Opportunity cost of water allocation to afforestation rather than conservation of natural vegetation in China

Estimation of ecosystem service values is a hot area of research in ecological conservation and economics. However, the costs of these outputs are largely unknown. In this paper, we estimated the opportunity cost of water allocated to afforestation projects through mathematical modeling based on statistical data for all of China to provide support for restoration planning based on a fuller consideration of the true costs. To guide future ecological conservation and environmental policy development, we illustrate a neglected concept (ecosystem service costs) and use this concept to compare the ecological services provided by ecological restoration based on afforestation with those of restoration based on the conservation of natural vegetation using data obtained since 1949 in China. The results showed that afforestation and natural vegetation create annual costs related to use of the available water resources equal to 4800 and 3700 RMB ha⁻¹, respectively, representing a water opportunity cost of 1100 RMB ha⁻¹ for afforestation. This illustrates the rule that “there is no free lunch” for any service, including ecosystem services. Therefore, to support the development of more effective and sustainable environmental restoration policy, it will be necessary to evaluate the associated opportunity costs.     

Environmental protection or subversion in mining? Planning challenges,perspectives and actors at the largest gold deposit in Europe

The gold ores in Roşia Montană have been intensely mined for the last two thousand years, as this mining district was one of the richest gold deposits in the Apuseni Mountains (the so-called Golden Quadrangle of Romania). Itis currently considered the largest gold deposit in Europe. Up until a few decades ago, gold mines had a relatively predictable path, which began with exploration and ended with abandonment. This has since changed, once the impact of abusive past or current exploitation methods and technologies has been deemed unacceptable by the state and the public. With its millennia-old history of mining, Roșia Montană raises the intriguing question of what does the future hold for different actors in a situation that is clearly unsustainable, but which may be continued through environmental rehabilitation, or even a larger mine. We address the question for this particular mine by drawing on a worldwide database of similar cases contained in the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas). We consider three scenarios, namely: 1) continued degradation with no intervention; 2) approval of large-scale mining, due to international arbitration; 3) environmental rehabilitation. These capture the most plausible future scenarios of the Roșia Montană case and, by relating them to the relevant transnational environmental justice context, we aim at assessing their implications for different actors and also the extent to which they are illustrative for the fate of other mines worldwide. Mine closure and the rehabilitation of the environment, regardless how distant they may seem at the beginning of the prospection and extraction stage, are imminent in the mine life cycle and a mandatory step of the environmental management process. We conclude by suggesting under which governance regimes each scenario is likely to unfold and what implications can be drawn for public policy.     

我国软件外包承接城市效率评价与驱动因素研究

就 业问题、环境污染以及从业人员研发能力下降已经成为制约软件外包承接城市发展的瓶颈问 题。文章运用DEA方法构建考虑非期望产出和非合意变量的软件外包承接效率评价模型，重 点比较不同模型下我国软件外包承接城市效率的差异，并引入Tobit回归分析软件外包承接 城市效率的驱动因素。研究发现：我国软件外包承接城市的投入产出组合在逐步优化，且东 部沿海城市的效率值明显优于中西部城市，其中大连市的效率值始终为1，处于生产的前沿 面。另外，人才竞争力对软件外包承接城市效率有显著的正向影响，信息技术基础设施竞争力与承接效率的关系呈显著负相关。     

Stakeholder perceptions and governance challenges in urban protected area management: The case of the Las Piñas – Parañaque Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area,Philippines

The conservation and management of protected areas in urban settings has become increasingly challenging with dynamics over land use change in adjacent urban areas being highly relevant to, but at times conflicting with, the protected area. This study seeks to better understand the implications of land use change processes to urban protected area management through the case study of the Las Piñas – Parañaque Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area (LPPCHEA) in Metro Manila, Philippines. Factors and processes influencing land use change and protected area management and the impact of stakeholders’ perceptions on protected area were analyzed. The urban protected area in itself has limited influence on its surrounding urban areas, as land use change in these areas is shaped more by social, economic and policy/institutional factors occurring within the context of urban-regional development. The study also found that land use conflict is evident in an urban protected area due to the competing ecosystem services derived by various stakeholders. This discord is deepened by the lack of coordination between land use planning and protected area management. Integrating protected area management with land use planning through legally binding instruments, specific timeframes and clear internal procedures can help resolve land use conflict for an urban protected area at the strategic or policy level.     

