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This paper analyzes the effect of new bicycle lanes on traffic volume, congestion, and accidents. Crucially, the new bike lanes replace existing car lanes thereby reducing available space for motorized traffic. In order to obtain causal estimates, I exploit the quasi-random timing and location of the newly built cycle lanes. Using an event study design, a two-way fixed effects model and the synthetic control group method on geo-coded data, I show that the construction of pop-up bike lanes significantly reduced average car speed by 8 to 12 percentage points (p.p.) and up to 16 p.p. in peak traffic hours. In contrast, the results for car volume are modest, while the data does not allow for a conclusive judgment of accidents.

With society turning increasingly to sustainable development, sharper demands are being made concerning energy efficiency and other properties that mean reductions in the negative effects of the building on the environment and people. This means that architects must have a suitably adapted solution already in the early design phase, as this has the greatest influence on the final result. Current tools and methods used for this are either focused only on individual topics or are too complex and not adapted for independent use by architects. The paper presents a simplified method for evaluating building sustainability (SMEBS) which addresses these needs. It is intended as a tool to aid architects in the early project planning phases as it allows a quick evaluation of the extent to which the demands of sustainable building are fulfilled. The method was developed on the basis of a study of international building sustainability assessment methods (BSAM) and standards in this field. Experts in sustainable construction were invited to determine weights for assessment parameters using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Their judgments reflect the specific characteristics of the local environment.

Economists are worried that the lack of property rights to natural capital goods jeopardizes the sustainability of the economic growth miracle that has existed since industrialization. This article questions their position. A vertical innovation model with a portfolio of technologies for abatement, adaptation, and general (Harrod-neutral) technology reveals that environmental damage spillovers have a comparable effect on research profits as technology spillovers so that the social costs of depleting public natural capital are internalized. As long as there is free access to information and technology, growth is sustainable and the allocation of research efforts among alternative technologies is socially optimal. While there still is a need to address externalities from monopolistic research markets, no environmental policy is necessary. These results suggest that environmental externalities may originate in restricted access to information and technology, demonstrating that (i) information has a similar effect as an environmental tax and (ii) knowledge and technology transfers have an impact comparable to that of subsidies for research in green technology.

The large literature that aims to find evidence of climate migration delivers mixed findings. This meta-regression analysis i) summarizes direct links between adverse climatic events and migration, ii) maps patterns of climate migration, and iii) explains the variation in outcomes. Using a set of limited dependent variable models, we meta-analyze thus-far the most comprehensive sample of 3,625 estimates from 116 original studies and produce novel insights on climate migration. We find that extremely high temperatures and drying conditions increase migration. We do not find a significant effect of sudden-onset events. Climate migration is most likely to emerge due to contemporaneous events, to originate in rural areas and to take place in middle-income countries, internally, to cities. The likelihood to become trapped in affected areas is higher for women and in low-income countries, particularly in Africa. We uniquely quantify how pitfalls typical for the broader empirical climate impact literature affect climate migration findings. We also find evidence of different publication biases., CEPA Discussion Papers; 29

International audience; We develop a model of optimal land allocation in a developing economy that features three possible land uses: agriculture, primary and secondary forests. The distinction between those forest types reflects their different contributions in terms of public goods. In our model, reforestation is costly because it undermines land title security. Using the forest transition concept, we study long-term land-use change and explain important features of cumulative deforestation across countries. Our results shed light on the speed at which net deforestation ends, on the effect of tenure costs in this process, and on composition in steady state. We also present a policy analysis that emphasizes the critical role of institutional reforms addressing the costs of both deforestation and tenure in order to promote a transition. We find that focusing only on net forest losses can be misleading since late transitions may yield, upon given conditions, a higher level of environmental benefits.; Nous développons un modèle d'allocation optimale des terres dans une économie en développement qui présente trois utilisations possibles des terres : agriculture, forêts primaires et secondaires. La distinction entre ces types de forêts reflète leurs différentes contributions en termes de biens publics. Dans notre modèle, la reforestation est coûteuse car elle porte atteinte à la sécurité des titres fonciers. En utilisant le concept de transition forestière, nous étudions les changements d'utilisation des terres à long terme et expliquons les caractéristiques importantes de la déforestation cumulative entre les pays. Nos résultats mettent en lumière la vitesse à laquelle la déforestation nette prend fin, l'effet des coûts de tenure dans ce processus et la composition en régime permanent. Nous présentons également une analyse politique qui souligne le rôle essentiel des réformes institutionnelles portant sur les coûts de la déforestation et de la tenure afin de promouvoir une transition. Nous constatons que se concentrer uniquement sur les pertes forestières nettes peut être trompeur, car les transitions tardives peuvent produire, dans certaines conditions, un niveau plus élevé de bénéfices environnementaux.

