Large Scale Marine Protected Areas for Biodiversity Conservation Along a Linear Gradient: Cooperation, Strategic Behavior or Conservation Autarky?

In this paper we investigate effects of overlap in species between ecosystems along a linear gradient on the location of marine protected areas (MPAs) under full cooperation, strategic behavior and conservation autarky. Compared to the full cooperation outcome, both strategic behavior and conservation autarky lead to under-investment in biodiversity protection. Under strategic behavior, however, we observe the additional problem of ??location leakage?? i.e. countries invest less in species protected by others. Conservation autarky eliminates location leakage; in ecosystems with partly overlapping species compositions at country borders it even induces MPAs that are too large from a global perspective. We also find that, in our setting of a linear gradient without migrating species, countries focus their conservation efforts on species unique to their own country and that these species are relatively well protected compared to common species.     

林业经济贸易与生态U型关系研究

运用四个方程组成的联立方程组模型研究了我国林业经济增长、林业生态安全与林产品贸易的关系,林业生态指标采用林业生物灾害面积与造林面积等与生命生态直接相关的指标。研究结果认为林业生物灾害与林业产值之间出现正U关系,而造林面积与林业产值之间呈现倒U型关系,林产品贸易延缓了造林面积的降低,在一定程度上有保护生态的作用,而同时林产品贸易也带来了部分林业生物灾害。我国林产品出口是林产品大量进口的原因,林产品进口对林业经济增长的确有促进作用。同时林产品进口和林业产值之间也呈现倒U型关系。     

试论森林环境资源核算

环境资源核算是当前国际社会最关注的热门课题之一,作者指出了现行国民经济核算体系的缺陷,论述了世界环境资源核算的研究现状及发展前景,重点介绍了环境资源核算研究的指导思想、环境资源核算的新概念及其分类、价值和计算方法、环境产业问题等,并对我国开展森林环境资源核算研究提出了几点建议。     

林权改革推进中农户林业合作经营的动因

集体林权制度改革后,小农户与大市场之间的矛盾,是我国林业发展的一个突出矛盾。要解决这一矛盾,提升农户进入市场的能力,需提高分散农户在林业经营中的合作程度。从内外两方面探究了农户林业合作经营需求产生的动因,认为合作需求的产生受农户自身内在驱动因素与外部环境推动因素的共同作用,政府在制定相关扶持政策时应以农户需求为基础,尊重农户意愿。     

Socioeconomic Impacts of Public Forest Policies on Heterogeneous Agricultural Households

Nepal has a long history of returning public forests to local people as part of its community forestry programme. In principle the community forestry programme is designed to address both environmental quality and poverty alleviation. However, concern has been expressed that forest policies emphasise environmental conservation, and that this has a detrimental impact on the use of community forests in rural Nepal where households require access to public forest products to sustain livelihoods. To study the effect of government policies on forest use, an economic model of a typical small community of economically heterogeneous households in Nepal was developed. The model incorporates a link between private agriculture and public forest resources, and uses this link to assess the socioeconomic impacts of forest policies on the use of public forests. Socioeconomic impacts were measured in terms of household income, employment and income inequality. The results show that some forest policies have a negative economic impact, and the impacts are more serious than those reported by other studies. This study shows that existing forest policies reduce household income and employment, and widen income inequalities within communities, compared to alternative policies. Certain forest policies even constrain the poorest households?? ability to meet survival needs. The findings indicate that the socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies may be underestimated in developing countries unless household economic heterogeneity and forestry??s contribution to production are accounted for. The study also demonstrates that alternative policies for managing common property resources would reduce income inequalities in rural Nepalese communities and lift incomes and employment to a level where even the poorest households could meet their basic needs.     

Biodiversity value and the optimal location of forest conservation sites in Southern Finland

Safeguarding biodiversity has been one of the most important issues in environmental and forest policies since the 1990s. In Southern Finland, decisions concerning further actions for the preservation of forest biodiversity will be made in the coming years. To support policy making, we present a multi-regional model that is applicable in determining the economically optimal regional allocation of conservation sites. Three habitat quality models are evaluated to calculate habitat quality indices used as a surrogate for a biodiversity value in a forest sector model. The scenarios presented provide information about the economic impacts of conservation choices on the forest sector. The overall economic impacts of conservation depend on its scale and regional allocation. Conserving land with high biodiversity value can have less adverse impact on the forest sector than conservation of typical commercial forest sites. When optimizing conservation set-asides, we found that set-asides targeted to certain regions possessing higher/lower than average relative share of ecologically valuable land, caused lower/higher adverse economic impacts on the forest sector. Because it is expensive to search land suitable for conservation, these regions could be respectively favoured/avoided when asking forest owners to offer their land for the new conservation program in Southern Finland, which will be based on voluntariness.     