Monitoring as a partially observable decision problem

Monitoring is an important and costly activity in resource management problems such as containing invasive species, protecting endangered species, preventing soil erosion, and regulating contracts for environmental services. Recent studies have viewed optimal monitoring as a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP), which provides a framework for sequential decision making under stochastic resource dynamics and uncertainty about the resource state. We present an overview of the POMDP framework and its applications to resource monitoring. We discuss the concept of the information content provided by monitoring systems and illustrate how information content affects optimal monitoring strategies. Finally, we demonstrate how the timing of monitoring in relation to resource treatment and transition can have substantial effects on optimal monitoring strategies.     

Corporate governance,environmental regulations,and technological change

This paper investigates the relationship between environmental regulations and innovation by focusing on the automobile industry in a cross-country setting. We provide empirical evidence that the presence of agency problems mitigates the negative effects of environmental regulations on overall R&D activity, which leads to full compensation when the degree of agency problems is sufficiently high. Guiding our empirical analysis, we provide a general model consistent with the structure of existing ownership data. Specifically, we model ownership structure as a combination of two extreme corporate governance types. On the one extreme there are profit maximizers, and on the other extreme there are managers who are only concerned with their private benefits. The model leads to a simple country level ownership indicator and shows that if an economy is dominated by firms with higher agency problems, then pollution tax might even increase overall R&D, while reducing pollution. According to our estimations, such an outcome is possible only for out-of-sample values of the ownership indicator, where the degree of agency problems is extremely high.     

The effects of haze pollution on stock performances: evidence from China

Haze pollution has become the most important environmental issue in China in recent years. Using the data of PM_2.5 concentration and stocks of listed companies located in Beijing between 2010 and 2014, this article investigates the effects of haze pollution on stock performances. Empirical results indicate that haze pollution has significant negative effects on stock returns and significant positive effects on stock volatilities, through the channel of investors’ mood. Furthermore, the effects of haze pollution on stock returns emerge gradually and the effects of haze pollution on stock volatilities weaken gradually over time during a trading day.     

Optimal combination of innovation and environmental policies under technology licensing

Under what conditions will a carbon tax encourage environmental innovation? Can a regulator design an optimal environmental policy to reduce emissions and to promote clean technologies? This paper studies optimal environmental policy in the situation where a monopoly innovator develops and licenses clean production technologies to downstream polluting firms. We find that (i) a higher emission tax will encourage innovation when the burden of the tax payment in the polluters' costs and/or the price-elasticity of the demand for polluting goods are small, (ii) the innovation-inducing effects of emission tax are inversely related to the emission-reduction (Pigouvian) effects of the tax, and (iii) the social optimum can be achieved by the mix of tax and subsidy. We also show that if the policy instrument is limited to the tax, the second-best tax rate would lie between the marginal damage and the first-best rate. By performing numerical simulations, we also demonstrate that the optimal mix of the emission tax and R&D subsidy can have “double dividend” benefits.     

Climatic Factors as Determinants of International Migration

We examine natural disasters and long‐run climatic factors as potential determinants of international migration, implementing a panel dataset of bilateral migration flows from 1960 to 2000. We find no direct effect of long‐run climatic factors on international migration across our entire sample. These results are robust when conditioning on origin‐country characteristics, when considering migrants returning home, and when accounting for the potential endogeneity of migrant networks. Rather, we find evidence of indirect effects of environmental factors operating through wages. We find that epidemics and miscellaneous incidents spur international migration, and there is strong evidence that natural disasters beget greater flows of migrants to urban environs.     

基于动态面板数据模型分析FDI的环境效应

外商直接投资在对中国经济增长起到积极推动作用的同时,我们也不可忽视其可能会对我国环境造成的影响。文章通过构建环境污染综合指数,并且以东中西部为三个横截面建立动态面板数据模型来分析外商直接投资对各个地区环境的影响。结果显示,外商直接投资和东部中部地区的环境污染指数之间有正相关关系,和西部地区的环境污染指数之间是一个负相关关系。