policy. Mathematical modelling is a valuable tool to help the investor and policy-maker appreciate the key risk factors and to understand the effect of environmental and economic policy on desired outcomes. For R&D, most model development has focused on policy development and is not very useful supporting the business decisions msociated with effective R&D investment. In this paper, the interaction bebeen government policy and business decision-making is discussed, and a methodology, supported by a model, is presented to aid R&D investors to take environmental and sustainabilip issues into account when assessing the future competitiveness of technology.     

试论我国环境刑事政策

我国正在建设“资源节约型、环境友好型”社会。“两型”社会的建设目标就是保护环境和资源。这就需要我们运用各种手段，采取各种措施，加大保护环境资源的力度。政策手段是一个主要的调控杠杆，环境刑事政策作为运用刑法手段控制环境违法行为和惩治环境犯罪的策略和方针，近年来在环境资源保护方面发挥的作用越来越大。环境刑事政策既是刑事政策，也是环境政策，既是立法政策、司法政策，也是执行政策，理论上对环境刑事政策进行研究，可以指导决策机关制定符合“两型”社会建设需要的方略，进而更好地运用刑事手段保护环境和资源。     

Farmers' preferences for crop variety traits: Lessons for on-farm conservation and technology adoption

Although in-situ conservation is increasingly considered an efficient way of conserving plant genetic resources, little is known about the incentives and constraints that govern conservation decisions among small farm holders in developing countries. Using a choice experiment approach, we investigated Ethiopian farmers' crop variety preferences, estimated the mean willingness to pay for each crop variety attribute, and identified household-specific and institutional factors that governed the preferences. We found that environmental adaptability and yield stability are important attributes for farmers' choice of crop varieties. Farmers are willing to forego some extra income or yield to obtain a more stable and environmentally adaptable crop variety. Among other things, household resource endowments (particularly land holdings and livestock ownership), years of farming experience, and contact with extension services are the major factors causing household heterogeneity of crop variety preferences. Based on our experimental results, we derived important policy implications for on-farm conservation, breeding priority setting, and improved variety adoption in Ethiopia.     

Growth,intergenerational welfare,and environmental policies in an overlapping generations economy

This paper examines the effects of the environmental tax on long‐run growth and intergenerational welfare in a discrete‐time overlapping generations (OLG ) model. We highlight that the role regarding how the environmental tax revenues are distributed between the young or old generations has important implications for the growth and welfare effects. Our results indicate that raising the environmental tax can exert different effects on the environmental utility of the existing young and old generations, implying an intergenerational welfare conflict of the environmental policy. However, if tax revenues are distributed appropriately, our numerical simulation shows that it is possible for a higher environmental tax to improve the welfare of all generations.     

Growth, Environment and Uncertain Future Preferences

The attitude of future generations towards environmental assets may well be different from ours, and it is necessary to take into account thispossibility explicitly in the current debate about environmental policy. The question we are addressing here is: should uncertainty about futurepreferences lead to a more conservative attitude towards environment?Previous literature shows that it is the case when society expects that onaverage future preferences will be more in favor of environment than ours,but this result relies heavily on the assumption of a separability betweenconsumption and environmental quality in the utility function. We show thatthings are less simple when preferences are non-separable: the attitude ofthe society now depends not only on the expectation of the change inpreferences but also on the characteristics of the economy (impatience,intertemporal flexibility, natural capacities of regeneration of theenvironment, relative preference for the environment), on its history(initial level of the environmental quality) and on the date at whichpreferences are expected to change (near or far future).     

Hydro-economic river basin modelling: The application of a holistic surface-groundwater model to assess opportunity costs of water use in Spain

Combined hydro-economic models of river basins are fundamental tools for assessing management and infrastructure strategies to improve the economic efficiency of water use in a context of competition over scarce water resources. Integrated hydro-economic models have to be capable to properly reproduce the physical behavior of the system, with a realistic representation of the different surface and groundwater resources, including their interaction, and the spatial and temporal variability of resource availability. On the other hand, such models must incorporate the value of water for different urban, agricultural and industrial uses and users. Economic values for water use are defined according to the marginal residual value of water for production (for agricultural and industrial uses) or the aggregated willingness-to-pay (WTP) for urban supply and other final water uses. In this paper, we present a systematic approach to estimate the marginal economic value of surface and groundwater resources at different locations within a complex water resources system. Based on a holistic conjunctive optimization model applied to the Adra river system in Spain we asses the total and marginal opportunity costs of capacity and operation constraints, including the opportunity cost of imposing environmental constraints on water use as foreseen in future Spanish water policy following the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive. The resulting opportunity costs provide important information to water managers about economic inefficiencies of current water allocation policy or infrastructure design, and about the resource opportunity costs to be considered in the design of efficient pricing policies in regions with water scarcity issues.     

A Stackelberg Game Model of Trade in Renewable Resources with Competitive Sellers*

We model international trade in renewable resources between a single buyer and competitive sellers as a Stackelberg differential game. The buyer uses unit and ad valorem tariffs to indirectly encourage conservation of the renewable resource under study. First, we show that the efficacy of these trade policy instruments in promoting conservation depends fundamentally on whether harvesting costs are stock dependent or independent. When harvesting costs are stock independent, the optimal open‐loop tariffs are dynamically consistent. In contrast, when harvesting costs are stock dependent, the optimal open‐loop tariffs are dynamically inconsistent. Secondly, we point out that whether the terminal value of the resource stock is higher with the stock independent or the stock dependent cost function cannot be resolved unambiguously. Thirdly, we show that it does not make sense for the buyer to use both tariffs simultaneously. Finally, we discuss the implications of these and other findings for renewable resource conservation in general.