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At the present time, a great attention is paid to the ecological innovation, which represents innovation characterization to any ecological change with a positive impact on consumers. Such innovations increase the comfort for consumers and concurrently they represent more effective, more economic, ecological, healthier and safer solutions. Ecological innovation represents any innovation aimed at significant and visible progress towards the goal of sustainable development. This is done by reducing the impact on the environment or achieving a more efficient and responsible use of natural resources, including energy and Zero waste. The aim this paper is evaluation to the perception of Zero waste in the context of ecological innovations in Slovakia. The research is carried out using the Kano model. The results point to the importance of addressing the issue of ZeroWaste, encouraging friends to buy in non-packaging stores and creating a stimulation of advertising to buy products in a non-packaging store. Other attributes of the given issue are perceived by Slovak respondents in the opposite way or have no influence on them. Therefore, it is important to provide sufficient information on this issue and to educate the population in order to increase their interest in this issue and to start behaving responsibly towards waste management.

Research background: Insufficient global cooperation in carbon pricing against global warming has the risk of global carbon emissions rise because of carbon leakage. The effect of a carbon tax on the present supply of fossil fuels is also valuable in regard to global carbon emissions. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to gain more insights into the effects of carbon leakage along with the green paradox on global carbon emissions by reviewing the relevant literature. Research methodology: We provide the problem linked to carbon leakage and the green paradox in the introduction. Then, the effects of carbon leakage and the green paradox on global carbon emissions are elaborated separately. Finally the mutual effects of carbon leakage and the green paradox are reviewed comprehensively. Results: It is seen that various factors like interest rates, fossil fuel extraction costs, the fossil fuel reserves to be discovered in the future and carbon tax incidence are equally important determinants in regard to global carbon emissions. Novelty: This study provides an insight into the mutual effects of carbon leakage and the green paradox on global carbon emissions by reviewing the primary literature in the field.

E-waste has grown exponentially around the world and is estimated to be growing at 3-5 % per annum. China faces a rapidly increasing amount of e-waste, both, from domestic generation and illegal imports. This paper examines the management of e-waste by formal and informal sectors in china, by means of descriptive and analytic approaches. The main results involve that China is the world's largest producer and importer of electrical and electronic devices, likewise China is the largest e-waste market. Furthermore, over 60% of E-waste produced in China is recycled informally. However, about 40% of e-waste was focused on the formal system. Finally, the major challenge for china in e-waste management is how to provide incentives for formal recyclers to reduce informal recycling activities.

Jedes Jahr findet hierzulande rechnerisch ungefähr auf jedem dritten Arbeitsplatz ein Personalwechsel statt. Der Fluktuationskoeffizient, der die Fluktuation auf dem Arbeitsmarkt beschreibt, ist im Zuge der Covid-19-Krise von 33,1 Prozent im Jahr 2019 auf 29,8 Prozent im Jahr 2020 merklich gesunken. Die Daten für das jeweils erste Halbjahr zeigen, dass das Ausmaß der Personalbewegungen auf dem deutschen Arbeitsmarkt auch im zweiten Corona-Jahr 2021 mit 14,5 Prozent deutlich hinter dem Wert des Jahres 2019 (15,9 Prozent) zurückgeblieben ist. Der Blick auf die gesamtwirtschaftliche Arbeitsmarktdynamik verbirgt allerdings deutliche Branchenunterschiede. Die Arbeitskräftefluktuation ist zum Beispiel in der Gastronomie und im Bereich der Sonstigen wirtschaftlichen Dienstleistungen hoch, im Verarbeitenden Gewerbe und im öffentlichen Sektor hingegen gering. Die empirische Analyse liefert keinen Hinweis darauf, dass der digitale und ökologische Wandel einen Erklärungsbeitrag für die unterschiedlich hohe Arbeitskräftefluktuation in den verschiedenen Branchenclustern leisten kann. Zwischen der Höhe des Fluktuationskoeffizienten und vier Indikatoren, die das Stadium der Transformation auf Branchenebene erfassen, ist kein systematischer Zusammenhang zu erkennen. Damit bleibt derzeit auch offen, ob sich die Dynamik auf dem Arbeitsmarkt beschleunigen könnte, wenn der digitale und ökologische Wandel voranschreitet. Every year, on average, approximately every third job in Germany sees a change of occupant. However, the fluctuation coefficient, which describes turnover in the labour market, has fallen noticeably in the wake of the Covid 19 crisis - from 33.1 per cent in 2019 to 29.8 per cent in 2020. Taking only the data for the first half of each year shows that, at 14.5 per cent for 2021 compared with 15.9 per cent in 2019, the extent of job changing in the German labour market remained significantly lower in the second year of crisis than before the virus struck. However, behind the figures for the national labour market lurk significant sectoral differences. For example, labour turnover is high in the hospitality and 'other business services' sectors, but low in manufacturing and the public sector. The present empirical analysis fails to turn up any evidence of digitalization or the ecological transition contributing to these differences in labour turnover in the various sectoral clusters. Indeed, there appears to be no systematic correlation between the level of the fluctuation coefficient and four indicators that capture the stage reached by the transformation in each branch of industry. Thus, it remains an open question whether the labour market will become more dynamic as digitalisation and moves to combat global warming continue to transform the economy.

The projection bias corresponds to the human tendency to project current preferences into the future as if present preferences will remain unchanged, omitting a range of external influences over the current preferences. We design a survey experiment to investigate the projection bias relevance on two environmentally friendly initiatives, namely solar panels and eco-friendly transport. We found that beliefs and behavioral intentions are subject to positive change when individuals are solicited a day when the weather is congruent with the proposed changes. We draw several policy and managerial implications for environmental issues.