Climate Policy,Learning, and Technology Adoption in Small Countries

A significant reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions requires international cooperation in emission abatement as well as individual countries’ investment in the adoption of abatement technology. The existing literature on climate policy pays insufficient attention to small countries, which account for a substantial proportion of global emission. In this study, we investigate how climate policy and learning about climate damage affect investment in abatement technology in small countries. We consider three alternative climate policy instruments: emission standards, harmonized taxes and auctioned permits. We say that learning is feasible if an international environmental agreement (IEA) is formed after the resolution of uncertainty about climate damage. We find that, either with learning and quadratic abatement costs or without learning, harmonized taxes outperform emission standards and auctioned permits in terms of investment efficiency. Without learning, a large cost of nonparticipation (that a country incurs) in the IEA can be beneficial to the country. Whether learning improves investment efficiency depends on the size of this nonparticipation cost.     

Offset carbon emissions or pay a price premium for avoiding them? A cross-country analysis of motives for climate protection activities

This article contributes to the economic literature on pure and impure public goods by considering two alternatives for contributing to the public good climate protection: offsetting carbon emissions from conventional consumption or paying higher prices for climate-friendly products. We empirically examine a wide range of motives and their impact on individuals’ choice in favour of these two alternatives relying on data from representative international surveys. Our results indicate that environmental awareness, warm glow motives and the desire to set a good example have the most robust effects on both climate protection activities in Germany and the United States. However, some motives differ considerably between both alternatives and the two countries. A green identity enhances the willingness to pay a price premium for climate-friendly goods or services in Germany, while social norms seem to be of much higher relevance in the United States. Our results further suggest that the choice of climate protection activities, especially of carbon offsetting, entails a high degree of uncertainty.     

我国林产品贸易与森林生态研究综述

在我国日益成为世界主要林产品生产和对外贸易大国,人均森林资源严重不足、森林生态十分脆弱、林产品贸易与气候关系被世界各国密切关注的背景下,文章从林产品贸易与森林资源的关系、林产品贸易和森林生态安全的关系、森林资源与森林生态的关系及林产品贸易和碳排放的关系等方面,总结了有关林产品贸易和我国森林资源及生态关系文献的研究概况,之后从理论创新、数据类型和概念界定、方程设定和回归估计方法等方面分析了现有相关研究文献的特点,最后从林产品贸易和森林资源、生态关系相关研究文献的研究方法、研究结论、研究前提、研究视角、研究范畴等方面做了评论,并且从国际贸易学、生态学、系统动力学、系统论等研究技术和方法、Ec—Re—En系统模型设计、耦合理论和仿真技术等方面,对我国林产品贸易安全与森林生态关系未来的研究方向做了展望。     

International treaties on trade and global pollution

The paper shows that global pollution need not rise under free trade in goods and/or emissions even in the complete absence of income effects. Differences in environmental concerns across the countries lead to differences in the pollution intensity of production and, thus, generate the possibility of increasing world output and income without increasing the world pollution by shifting the production of the polluting good from the country with higher pollution intensity of production to the country with lower one. We show that free trade in goods and/or emissions can induce precisely such a shifting of production with the country with greater environmental concern exporting the polluting good. The paper also demonstrates the possibility of a first-best international treaty on global pollution in which each country or group of countries is better-off.     

Adaptation to Climate Change: Commitment and Timing Issues

We study the impact of timing and commitment on adaptation and mitigation policies in the context of international environmental problems. Adaptation policies present the characteristics of a private good and may require a prior investment, while mitigation policies produce a public good. In a stylized model, we evaluate the impact of strategic commitment and leadership considerations when countries with different attitudes towards environmental cooperation coexist. We obtain equilibrium abatement and adaptation levels and environmental costs under partial cooperation for various timing and leadership scenarios. Crucially, global environmental costs suffered by countries are found to be greater when adaptation measures can be used strategically.     

中国木质林产品出口贸易结构与林业经济增长——基于1981～2009年数据的分析

与世界主要木质林产品出口大国(地区)相比,中国劳动密集型木质林产品出口比重过大。基于1981~2009年间数据,运用协整分析和格兰杰因果检验,分析中国劳动密集型、资源密集型、资本技术密集型木质林产品的出口与林业经济增长的关系,认为我国林业总产值与各类木质林产品的出口之间存在长期的均衡关系,资源密集型木质林产品出口与林业产值存在单向Granger因果关系,劳动密集型和资本技术密集型木质林产品的出口与林业产值之间存在双向Granger因果关系。     

Unsustainable timber harvesting, deforestation and the role of certification

Deforestation is a major environmental issue, while demand for timber products increases rapidly in the developing world. One can thus wonder whether forest harvesting is sustainable worldwide, or if demand for timber products is fulfilled with the products from deforestation. Our panel data analysis shows that countries where timber harvesting is more important tend to experience larger deforestation rates than others, giving the intuition that forest harvesting is generally not sustainable. We also show that timber certification is negatively related to deforestation and thus seems to be a good indicator of harvesting sustainability.     

