Environmental Economics
- LAST REVIEWED: 29 September 2015
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 September 2015
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199363445-0033
- LAST REVIEWED: 29 September 2015
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 September 2015
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199363445-0033
Introduction
Environmental economics uses the tools of economic analysis to address issues relating to the impacts of human activity on the natural environment, the ways in which those impacts affect human well-being, and the appropriate policy and regulatory responses to environmental problems. Such policy responses include targets (how much pollution is acceptable) and instruments (what means are available to achieve particular targets and their relative merits). Environmental economics emerged as a well-defined subdiscipline in the 1960s; in the 1970s and 1980s, most research considered local air and water pollution problems, with a key theme emerging that the use of economic incentive-based policy instruments had large potential efficiency gains compared with traditional (command-and-control) regulatory instruments. As the subject became more actively researched, other strands have become interwoven into environmental economics. First, recognition that sustainability of activity is as important as economic efficiency and that these two objectives may not always be mutually consistent. Second, system-level thinking showed that researchers cannot properly address environmental concerns without being aware of the material basis of economic activity and without considering the ecosystems within which particular configurations of resources are found—hence, the emergence of ecological economics and the linkage of natural resource economics with mainstream environmental economics. Early work in environmental economics was national or subnational in focus and heavily dominated by papers that addressed issues of particular concern to the more affluent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. This emphasis changed for several reasons. Global poverty reduction became more central to the international agenda, and governments became aware that dealing with poverty was a necessary condition for achieving sustainability goals. Globalization and greater economic interdependence of nations pointed to the need to bring international trade into the analysis of environmental problems. In addition, perhaps of most importance in terms of its effect on studies by environmental economists, it became evident that many of the most serious and least tractable environmental problems were international, with impacts spilling over national boundaries and thus requiring international policy coordination. In this vein, research has begun on solving acid rain pollution, ozone layer–depleting substances (both of which have been dealt with relative success), and global environmental problems such as biodiversity loss and climate change (the track record for both is far less impressive). One unifying feature throughout the whole discipline of environmental economics is the issue of valuation of non-marketed goods and services, including environmental amenities. A central precept within the discipline is that environmental problems arise because of the presence of externalities, particularly “public good” externalities. By definition, externalities are not priced. However, designing appropriate policy responses requires that shadow prices be imputed, and the huge literature on non-market valuation considers how these shadow prices can be estimated.
General Overviews
The references in this section provide overviews and introductions to the field of environmental economics.
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Article
- Acid Deposition
- Agricultural Land Abandonment
- Agrochemical Pollutants
- Agroforestry Systems
- Agroforestry: The North American Perspective
- Antarctica
- Anthropocene
- Applied Fluvial Ecohydraulic
- Arctic Environments
- Arid Environments
- Arsenic Contamination in South and Southeast Asia
- Beavers as Agents of Landscape Change
- Berry, Wendell
- Burroughs, John
- Bush Encroachment
- Carbon Dynamics
- Carbon Pricing and Emissions Trading
- Carson, Rachel
- Case Studies in Groundwater Contaminant Fate and Transport
- Citizen Science
- Climate Change and Conflict in Northern Africa
- Common Pool Resources
- Community Forest Management
- Contaminant Dispersal in the Environment
- Coral Reefs and Coral Bleaching
- Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia
- Deltas
- Desert Dust in the Atmosphere
- Determinism, Environmental
- Digital Earth
- Disturbance
- Ecohydrology
- Ecological Integrity
- Economic Valuation Methods for Non-market Goods or Service...
- Economics, Environmental
- Economics of International Environmental Agreements
- Economics of Water Management
- Effects of Land Use
- Endocrine Disruptors
- Endocrinology, Environmental
- Engineering, Environmental
- Environmental Assessment
- Environmental Flows
- Environmental Health
- Environmental Law
- Environmental Sociology
- Erosion
- Ethics, Animal
- Ethics, Environmental
- European Union and Environmental Policy, The
- Extreme Weather and Climate
- Fair Water Distribution: From Theory to Application
- Feedback Dynamics
- Fisheries, Economics of
- Footprints
- Forensics, Environmental
- Forest Transition
- Geodiversity and Geoconservation
- Geography
- Geology, Environmental
- Global Phosphorus Dynamics
- Groundwater
- Hazardous Waste
- Henry David Thoreau
- Historical Changes in European Rivers
- Historical Land Uses and Their Changes in the European Alp...
- Historical Range of Variability
- History, Environmental
- Human Impact on Historical Fluvial Sediment Dynamics in Eu...
- Humid Tropical Environments
- Hydraulic Fracturing
- India and the Environment
- Industrial Contamination, Case Studies in
- Institutions
- Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) for Climate Change
- International Land Grabbing
- Karst Caves
- Key Figures: North American Environmental Scientist Activi...
- Lakes: A Guide to the Scientific Literature
- Land Use, Land Cover and Land Management Change
- Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
- Large Wood in Rivers
- Legacy Effects
- Lidar in Environmental Science, Use of
- Management, Australia's Environment
- Mangroves
- Marine Mining
- Marine Protected Areas
- Mediterranean Environments
- Mountain Environments
- Muir, John
- Multiple Stable States and Regime Shifts
- Murray-Darling Basin Plan: Case Study in Market-Based Appr...
- Natural Fluvial Ecohydraulics
- Nitrogen Cycle, Human Manipulation of the Global
- Non-Renewable Resource Depletion and Use
- Olmsted, Frederick Law
- Payments for Environmental Services
- Pedology
- Periglacial Environments
- Permafrost
- Physics, Environmental
- Psychology, Environmental
- Remote Sensing
- Resilience
- Riparian Zone
- River Pollution
- Rivers
- Rivers and Their Cultural Values: Assessing Cultural Water...
- Rivers, Effects of Dams on
- Rivers, Restoration of Physical Integrity of
- Rulemaking
- Sea Level Rise
- Secondary Forests in Tropical Environments
- Security, Energy
- Security, Environmental
- Security, Water
- Sediment Budgets and Sediment Delivery Ratios in River Sys...
- Sediment Regime and River Morphodynamics
- Semiarid Environments
- Soil Salinization
- Soils as an Environmental System
- Spatial Statistics
- Stream Mitigation Banking
- Sustainable Finance
- Sustainable Forestry, Economics of
- Technological and Hybrid Disasters
- The Key Role of Energy in Economic Growth
- Thresholds and Tipping Points
- Treaties, Environmental
- Tropical Southeast Asia
- Use of GIS in Environmental Science
- Water Availability
- Water Quality in Freshwater Bodies
- Water Quality Metrics
- Water Resources and Climate Change
- Water, Virtual
- Wetlands
- White, Gilbert Fowler
- Wildfire as a Catalyst
- Zone, Critical