This research investigated the performance of a dynamic portfolio that consists of sustainable/ethical stocks and gold. The main purpose of this study is to prove that the inclusion of gold in sustainable/ethical stocks portfolios could produce better performance. Therefore, the method used in this research, DCC-GARCH, was relaxing the basic assumptions in the theory of modern portfolio that is under the assumption of the normality of stock return and securities would have constant correlation. This research used data such as SRI-KEHATI Index (SKI) and Jakarta Islamic Index (JII) in Indonesia as a proxy for sustainable investments. Additionally, this research used gold from 2013 to 2019. This study is able to provide evidence regarding the ability of a dynamic portfolio to minimize the level of portfolio risk. However, this led a lower rate of return. Based on the OLS regression, gold is also proven as a weak safe haven for sustainable investment in Indonesia. Investors who believe in ethical investment may include gold in this time-varying approach when formulating the portfolio to reduce risk significantly. The inclusion of gold in portfolios could produce hedging effectiveness. Overall, this study supports some previous findings regarding the ability of gold as an instrument, which could reduce investment risk if involved in a portfolio.

Dans ce papier, nous proposons un modèle d'économie politique pour cerner lesenjeux liés à la mise en place de dispositifs institutionnels de protection des ressourcesnaturelles et sociales. Ces dispositifs émergent suite au vote. Pour analyser ce dernier, troisgroupes socio-économiques sont considérés: la bourgeoisie éduquées, les classes populaires etl élite financière. Les deux premiers se différencient sur deux niveaux: la demande pour laredistribution et la préférence verte. Le dernier groupe joue un rôle central. Nous étudions lesrésultats en termes de cadre institutionnel choisi par les acteurs, sous différentes hypothèsesconcernant le scrutin politique: majoritaire versus coalition. Les principaux résultats de notreanalyse sont qu'une coalition populaire verte peut émerger dont les choix redistributifs et vertsvont à l'encontre des préférences de l'élite financière. Le verdissement de cette dernières'ensuit avec comme conséquence possible l'isolement des classes populaires sur l'échiquierpolitique.

Vor einem Jahrzehnt wurde das Hauptgutachten des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats der Bundesregierung für Globale Umweltveränderungen (WBGU) veröffentlicht. Dieser Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme im Jahre 2011 hat national und international Impulse gesetzt und Orientierung gegeben. Der WBGU ging aufs Ganze: die Dringlichkeit eines auf nachhaltige Entwicklung zielenden Wandels sollte im Zusammenspiel von Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Natur gezeigt werden. Die zentrale Botschaft war ein „Gesellschaftsvertrag für eine Große Transformation“, der bis 2021 umgesetzt werden müsse. Wie ist der Bericht heute zu beurteilen? Wir werden die Positionen des WGBU referieren, seine Verdienste nennen und sie konstruktiv-kritisch kommentieren. Unser Vorgehen orientiert sich an fünf Themenschwerpunkten des Berichtes, nämlich: Globaler Gesellschaftsvertrag, Global Governance am Beispiel des Pariser Klimaabkommens, Akzeptanz der Beteiligten und Betroffenen, Dringlichkeit des wirtschaftlichen, politischen und gesellschaftlichen Handelns sowie die Idee einer Großen Transformation. In unserer Kritik entwickeln wir Vorschläge für ein konstruktives Weiterdenken dessen, was im WBGU-Bericht angelegt ist, aber nicht zu Ende gedacht wurde. Unsere Schwerpunkte liegen insbesondere auf dem Umgang mit Zeit und dem Begriff der Großen Transformation. Dabei werden wir auch auf die Bedeutung von technischem Forstschritt, Innovation und von Unwissen eingehen. Der Titel des Berichts setzt als Leitmotiv den Begriff der „Großen Transformation“. Dieser Begriff, den Karl Polanyi (1941/44) geprägt hat, soll im Sprachgebrauch des WBGUs die weitreichenden Veränderungen thematisieren, die ein gestaltender Staat unter Beteiligung der Weltbürgerschaft für eine Bewältigung der ökologischen Krise in den nächsten Jahrzehnten vorzunehmen hätte. In unserem Fazit argumentieren wir dagegen, dass die Idee einer einheitlich planbaren und umfassend realisierbaren Transformation der gegenwärtigen Problemlage unangemessen ist. Vielmehr lässt sich beobachten, dass unterschiedliche Akteure an unterschiedlichen Orten mit unterschiedlichen Geschwindigkeiten an einer Vielzahl sozial-ökologischer Transformationsprozesse mitwirken. Die Wirkmächtigkeit solcher Bewegungen, die oft ungeplant und spontan auftreten, nimmt bis in die Gegenwart deutlich zu. Daraus lässt sich Hoffnung schöpfen.

International audience; The projection bias corresponds to the human tendency to project current preferences into the future as if present tastes remained unchanged. We apply the projection bias to the environmental domainand design a surveyexperiment to investigate its relevance on two environmentally friendly initiatives, namelysolar panels and eco-friendly transport. We found that some attitudes and behavioral intentions aresubject to positive changewhen individuals are soliciteda day when the weatheris congruent with the proposed changes. We draw several policy and managerial implications for ecological issues.

