Implementation of land and ecosystem accounts at the European Environment Agency

The European Environment Agency has started the implementation of a programme of land use and ecosystem accounts, following the System of Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA) guidelines of the United Nations. The purpose is to integrate information across the various ecosystem components and to support further assessments and modelling of these components and their interactions with economic and social developments. This programme reflects the increasing demand for environmental policy integration in Europe, both vertically through thematic policies as well as horizontally across policies in those sectors that contribute most to environmental impacts. The construction of land and ecosystem accounts is now feasible due to continuous improvements in monitoring, collecting and processing data and progress with the development of statistical methods that facilitate data assimilation and integration. The accounts are based on explicit spatial patterns provided by comprehensive land cover accounts that can be scaled up and down using a 1 km² grid to any type of administrative region or ecosystem zone (e.g., river basin catchments, coastal zones or bio-geographic areas). Land cover accounts have been produced for 24 countries in Europe and first results published in the European Environment State and Outlook2005 report of the EEA.¹     

Regulatory and environmental effects on public transit efficiency: a mixed DEA-SFA approach

This paper assesses the impact of regulatory and environmental factors and statistical noise on the efficiency of public transit systems within a DEA-based framework. Using a panel of Italian companies, we implement a DEA-SFA mixed approach based on [H.O. Fried et al. (2002) Journal of Productivity Analysis, 17(1–2), 157–174] to decompose DEA inefficiency measures into three components: exogenous effects, managerial inefficiency and stochastic events. Besides providing evidence on the determinants of input-specific efficiency differentials across companies, the results point out that managerial skills play a minor role, and emphasize the relevance of regulatory policies aimed at replacing cost-plus subsidization with high-powered incentive contracts as well as improving environmental conditions of public transit networks.      

环境会计计量构架、方法及其应用研究

环境会计计量困难是制约环境会计推行的关键。本文构建了环境会计计量构架,以此为基础从企业资源环境的产权界定、实物计量、货币计量、货币计量方法在会计系统中的应用四个环节研究环境会计计量。     

How efficient are national environmental standards? A benefit-cost analysis of the United States experience

This paper summarizes the results of the first systematic, geographically-specific efficiency assessment of the U.S. experience with national environmental standards and with alternative approaches to establishing those standards. This ex-post evaluation assessed the net benefits that resulted from EPA's regulation of conventional air and water pollutants from the pulp and paper industry between 1973 and 1984. The paper compares the benefit-cost efficiencies of the three dominant regulatory approaches: technology, ambient, and benefits. Unlike previous studies, which assessed benefits and costs on a national basis, the study estimates both costs and benefits on a facility-by-facility basis. The analysis shows how the efficiency of national environmental regulations can vary dramatically at local levels. The authors conclude that the technology-based standards for water pollution management failed as an efficient environmental strategy. The costs clearly exceeded the benefits in the aggregate, as well as in the specific in most situations. Benefits exceeded costs at only 11 of the 68 mills investigated. The ambient based standards for air pollution management succeeded as an environmental strategy in the aggregate, but succeeded in the specific for only one-third of the mills (22 of 60 mills). The benefits-based standards for air pollution management also succeeded in the aggregate as well as in the specific for about one-half of the mills. Benefits exceeded costs at 29 of the 60 mills investigated. The results of the study point to two major conclusions. First, a regulatory policy that is based on some measure of environmental results, either ambient-based or benefits-based, will be more efficient than a policy that ignores environmental results. Second, truly efficient policies for reducing environmental risks require pollution mitigation decisions that take into account local conditions. These include not only the changes in local ambient conditions, but also the number of people who will benefit from pollution reduction decisions. This latter conclusion suggests that national environmental standards per se may be inefficient.Dr. Luken is currently Senior Environmental Advisor to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Vienna, Austria. He is on leave from the U.S. EPA where he was Chief of the Economic Analysis and Research Branch of the Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation (OPPE). Mr. Clark is President of Environmental Economics Associates of Traverse City, Michigan. He was formerly Chief of EPA's Cost and Economic Impact Analysis Branch in OPPE. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.     