论我国森林认证的发展现状、问题与对策

森林认证又称FSC认证或木材认证。开展森林认证,有助于推动林产品贸易与国际接轨、扩大林产品对外贸易;有助于建立三位一体的生态文明。目前我国开展森林认证还存在着诸多问题,为推动我国森林认证的健康发展,我们应该从以下几方面做好工作：加强国际交流与合作,尽早建立与FSC互认的认证体系;强化政府监管,规范森林认证市场;深化集体林权制度改革,加快林业信息化建设;政府应对获得森林认证的出口企业提供政策扶持;努力争取FSC认证,避免市场过分集中;充分发挥行业协会的作用。     

Damned if you do,damned if you do not—Reduced Climate Impact vs. Sustainable Forests in Sweden

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the potential goal conflict between two of Sweden's environmental objectives: Sustainable Forests and Reduced Climate Impact – or, more precisely, the conflict between forest conservation and the supply of wood fuel. To accomplish this, we use a forest sector model that includes the suppliers and major users of roundwood. The econometric results, based on a data set that spans 40 years, show that all the own price elasticities have the expected signs. Among the three forestry products, the supply and (long-term) demand of forest fuel seems to be most sensitive to a price change. In a second step, the estimated model is used to simulate the effect of increased forest conservation – the Sustainable Forest objective – on the supply of wood fuel. If oil is used as a substitute, Swedish emissions of greenhouse gases will increase by almost 0.92 percent, which indicates a clear conflict with the Reduced Climate Impact objective.     

Are Preferential Trade Agreements with Non-trade Objectives a Stumbling Block for Multilateral Liberalization?

In many preferential trade agreements (PTAs), countries exchange not only reductions in trade barriers but also cooperation in non-trade issues such as labour and environmental standards, intellectual property, etc. We provide a model of PTAs motivated by cooperation in non-trade issues and analyse its implications for global free trade and welfare. We find that such PTAs increase the cost of multilateral tariff reductions and thus cause a stumbling block to global free trade. This occurs because multilateral tariff reductions decrease the threat that can be used in PTAs and thus the surplus that can be extracted from them. By explicitly modelling the interaction between preferential and multilateral negotiations, we derive a testable prediction and provide novel econometric evidence that supports the model's key prediction. The welfare analysis shows that the current World Trade Organization rules allowing this type of PTAs may be optimal for economically large countries, thus the model can predict the rules we observe. We also analyse alternative rules that constitute a Pareto improvement.     

Trade in intermediate inputs,customs unions,and global free trade

In a three‐country customs union (CU) formation game, I introduce international trade in intermediate inputs and rules of origin (RoO) restrictions. In the case of symmetric countries, I show that as countries become more involved in global supply chains, global free trade is less likely to be a stable equilibrium outcome. RoO can help solve this problem. In the case of asymmetry, depending on the degree of the globalization, free riding (for high degree) or exclusion motive (for low degree) prevents global free trade. Correspondingly, I show that RoO can have helpful or detrimental effects on attaining global free trade.     

Games of Climate Change with International Trade

We analyse games of greenhouse gas emission reduction in which the emissions and the emission reduction costs of one country depend on other countries' emission abatement. In an analytically tractable model, we show that international trade effects on costs and emissions can either increase or decrease incentives to reduce emissions and to cooperate on emission abatement; in some specifications, optimal emission reduction is unaffected by trade. We therefore specify the model further, calibrating it to larger models that estimate the costs of emission reduction, trade effects, and impacts of climate change. If trade effects are driven by total emission reduction costs of other countries cooperation is slightly more difficult than in the case without trade effects. If trade effects are determined by relative emission reduction efforts in other countries, cooperation becomes easier. Carbon leakage does not affect our qualitative insights, although it does change the numbers.     

International capital market and repeated tax competition

We propose an infinitely repeated game of tax competition with an endogenous capital supply. Our results show that the larger the capital supply elasticity to interest rates, the easier it is for interregional tax coordination within a country to be achieved. The capital supply elasticity is lower when countries are less integrated into the international capital market, and vice versa. Thus, our finding suggests that the regions in the country with a lower (higher) degree of integration in the global market are less (more) likely to achieve tax coordination.     

A time-consistent model for cooperation in international pollution control

In this paper, transnational pollution is formulated as a differential game between sovereign governments. We consider the case when the countries want to cooperate and agree to act so that an international optimum can be achieved. For the cooperative scheme to be upheld throughout the game horizon, both group rationality and individual rationality are required to be satisfied at any point in time along the optimal trajectory. A payment distribution scheme is formulated to guarantee time consistency. We conclude that a payoff transfer is not necessary to ensure cooperation given that the countries are different only in environmental efficiency. However, if the countries differ in terms of damage parameters, a payoff transfer from the country with higher damage parameters to the country with lower damage parameters is required for the time-consistent cooperative solution.