Der nachhaltige Umgang mit natürlichen Ressourcen ist eine der wichtigsten Aufgaben der Menschheit. Die interdisziplinäre Online-Plattform MINE-Mapping the Interplay between Nature and Economy (www.nature-economy.de) will zu einem erfolgreichen Umgang mit dieser Herausforderungbeitragen. MINE versteht sich als Brücke zwischen den Sozial-und Wirtschaftswissenschaften und den Naturwissenschaften. Wichtige Bausteine dieser Brücke sind Überlegungen aus den Bereichen der politischen Philosophie und der Ethik. Für sozial-ökologischeTransformationsprozesse bietet MINE Grundlagen, die theoretisch umfassend und zugleich praktisch für Politik und Wirtschaft sind.Unsere Überlegungen zeigen, wie die Ideen von MINE entstanden sind, was die Besonderheit des Ansatzes ausmacht und was er zu leisten vermag. Auf diese Weise sollen sowohl interessierte Personen aus der Wissenschaft als auch ökologisch engagierte Bürger zu einer fruchtbaren Arbeit mit der Online-Plattform geführt werden. Nach der Einführung in Teil I werden in Teil II aus der Perspektive von Malte Faber, der in der Ich-Form spricht, Motive und Erfahrungen erzählt, die ihn dazu bewogen haben, ab1980 einen interdisziplinären Forschungsverbund aufzubauen, dessen Methoden und Erkenntnisse wegweisend für MINE wurden. Teil III beschäftigt sich mit der Bedeutung der Philosophie für MINE und geht auf einige Leitideen und Grundbausteine des Ansatzes von MINE aus philosophischer Sicht ein. In Teil IV werden fünf Konzepte von MINE - drei Aspekten der Zeit, Unwissen, Kuppelproduktion, politische Verantwortung, Urteilskraft - vorgestellt, um den Ansatz von MINE an einem konkreten Transformationsproblem, nämlich der Entwicklung des Flusses Emscher, zu illustrieren. Diese war um 1900 der zentrale Abwasserkanal des Ruhrgebiets und wurde nach mehreren Jahrzehnten im Jahr 2020 vollständig renaturiert. In Teil V veranschaulicht Malte Faber, wiederum in der Ich-Perspektive, die Ausrichtung von MINE durch drei Botschaften zur Transformation. In einem Addendum, Teil VI, kommentieren wir kritisch die Fünf-vor-Zwölf-Rhetorik, die vor allem in Diskursen des Klimaschutzes verbreitet ist. The sustainable management of natural resources is one of the most important tasks humanityfaces. The interdisciplinary online platform MINE-Mapping the Interplay between Nature and Economy (www.nature-economy.de) aims to contribute to this. MINE can be understoodas a bridge between socialsciences, economicsand the natural sciences. Important building blocks of this bridge are considerations from the fields of political philosophy and ethics. For socio-ecological transformation processes, MINE offers foundations that are theoretically comprehensive and at the same time practical for politics and economics.Our considerations show how the ideas of MINE came into being, what constitutes the peculiarity of its approach and what it is capable of achieving. In this way, interested persons from the scientific community as well as ecologically engaged citizens should be led towards a fruitful work with the online platform. After the introduction in Part I, in Part II, from the perspective of Malte Faber, who speaks in first-person, motives and experiences are recounted that have led him to found an interdisciplinary research cooperation since 1980. Themethods and insight generated in this cooperation became groundbreaking for MINE. Part III deals with the importance of philosophical reasoningfor MINE and addresses some guiding ideas and basic building blocks of MINE's approach from a philosophical perspective. In Part IV, five concepts of MINE -three aspects of time, ignorance, joint production, political responsibility and, power of judgment -are introduced to illustrate the MINE-approach by a concrete transformation problem, namely the river Emscher; which was the central sewer of the Ruhr area around 1900 and was completely renaturalized after several decades in 2020. In Part V, Malte Faber illustrates, again in the first-person perspective, the orientation of MINE through three messages on transformation. In an addendum, Part VI, we critically comment on the five-before-twelve rhetoric that is widespread especially in discourses of climate protection.

A decade ago, the German Advisory Council to the Federal Government on Global Environmental Change (Wissenschaftlichen Beirats der Bundesregierung für Globale Umweltveränderungen - WBGU) published its main report. This attempt to take stock in 2011 made an impact and provided orientation on both a national and international scale. The WBGU report did not hold back: It aimed to show the urgent need for change in terms of sustainable development through the interplay of politics, economy, society and nature. The central message was: We need a "social contract for a Great Transformation", and it must be implemented by 2021. How is the report to be assessed today? We will summarise the positions of the WGBU report, cite its merits, and comment on them critically and constructively. Our approach examines the five main themes of the report: the global social contract; global governance using the example of the Paris Climate Agreement; acceptance by those involved and affected; the urgency of economic, political and social action; and the concept of the Great Transformation. In our critique, we suggest ways to constructively elaborate on the ideas laid out in the WBGU report, ideas that were not thought through to the end. Our focus lies particularly on how to deal with time and the concept of the Great Transformation. In doing so, we will also address the significance of technical advances, innovation and our own ignorance. The title of the report uses the term "Great Transformation" which acts as a leitmotif throughout. Put forth by Karl Polanyi (1941/44), this term, as used in the WBGU's parlance, is intended to address the far-reaching changes that a regulatory state would have to undertake, along with the participation of the global citizenry, in order to overcome the ecological crisis of the coming decades. In our conclusion, we argue that the idea of a uniformly planned and comprehensively attainable transformation of the current situation is inadequate. Instead, we have observed that different actors in different places have worked at different speeds not on a Great Transformation but on a multitude of social-ecological transformation processes. The effectiveness of such movements - which often emerge spontaneously - has grown to the present day. This gives us hope.

This policy report stakes a stance on industrial policy in the European Union in the light of the revived interest in the subject and the most pressing challenges ahead. In the current global context these challenges are: (i) to keep pace at the technology frontier with the technologically most advanced economies; (ii) to meet the challenge of fast catching-up emerging economies; (iii) to contribute to the convergence and cohesion processes within the EU; and (iv) to deal with climate change and environmental sustainability issues more generally. A quantitative exercise that makes use of the EU's budget data, including the structural funds, and member states state aid expenditures is used to identify the EU's current industrial policy priorities. The results are the basis for an assessment of the extent to which the key challenges are addressed at the supranational level and which aspects are primarily dealt with by national governments.

Voluntary approaches to environmental policy can contribute to stemming environmental degradation in developing countries with weak institutions. We evaluate the role of a behavioral anomaly, limited attention paid by owners or managers, in explaining the voluntary adoption of environmental certification by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the food and beverage industry in Vietnam. We find that firms where owners or managers were inattentive were 30 percentage points less likely to receive environmental certification. Moreover, this effect is larger for firms that were previously inspected for technical violations, and that exported or bribed, and it is weaker for household enterprises.

