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Widespread agreement exists on the broad outlines of the concept of sustainable development for developing countries. This calls for a development model capable of meeting basic needs without depleting natural resources at a rate that robs future generations of their use. In this regard, citizen participation is also considered key to legitimise such policy choices. However, there is considerable disagreement over the substance and meaning of the major components of the concept and the relationship between them. This paper argues that positions in policy disputes over the sustainable development of the forest cluster in two distinct approaches: market-friendly initiatives and grassroots development. Since market economies prevail almost everywhere, the question that is posed concerns the conditions under which the grassroots development approach is included as a significant complement to market-friendly initiatives. This is a political question, requiring an examination of actors, interests and power resources. The paper thus applies a political economy framework to a paired comparison of Mexico, where grassroots development approaches (community forestry) had notable successes, and Chile, where market-friendly forest policy crowded out alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Sustainable natural resource management is at the core of the policy agenda, given the wide array of goods and services environmental resources generate, that significantly contribute to social welfare and productive capacity of modern economies. Likewise, there is a large policy interest in the monetization of the economic effects of environmental damages, to enable the design of response and mitigation strategies. This paper focuses on the valuation of the welfare losses from forest fires in the fire prone Mediterranean region applying the life-satisfaction approach. Detrimental effects on utility relate to morbidity, losses of marketed goods and impacts on forest goods and services. For our empirical investigation, we employ self-reported life satisfaction, income and other socio-economic information from the Eurobarometer Survey Series matched with data on the number and extent of forest fires at the regional level. To account for endogeneity, we instrument forest fire characteristics with the mean daily precipitation in the region during the fire season ( April to September). Our sample covers Portugal, Spain, Italy and the Mediterranean provinces of France, and spans from 1986-1993 and 2001-2003. We find that both forest fire incidence and forest fire extent have a significant negative effect on individual welfare. We estimate the monetary loss from an additional fire incident to be €0.20 and the loss from burning an additional 100ha of forest at €2.03 per household respectively. Nevertheless, the negative effect of forest fires on life satisfaction is significant only for the rural population. Results therefore provide useful insights on the detrimental effects of forest fires at the regional level for different segments of the population that should be accounted for in policy formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increase of global integration, the peri-urban area (PUA) of megacities in Asia has become a favourite destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). This paper uses the PUA of Shanghai as a case study to investigate the impact of global forces on the urban expansion of the city, and the link between urban growth and sustainable development in this mega-urban context. Shanghai has grown impressively during the past two decades in terms of economic and physical transformation. Much of this transformation has rested on the unbridled exploitation of land and other environmental resources in its peri-urban area. This is characterised by the designation of development zones and the concentration of manufacturing FDI, resulting in dispersed growth and environmental degradation. The disruption of the physical environment, combined with the concentration of the urban poor in these areas (in particular ‘temporary migrants’), has turned the PUA into a potential crisis point threatening the social and economic development of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]