环境库兹涅茨曲线假说及其在中国的检验

经济与环境协调发展是我国经济发展中的重大课题。本文从环境库兹涅茨曲线假说出发,利用中国各个省市区1989～2004年数据建立面板数据模型,运用固定效应模型和随机效应模型对其进行估计,以此剖析我国经济增长与环境污染水平的演变规律。结果表明,环境库兹涅茨曲线假说在我国并不成立。因此,我国不能盲目重复发达国家"先污染,后治理"的传统模式,而应该走环境与经济持续协调发展的道路。     

Idea and goals of environmental protection and ecological construction in the 11^th five-year plan period

In this paper, the executive of the 10th Five- Year Plan in the field of environmental protection and ecological constrution is reviewed, and the charactristics of economic growth and its environmental impact on the 11^th Five-Year Plan is forecasted and analyzed. A principal idea of eavironmental protection and ecological construction is put forward for the 11^th Five-Year Plan pertod： strensgthen the point treatment in key areas and set the main targets based on the idea. The relating countermeasures in national level are proposed as follows： set up appropriate ideas for official achievements by launching resources and environmental cost acconting; adjust the industrial struacture actively by industrial policies and strenuous work; develop circular economy, change the mode of environmental protecgon from end treatment to headstream and proeess control： strengthen the market mechanism in the process of pollution treatment, set up the system of ＂who treats who benefits＂ ; perfect interrelated laws and standards, strengthen the ability of environmental munagement; lay extra emphasis on two key targets： water pollution tretment in key river basins and management of the reserves; and combine the ecological consnuction and poverty alleviation in higher level.     

环境会计信息披露研究

环境会计是现代会计的新兴分支,而环境会计信息披露则是环境会计最主要的基本问题。随着国民经济的迅速发展,对自然资源的消耗加剧,致使环境污染日益严重。环境会计是从环境保护、成本、收益、利润研究环境,环境会计信息的披露成为环境会计工作的重要组成部分,对环境建设、保护利用与开发起到了积极的作用。     

Making green discourses matter in policy-making: Learning from discursive power struggles within the policy area of car taxation

This paper is about stability and change in the policy-making discourse of a traditional neoclassical policy area, the area of car taxation. Stability is here related to the unquestioned continuation of a traditional neoclassical economics perspective in policy-making, whereas change is related to the introduction and impact of environmental concerns. The aim of the paper is to investigate, what makes green discourses matter in traditional policy-making. It is based on an in-depth study of policy-making processes related to car taxation in two environmental front-runner countries, Sweden and Denmark.Making green discourses matter in policy-making is an important contemporary environmental challenge. Therefore, as Tian Shi argues, we need more research into the institutional setting of the policy-making process. Ecological economics as a policy science has to have a broad understanding of the political economic nature of the policy process. Taking this standpoint as the point of departure, the paper seeks to uncover questions such as, what is the policy-making reality in which Swedish and Danish green discourses have to make a difference? How do existing neoclassical regimes react, when green actors attempt to influence policy-making from an environmental point of view? And to what extent can green discourses actually have an impact on the policy world within the area of car taxation?The paper concludes that the traditional neoclassical economic discourse is particularly robust and resistant against alternative green discourses. Stability rather than change is the dominating picture. This does not imply that environmental concerns will not be taken into account in the future. Rather it implies that only the changes, which keep up the existing order, or enhance the narrow power-related interests of the dominating actors, will materialise more or less easily. The rest is a power struggle in which timing, coalition-building, persistence and thorough knowledge about the field in question is of importance. In this struggle change agents will also benefit from the ability to rethink dominating ways of thinking and doing in an environmentally benign way. A rethinking that is based on environmental values while at the same time holding positive visions that are ‘compatible’ with the existing dominating discourse.     

确立资源有偿使用的环境经济政策

资源有偿使用是运用经济手段保护环境的一个最重要方面，我国环境与发展十大对策中也进一步阐述了这个观点。本文在分析环境有偿使用机制成固的基础上，对现有的主要有偿使用形式、排污收费、环境税和环境补偿费等作实证分析，并提出今后强化环境资源有偿使用的若干政策措施。     

Voluntary development of environmental management systems: motivations and regulatory implications

Encouraging firms to develop voluntarily more comprehensive environmental management systems (EMSs) is touted as a policy tool to augment mandatory environmental regulations. Using a unique dataset of environmental management practices of Japanese manufacturers and controlling for self-selection bias in survey responses, we find that proxies for regulatory pressures and consumer pressures are the most important factors that motivate firms toward more comprehensive EMSs. Despite the oft-claimed “voluntary” nature of EMS development, our results show that the government may have a role to play in both directly and indirectly affecting EMS development by firms.