Many environmental problems represent social dilemma situations where individually rational behaviour leads to collectively suboptimal outcomes. Communication has been found to alleviate the dilemma and stimulate cooperation in these situations. Yet, the knowledge of what type of information needs to be shared to ensure the beneficial effect is still incomplete. Previous research relies on ex post methods, i.e. after conducting an experiment researchers analyse what information was shared during the communication phase. By nature, this ex post categorization is endogenous. In this study, we aim to identify the elements of effective communication ex ante and evaluate their impact in a more controlled way. Based on the findings of previous studies, we identify four cooperation-enhancing elements of communication: (i) problem awareness, (ii) identification of strategies, (iii) agreement, and (iv) ratification. In a laboratory experiment with 560 participants, we implement interventions representing these components and contrast the resulting levels of cooperation with the outcomes under free (unstructured) or no communication. We find that the intervention facilitating agreement on a common strategy (combination of (ii) and (iii)) is particularly powerful in boosting cooperation. And if this is combined with interventions promoting problem awareness and ratification, similar cooperation levels as in settings with free-form communication can be reached. Our results are relevant not only from an analytical perspective, but also provide insights for effectively structuring communication in participatory processes aimed at improving environmental outcomes.

Aim: awareness of the inherent unsustainability of past economic development, the magnitude and multidimensionality of the resulting environmental problems and the urgency of a paradigm shift in politics and economics. Design / Research methods: reflection on Matthias Glaubrecht´s book “Das Ende der Evolution” (The End of Evolution). Additionally Yuval Harari´s book “Sapiens” and some online sources were used. Conclusions / findings: An evolutionary developed cognitive superiority has made Homo sapiens not only to the most successful but also the most destructive species ever, which makes a drastic shift towards sustainable development is overdue in the 21st century. Originality / value of the article: highlighting the slow and merciless mechanisms of evolution and its big cycles, raising more awareness of the vulnerability of mankind and the necessity for a paradigm shift. Implications of the research (if applicable): urgency of sustainable development in politics, economics and research. Keywords: sustainable development, evolution, environmental economics, politics JEL: B52, Q01, Q59

The objective of the RTEPMS (Real-Time Environmental Parameters Monitoring System) project is to design and implement a general-purpose environmental parameter monitoring system. The main focus is on measuring water quality parameters is several use cases. To achieve this goal, monitoring will be based on widely available, relatively cheap Internet of Things (IoT) based hardware. One of the most important use cases, drinking water quality monitoring, is piloted in cooperation with Regional Waterworks for the Montenegrin Cost (RWMC). RWMC is the largest drinking water supply company in Montenegro. Using the 135 km of pipelines it delivers drinking water of the highest quality to the Montenegrin coast. Beside drinking water monitoring use case, other use cases will be implemented and executed, such as water quality monitoring for fish farming as well as the pool (swimming) water quality monitoring. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

We construct the world’s centers of gravity for human population, GDP and CO2 emissions by taking the best out of five recognized data sources covering the last two centuries. On the basis of a novel distorsion-free representation of these centers of gravity, we find a radical Western shift of GDP and CO2 emissions centers in the 19th century, in sharp contrast with the stability of the demographic center of gravity. Both GDP and emissions trends are reversed in the first half of the 20th century, after World War I for CO2 emissions, after World War II for GDP. Since then, both centers are moving eastward at an accelerating speed. These patterns are perfectly consistent with the lead of Western countries starting the industrial revolution, the gradual replacement of coal by oil and gas as alternative sources of energy, and the progressive catch up of Asian countries in the recent past.

Water use is one of the most critical sustainability issues of the mining sector. It is important in each stage of the mining life cycle. The water use of the mine can introduce significant ecological changes. It can compete with the water use of households living in the community and other economic activities in the area. We look at the water use of two large scale mining companies and communities in Didipio, Nueva Viscaya and Taganito, Surigao del Norte. We compare water extraction with various factors such as mineral production, land use, rehabilitation, mine development, and environmental concerns. Based on our initial findings, the rate of water extraction of the two mines is significantly correlated with the level of mine development, rehabilitation and pollution control. In both cases, household consumption plays a minimal role in driving the demand for water.

This is the first study that uses a direct measure of skyglow, an important aspect of light pollution, to examine its impact on infant health at birth. We find evidence of reduced birth weight, shortened gestational length and even preterm births. Specifically, increased nighttime brightness, characterized by being able to see only one-third to one-fourth of the stars that are visible in the absence of artificial light, is associated with an increase in the likelihood of a preterm birth by as much as 12.8 percent, or an increase of approximately 45,000 preterm births nationwide annually. Our findings add to the literature on the impact of in utero and early-life exposure to pollution, which thus far has focused primarily on air pollution. The unique feature of our identification strategy to determine a causal effect is the application of Walker's Law in physics, which provides a scientific basis to estimate skyglow. We use estimated skyglow as an instrumental variable to address the endogeneity problem associated with the skyglow variable. In addition, our study shows that increased skyglow is associated with less sleep, indicating a likely biological mechanism that links sleep deprivation to light-pollution induced circadian disruption. This result, combined with the literature on the adverse effects of sleep disorders, completes the causal chain underlying our finding on the adverse health impact of skyglow. Our study has important policy implications for current installation of LED streetlights in many U.S. municipalities, highlighting the necessity of minimizing skyglow contributed by streetlights.

Worldwide legislation requires the presence of air filtration systems with detectors to monitor and control the release of radionuclides into the air in nuclear medicine centers. Dealing with radionuclides includes trapping the vapors and storing it for decay. However, these methods can involve considerable expense in infrastructure, manpower and monitoring. We present and describe a new method for the treatment of gaseous waste that is economically feasible. It focuses on diverting the radionuclides into the cyclotron bunker where they are allowed to decay by electron emission. After decaying, the radionuclides can be discharged to the environment through the normal ventilation system. This method complies with legislation and has the advantage of using the already existing resources in the radiopharmaceutical production facility.

Green Lean (Lean and Green) approach is based on the lean method. As the literature and case studies show the Japanese quality improvement tools can be used in environmental management as well as in quality management. Companies that focus on sustainability may use those tools and methods to improve its processes and eliminate green waste at the same time. The research concentrates on the examples of the companies that started to implement the Green Lean (Lean and Green). The purpose of the article is to present how the application of Green Lean (Lean and Green) approach improves the environmental performance of the company and what are the benefits. Critical review of the literature, observation, interviews in selected researched companies. By identifying and eliminating the green waste i.a. in energy, materials, garbage, water, emissions, biodiversity, transportation researched companies are minimizing its negative impact on environment. As the research shows the employees should be motivated and involved in the process so does the management to make it work. Green Lean (Lean and Green) approach enables the companies to perform in profitable and sustainable way at the same time.

We provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of environmental governance and policy in Kazakhstan as the country is assumed to have a leading role in Central Asia in terms of green growth and sustainable development. The overview of the environmental and institutional framework in the country reveals that the significant steps towards an improvement of environmental governance have been undertaken.

On the temperature derivative market, modeling temperature volatility is an important issue for pricing and hedging. To apply the pricing tools of financial mathematics, one needs to isolate a Gaussian risk factor. A conventional model for temperature dynamics is a stochastic model with seasonality and intertemporal autocorrelation. Empirical work based on seasonality and autocorrelation correction reveals that the obtained residuals are heteroscedastic with a periodic pattern. The object of this research is to estimate this heteroscedastic function so that, after scale normalization, a pure standardized Gaussian variable appears. Earlier works investigated temperature risk in different locations and showed that neither parametric component functions nor a local linear smoother with constant smoothing parameter are flexible enough to generally describe the variance process well. Therefore, we consider a local adaptive modeling approach to find, at each time point, an optimal smoothing parameter to locally estimate the seasonality and volatility. Our approach provides a more flexible and accurate fitting procedure for localized temperature risk by achieving nearly normal risk factors. We also employ our model to forecast the temperaturein different cities and compare it to a model developed in 2005 by Campbell and Diebold. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Consider a situation in which countries anticipate an international environmental agreement (IEA) to be in effect sometime in the future. What is the impact of the future IEA on current emissions after its announcement? We show that the answer to this question is ambiguous. We examine four types of IEAs that aim to reduce pollution stock in the environment. IEA type 1 sets a level of emissions, IEA type 2 and IEA type 3 set a percentage and a uniform cut vis-à-vis the business-as-usual policy respectively. IEA type 4 sets the policy that maximizes future joint benefits of the signatories. We show that all of these agreements reach their goal in the long run, but the intended benefits of these IEAs can potentially be offset by the anticipatory non-cooperative response of the signatories, leading to an environmental degradation in the short run. Which IEA is preferable depends on the targeted level emissions during the phase of cooperation. When this target is above a certain threshold, welfare under IEA type 1 is larger than under IEA type 2 which is larger than under IEA type 3. Moreover, the highest level of welfare that can be attained under IEA type 1 is above the highest level of welfare achieved by any one of the other three IEAs.

This paper documents that seasonal temperatures have significant and systematic effects on the U.S. economy, both at the aggregate level and across a wide crosssection of economic sectors. This effect is particularly strong for the summer: an increase of 1êF in the average summer temperature is associated with a reduction in the annual growth rate of state-level output of 0:15 to 0:25 percentage points. When these estimates are combined with projected increases in seasonal temperatures it is found that a reduction of U.S. economic growth by up to one third could occur over the next century.

The presented Sucha Beskidzka district situated in the małopolskie voivodeship (province) is an example of many different projects implemented for the benefit of inhabitants: installation of solar collectors, thermal modernization of public facilities, construction of modern waste screening plant as well as initiatives for natural values protection and promoting 'small homeland'. The aim of this paper is to present how the sustainable development goals can be achieved at local level bringing ecological, economic and social effects. A financial and economic analysis and environmental effects of completed projects lead to conclusions the activities implemented by the district undoubtedly improved the quality of life in the local community. Reducing emissions of harmful substances into the air fosters both population health and preservation of valuable natural areas in the district such as the Natura 2000 area covering the Babia Góra National Park. The use of renewable energy sources brings not only reduced heating costs but also lowered energy consumption. These activities had also a social dimension. The implementation of the programs undoubtedly increased ecological awareness among local community - the need to take care of the nearesr environment and the sense of regional identity among citizens.

Treball final de Grau en Economia. Codi: EC1049. Curs acadèmic 2014-2015 In the context of globalisation, with environmental degradation, it becomes necessary to rethink economic development paths and economic development models. The Industrial Ecology emerges as an opportunity for change to an eco-efficient and sustainable economy. It provides environmental, social and economic benefits. Under this premise the present work tries to explain the importance of Industrial Ecology and propose its implementation in an industrial park in Valencia. We analyse some companies and their possible interrelations, by creating synergies between them. A project which involves five companies is proposed and some synergies are identified. Firstly, this work presents us with a description of all of these companies and their flow diagrams and also the possible synergies between them. We then expand upon this until finally we achieve a diagram of synergies within that particular industrial park.

We construct the world's centers of gravity for human population, GDP and CO2 emissions by taking the best out of five recognized data sources covering the last two centuries. We also propose a more appropriate two-map representation of the location of the center of gravity, which abstracts from the usual distortions affecting the projection of a point within a three-dimensional sphere on a two-dimensional map. This allows for a more accurate interpretation of the underlying trends. We find a radical Western shift of GDP and CO2 emissions centers during the 19th century, in sharp contrast with the stability of the demographic center of gravity. Both GDP and emissions trends are reversed in the first half of the 20th century, after World War I for CO2 emissions, and after World War II for GDP. Since then, both centers are moving eastward at an accelerating speed. These patterns are consistent with the initial lead of Western countries starting the industrial revolution and the adoption of fossil fuels as its main energy source, the impact of world con flicts, the gradual replacement of coal by oil and gas, and the progressive catch up of Asian countries, leading to a convergence in terms of both GDP and CO2 emissions per capita in the recent past.

Some recent papers by Dell et al. (2009) and Dell et al. (2012) (DJO) relating weather and economic outcomes, have delivered meaningful messages with clear implications to the effects of a changing climate. In a nutshell, the authors claim that a 1êC increase in global average temperatures would harm both the level and growth capacities of relatively poor countries, leaving rich countries basically unaffected. In this study, we make use of a detailed weather and economic dataset covering the main regions of the five largest economies in the Euro area in an attempt to refute the previous affirmation. In particular, we find in our sample that global warming affects, although in a modest manner, all regions within well-developed countries in the long-term (level effect). As in DJO, the level effect in poor regions is exacerbated. The latter regions also suffer from a slight negative short-term effect (growth effect). We claim also that the larger short-time response of these regions to a climate shock is partially adapted in the long-run.

Climate change related risks impact and challenge the private sector in many different ways. This also applies to risk drivers like a companies' reputation and a changing consumer behavior. Since significant risk drivers for companies differ just as much as companies themselves, a sector specific guideline to evaluate possible climate change related risk drivers is indispensable. Further, a sector specific analysis on these risk drivers can foster cross sectoral cooperation, innovation and learning processes with regard to climate change related risks.

Understanding the replacement of the nutrients removed by harvests helps us understand the influence of humans on fertility. In this paper we compare two previous studies on the nutrient balance of the cropland area in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, which run circa 1860 and 1920. Although in this region livestock densities per cropland area were insufficient to balance the extraction of three macronutrients—N, P and K—, a diverse range of fertilising sources managed to reach equilibrium at regional level. The vineyard played a key role, not because of the great area occupied, but by its relatively low nutrient requirements. Albeit due to the availability of historical sources the scale of analysis differs, the comparison of the two cases shows two different steps of the Socio-Ecological Transition of agricultural metabolism. Finally, the results take us to consider the relationship between fertility and inequality in the highly polarized Catalan rural world at the late nineteenth century. Entender la reposición de nutrientes extraídos por las cosechas nos ayuda a entender la influencia de los seres humanos sobre la fertilidad. En este trabajo comparamos dos estudios anteriores sobre el balance de nutrientes de la superficie agraria del noreste peninsular, que transcurren alrededor de 1860 y de 1920. Pese a que en esta zona las densidades ganaderas por superficie agraria eran insuficientes para equilibrar la extracción de tres macronutrientes— N, P y K—, todo un abanico de estrategias de fertilización distintas conseguía llegar al equilibrio a nivel regional. El viñedo jugaba un papel clave, no sólo por la gran extensión que ocupaba, sino por sus relativamente bajas necesidades de nutrientes. Aunque, debido a la disponibilidad de fuentes históricas, la escala de análisis no puede ser la misma, la comparación de ambos casos muestra dos momentos distintos de la Transición Socioecológica del metabolismo agrario. Los resultados de un caso y otro nos llevarán a plantearnos la relación entre la fertilidad y la desigualdad en un mundo rural ya muy polarizado de finales del siglo diecinueve.

Climate change is happening, projected to continue and poses serious challenges also for cities' development. Extreme weather events resulting in hazards such as heat waves, floods and droughts are expected to happen more frequently in many parts of Europe. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts global temperatures to rise an additional 2-4˚C by the end of this century and graduation of weather extremes. While urban areas will generally experience the same exposures to climate change as surrounding regions, the urban setting can alter these local impacts. The replacement of natural vegetation with artificial surfaces and buildings creates unique microclimates altering temperature, moisture, wind direction and rainfall patterns. Moreover cities forms difficult dynamic systems with high density of people, hub of services and infrastructure so the climate change impacts have and will have potentially serious consequences for human health, livelihoods, and assets and ultimately influence the development of the entire city and its surroundings. However, many city managements are still inactive in this field. It is caused mainly by lack of information, low awareness and knowledge and absence of positive good examples. On the other hand an increasing number of cities around the world have begun to plan for climate change by developing stand-alone climate plans or incorporating climate considerations into existing plans, policies, and projects to become more resilient towards existing and future climate impacts, thereby limiting their magnitude and severity. City of Kosice, Slovakia namely, its largest city district West in cooperation with the research institution Carpathian Development Institute had implemented (as one of the first in Slovakia) the process of climate change adaptation in order to be better prepared and adjust proactively for the heat waves as the critical climate change impact on the city borough residents. The adaptation strategy is built on the principle "low cost quick win" based on assumption that increasing resilience requires not only robust decision making and big investments, but also a strong web of institutional and social relationships that can provide a safety net for vulnerable populations. Through both formal planning activities and concrete measures preparations, city is building their capacity to adapt effectively to existing and future climate impacts, while also experimenting and innovating in policy making and planning. The paper highlights key lessons learned from planning and implementing climate adaptation process as a part of innovative and integrated city development policy.

Electricity load forecasts are an integral part of many decision-making processes in the electricity market. However, most literature on electricity load forecasting concentrates on deterministic forecasts, neglecting possibly important information about uncertainty. A more complete picture of future demand can be obtained by using distributional forecasts, allowing for a more efficient decision-making. A predictive density can be fully characterized by tail measures such as quantiles and expectiles. Furthermore, interest often lies in the accurate estimation of tail events rather than in the mean or median. We propose a new methodology to obtain probabilistic forecasts of electricity load, that is based on functional data analysis of generalized quantile curves. The core of the methodology is dimension reduction based on functional principal components of tail curves with dependence structure. The approach has several advantages, such as flexible inclusion of explanatory variables including meteorological forecasts and no distributional assumptions. The methodology is applied to load data from a transmission system operator (TSO) and a balancing unit in Germany. Our forecast method is evaluated against other models including the TSO forecast model. It outperforms them in terms of mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and achieves a MAPE of 2:7% for the TSO.

The powerful typhoon Haiyan that swept across the Philippines is one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall, cut a path of destruction through several central islands, causing scores of people dead. The disaster's full impact is still revealing as the entire country has been caught in a state of shock and desperation. The devastation is really horrific with human tragedy. Responding to the disaster of such magnitude calls for both national and international hands to come forward for the affected people.

Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie koncepcji Ekologicznej Społecznej Odpowiedzialności Biznesu, a także identyfikacja podstawowych korzyści i barier rozwoju idei ECSR w strategiach polskich firm, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem przedsiębiorstw w województwie śląskim. Do głównych przeszkód w prowadzeniu przedsięwzięć na rzecz ekologii oraz oddziałujących społecznie należy przede wszystkim brak świadomości na temat korzyści płynących z CSR i narzędzi, które można stosować wśród pracowników wszystkich szczebli wewnątrz firm. Ponadto, jak wynika z przeprowadzonych badań, głównymi barierami wdrażania proekologicznych strategii i działań w przedsiębiorstwach województwa śląskiego są kapitałochłonność nakładów inwestycyjnych, niska świadomość ekologiczna. To także brak finansowego wsparcia instytucjonalnego, jak również uwarunkowania legislacyjne oraz niewystępowanie wsparcia instytucjonalnego władz regionalnych. Jednakże koncepcja ekologicznej i społecznej odpowiedzialności konsekwentnie realizowana przez przedsiębiorstwa może przyczynić się do poprawy konkurencyjności i budowania trwałej przewagi nad konkurentami. The purpose of this article is to present the idea of environmental corporate social responsibility and the identification of the key benefits and barriers to the development of ideas ECSR in the strategies of Polish companies with a particular emphasis on companies in Silesian Voivodeship. The main obstacles to running a environmentally and socially responsible business are: ignorance of benefits resulting from CSR and lack of knowledge about how to promote CSR among employees of all levels. Moreover, as a result of a surveys presented, the main barriers to the implementation of environmental strategies and actions in the Silesian province enterprises are capital-intensive investment; low awareness; financial lack of institutional support; legislative conditions and the lack of institutional support for the regional government. However, the idea of ecological and social responsibility consistently implemented by the company can contribute to improving the competitiveness and build a sustainable advantage over business competitors.

We analyze a consistent two-factor model for pricing temperature derivatives that incorporates the forward looking information available in the market by specifying a model for the dynamics of the complete meteorological forecast curve. The two-factor model is a generalization of the Nelson-Siegel curve model by allowing factors with mean-reversion to a stochastic mean for structural changes and seasonality for periodic patterns. Based on the outcomes of a statistical analysis of forecast data we conclude that the two-factor model captures well the stylized features of temperature forecast curves. In particular, a functional principal component analysis reveals that the model re ects reasonably well the dynamical structure of forecast curves by decomposing their shapes into a tilting and a bending factor. We continue by developing an estimation procedure for the model, before we derive explicit prices for temperature derivatives and calibrate the market price of risk (MPR) from temperature futures derivatives (CAT, HDD, CDD) traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). The factor model shows that the behavior of the implied MPR for futures traded in and out of the measurement period is more stable than other estimates obtained in the literature. This con rms that at least parts of the irregularity of the MPR is not due to irregular risk perception but rather due to information misspecification. Similar to temperature derivatives, this approach can be used for pricing other non-tradable assets.

We analyse the short-term spot price of European Union Allowances (EUAs), which is of particular importance in the transition of energy markets and for the development of new risk management strategies. Due to the characteristics of the price process, such as volatility persistence, breaks in the volatility process and heavy-tailed distributions, we investigate the use of Markov switching GARCH (MS-GARCH) models on daily spot market data from the second trading period of the EU ETS. Emphasis is given to short-term forecasting of prices and volatility. We find that MS-GARCH models distinguish well between two states and that the volatility processes in the states are clearly different. This finding can be explained by the EU ETS design. Our results support the use of MS-GARCH models for risk management, especially because their forecasting ability is better than other Markov switching or simple GARCH models.

Results of many atmospheric science applications are processed graphically using colors to encode certain parts of the information. Colors should (1) allow humans to process more information, (2) guide the viewer to the most important information, (3) represent the data appropriately without misleading distortion, and (4) be appealing. The second requirement necessitates tailoring the visualization and the use of color to the viewer for whom the graphics is intended. A standard way of deriving color palettes is via transitions trough a certain color space. Most of the common software packages still provide palettes derived in the RGB color model or "simple" transformations thereof as default. Confounding perceptual properties such as hue and brightness make RGB-based palettes more prone to misinterpretation. Additionally, they are often highly saturated, which makes looking at them for a longer period strenuous. Switching to a color model corresponding to the perceptual dimensions of human color vision avoids these problems. We show several practically relevant examples using such a model, the HCL color model, to explain how it works and what its advantages are. Moreover, the paper contains several tips on how to easily integrate this knowledge into software commonly used by the community, which should help readers to switch over to the new concept. The switch will result in a greatly improved quality and readability of visualized atmospheric science data for research, teaching, and communication of results to society.

In this paper we investigate price and volatility risk originating in linkages between energy and agricultural commodity prices in Germany and study their dynamics over time. We propose an econometric approach to quantify the volatility and correlation risk structure, which has a large impact for investment and hedging strategies of market participants as well as for policy makers. Volatilities and their short and long run linkages (spillovers) are analyzed using a dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model as well as a multivariate multiplicative volatility model. Our approach provides a flexible and accurate fitting procedure for volatility and correlation risk.

Many business people such as farmers and financial investors are affected by indirect losses caused by scarce or abundant rainfall. Because of the high potential of insuring rainfall risk, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) began trading rainfall derivatives in 2011. Compared to temperature derivatives, however, pricing rainfall derivatives is more difficult. In this article, we propose to model rainfall indices via a flexible type of distribution, namely the normal-inverse Gaussian distribution, which captures asymmetries and heavy-tail behaviour. The prices of rainfall futures are computed by employing the Esscher transform, a wellknown tool in actuarial science. This approach is flexible enough to price any rainfall contract and to adjust theoretical prices to market prices by using the calibrated market price of risk. This empirical analysis is conducted with U.S. precipitation data and CME futures data providing first results on the market price of risk for rainfall derivatives.

The "environment" factor has become increasingly important in business management. The relationship between the environmental behavior of the company and its economic performance has been one of the recurring themes of research, especially in the last two decades. However, many gaps still exist in this field of study, such as the lack of a theoretical framework and a methodology that allow reliable research in order to empirically contrast and compare the results of the different studies. Thus, we found that the empirical evidence on this relationship sometimes presents contradictory results. Therefore, this work has two objectives. On the one hand, we review the existing literature in order to identify and systematize the type of studies, the analysis techniques, the key factors of such relationship, the shortcomings and limitations of these studies, etc. trying to throw some light on the sign of the target relation. On the other hand, we look for fostering critical reflection, and we make some suggestions for future research.

Recently the topic of global warming has become very popular. The literature has concentrated its attention on the evidence of such effect, either by detecting regime shifts or change points in time series. The majority of these methods are designed to find shifts in mean, but only few can do this for the variance. In this paper we attempt to investigate the statistical evidence of global warming by identifying shifts in seasonal mean of daily average temperatures over time and in seasonal variance of temperature residuals. We present a time series approach for modelling temperature dynamics. A seasonal mean Lasso-type technique based with a multiplicative structure of Fourier and GARCH terms in volatility is proposed. The model describes well the stylised facts of temperature: seasonality, intertemporal correlations and the heteroscedastic behaviour of residuals. The application to European temperature data indicates that the multiplicative model for the seasonal variance performs better in terms of out of sample forecast than other models proposed in the literature for modelling temperature dynamics. We study the dynamics of the seasonal variance by implementing quantile and expectile functions with confidence corridor to detrended and deseasonalized residuals. We show that shifts in seasonal mean and variance vary from location to location, indicating that all sources of trends other than mean and variance would rise trends over spatial scales. The local effects of temperature risk support the existence of global warming.

Forecasting based pricing of Weather Derivatives (WDs) is a new approach in valuation of contingent claims on nontradable underlyings. Standard techniques are based on historical weather data. Forward-looking information such as meteorological forecasts or the implied market price of risk (MPR) are often not incorporated. We adopt a risk neutral approach (for each location) that allows the incorporation of meteorological forecasts in the framework of WD pricing. We study weather Risk Premiums (RPs) implied from either the information MPR gain or the meteorological forecasts. The size of RPs is interesting for investors and issuers of weather contracts to take advantages of geographic diversification, hedging effects and price determinations. By conducting an empirical analysis to London and Rome WD data traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), we find out that either incorporating the MPR or the forecast outperforms the standard pricing techniques.

We show that adaptive measures undertaken by countries in the face of climate change, apart from directly reducing the damage caused by climate change, may also indirectly mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the stable size of international agreements on emission reductions. Moreover, we show that the more effective the adaptive measure in terms of reducing the marginal damage from emissions, the larger the stable size of the international environmental agreement. In addition, we show that larger coalitions, in the presence of adaptation, may lead to lower global emission levels and higher welfare.

In the next years several power plants throughout Europe have to be replaced and the questions is whether to build coal fired power plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS). In a study for the city of Kiel in northern Germany only a 800 MW coal power plant reaches a required minimum rentability. We use the study for an additional economic and environmental evaluation of a coal plant with CCS. We find that integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plants with CCS have in two out of three carbon and energy price scenarios the largest rentability. Pulverized coal (PC) plants with CCS can only compete with other options under very favourable assumptions. Life-cycle emissions from CCS are less than 70% of a coal plant compared to at least more than 80% when only considering direct emissions from plants. Still, life-cycle emissions are lower than in any other assessed option.

Weather derivatives (WD) are different from most financial derivatives because the underlying weather cannot be traded and therefore cannot be replicated by other financial instruments. The market price of risk (MPR) is an important parameter of the associated equivalent martingale measures used to price and hedge weather futures/options in the market. The majority of papers so far have priced non-tradable assets assuming zero MPR, but this assumption underestimates WD prices. We study the MPR structure as a time dependent object with concentration on emerging markets in Asia. We find that Asian Temperatures (Tokyo, Osaka, Beijing, Teipei) are normal in the sense that the driving stochastics are close to a Wiener Process. The regression residuals of the temperature show a clear seasonal variation and the volatility term structure of CAT temperature futures presents a modified Samuelson effect. In order to achieve normality in standardized residuals, the seasonal variation is calibrated with a combination of a fourier truncated series with a GARCH model and with a local linear regression. By calibrating model prices, we implied the MPR from Cumulative total of 24-hour average temperature futures (C24AT) for Japanese Cities, or by knowing the formal dependence of MPR on seasonal variation, we price derivatives for Kaohsiung, where weather derivative market does not exist. The findings support theoretical results of reverse relation between MPR and seasonal variation of temperature process.

This paper presents an introductory analysis of price formation and volatility in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme using highfrequency data. The results show that there are several anomalies both in the EUA spot and EUA futures market. First, price formation seems to take place on price sets that are coarser than those offered by the exchanges. Second, price formation in the EUA spot market (BlueNext) may be strongly affected by the price formation in the EUA futures market (ICE Futures). The typical "U-shaped" pattern of intraday volatility, that is often observed in organized financial markets, is partly present in the EUA futures market. Similar to other classical financial markets, realized volatility estimates of daily EUA volatility seem to have a long-memory property.

The aim of this paper is to measure the cost of investing responsibly for different risk aversion levels by taking the example of green sovereign bond portfolios. We show that for developed markets, the cost of being a nice guy is lower if you are cautious (i.e. a higher level of risk aversion) while this is the contrary for emerging markets. It implies that managers of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds should gauge investor’s risk aversion prior to evaluating the “SRI cost”. The SRI cost is zero in some cases., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This paper focuses on the determinants of infant and child mortality in Kenya. It specifically examines how infant and child mortality is related to the household’s environmental and socio-economic characteristics, such as mother’s education, source of drinking water, sanitation facility, type of cooking fuels and access to electricity. A hazard rate framework is used to analyze the determinants of child mortality. Duration models are easily applicable to the problem of child mortality as this class of models straightforwardly accounts for problems like right-censoring, structural modeling and time varying covariates which traditional econometric techniques cannot handle adequately. A household’s environmental and socio-economic characteristics are found to have significant impact on child mortality. Policies aimed at achieving the goal of reduced child mortality should be directed on improving the household’s environmental and or socio-economic status if this goal is to be realized.

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