In this paper, we study the effect of exogenous global crop price changes on migration from agricultural and non-agricultural households in Sub-Saharan Africa. We show that, similar to the effect of positive local weather shocks, the effect of a locally-relevant global crop price increase on household out-migration depends on the initial household wealth. Higher international producer prices relax the budget constraint of poor agricultural households and facilitate migration. The order of magnitude of a standardized price effect is approx. one third of the standardized effect of a local weather shock. Unlike positive weather shocks, which mostly facilitate internal rural-urban migration, positive income shocks through rising producer prices only increase migration to neighboring African countries, likely due to the simultaneous decrease in real income in nearby urban areas. Finally, we show that while higher producer prices induce conflict, conflict does not play a role for the household decision to send a member as a labor migrant., CEPA Discussion Papers; 26

El propósito de este documento es identificar los determinantes claves para lograr ―transiciones socioecológicas‖ en la región andina. Se analizan de manera integrada las interacciones entre los aspectos de eficiencia económica, distribución del ingreso y sustentabilidad física mediante un conjunto de indicadores que se compilan para el período 1970-2010. La evolución histórica de la región permite concluir que estas economías no han logrado desprenderse de las trampas de la especialización y la dependencia que las caracterizan. Una progresiva reprimarización y especialización en el sector no renovable, alentada por la reciente evolución favorable de los términos del intercambio, componen una estrategia insostenible en el largo plazo. Estos procesos intensifican las presiones ambientales y profundizan las inequidades, pues, las perspectivas de crecimiento económico son limitadas por la capacidad de carga del ecosistema. Por esto se argumenta que la superación de las trampas de especialización y la ruptura de tales problemas estructurales conlleva una nueva forma de concebir las políticas públicas. El argumento central de este artículo es que la atención en los aspectos productivos y distributivos no es suficiente para una transición hacia economías sustentables. Es necesario integrar a esos dos factores los límites sociales y ambientales que condicionan la escala del crecimiento y la redistribución., In this paper we identify the key determinants that promote socio-ecological transitions in the Andean region. To this end, an integrated assessment of interactions between economic efficiency, income redistribution and physical sustainability is applied by using a set of indicators that are compiled for the period 1970-2010. The evolution of the Andean economies indicates that they have failed to overcome specialization traps and dependency. A progressive reprimarization and focus in the non-renewable sector, intensified by the recent favorable terms of trade, have led to an unsustainable long-term strategy. These processes induce environmental pressures and deepen inequalities, while economic growth prospects are limited by the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Thus, it has been argued that overcoming the pitfalls of dependency and such structural problems demands a new way of thinking about public policy. The central argument of this paper is that attention placed solely on production and distribution aspects is not enough for a transition to a sustainable economy, but it is also necessary to include both the social and environmental limitations that impact the scale of growth and redistribution.

As part of the Next Generation EU (NGEU) program, the European Commission has pledged to issue up to EUR 250 billion of the NGEU bonds as green bonds, in order to confirm their commitment to sustainable finance and to support the transition towards a greener Europe. Thereby, the EU is not only entering the green bond market, but also set to become one of the biggest green bond issuers. Consequently, financial market participants are eager to know what to expect from the EU as a new green bond issuer and whether a negative green bond premium, a so-called Greenium, can be expected for the NGEU green bonds. This research paper formulates an expectation in regards to a potential Greenium for the NGEU green bonds, by conducting an interview with 15 sustainable finance experts and analyzing the public green bond market from September 2014 until June 2021, with respect to a potential green bond premium and its underlying drivers. The regression results confirm the existence of a significant Greenium (-0.7 bps) in the public green bond market and that the Greenium increases for supranational issuers with AAA rating, such as the EU. Moreover, the green bond premium is influenced by issuer sector and credit rating, but issue size and modified duration have no significant effect. Overall, the evaluated expert interviews and regression analysis lead to an expected Greenium for the NGEU green bonds of up to -4 bps, with the potential to further increase in the secondary market.

Concerns about carbon offshoring, namely the relocation of dirty tasks abroad, undermine the efficiency of domestic carbon mitigation policies and might prevent governments from adopting more ambitious climate policies. This paper is the first to analyse the extent and determinants of carbon offshoring at the firm level. We combine information on carbon emissions, imports, imported emissions and environmental policy stringency based on a unique dataset of 5,000 French manufacturing firms observed from 1997 to 2014. We estimate the impact of imported emissions on firm’s domestic emissions and emission intensity using a shift-share instrumental variable strategy. We do not find compelling evidence of an impact of carbon offshoring on total emissions, but show that emission efficiency improves in companies offshoring emissions abroad, suggesting that offshored emissions are compensated by an increase in production scale. The effect is economically meaningful with a 10% increase in carbon offshoring causing a 4% decline in emission intensity. However, this effect is twice as small as that of domestic energy prices and, importantly, does not appear to be driven by a pollution haven motive.

This paper uses the 1918 influenza pandemic as a natural experiment to examine whether air pollution affects susceptibility to infectious disease. The empirical analysis combines the sharp timing of the pandemic with large cross-city differences in baseline pollution measures based on coal-fired electricity generating capacity for a sample 183 American cities. The findings suggest that air pollution exacerbated the impact of the pandemic. Proximity to World War I military bases and baseline city health conditions also contributed to pandemic severity. The effects of air pollution are quantitatively important. Had coal-fired capacity in above-median cities been reduced to the median level, 3,400-5,860 pandemic-related infant deaths and 15,575-23,686 pandemic-related all-age deaths would have been averted. These results highlight the complementarity between air pollution and infectious disease on health, and suggest that there may be large co-benefits associated with pollution abatement policies.

Bolivia tiene un gran potencial para mitigar el cambio climático a través de la reducción de la deforestación. Mientras que las posibles complicaciones han sido intensamente debatidas, se ha realizado poco análisis cuantitativo al respecto. Introducimos el modelo OSIRIS-Bolivia, con el fin de crear una base cuantitativa para la toma de decisiones. OSIRIS-Bolivia es una herramienta en Excel capaz de analizar los efectos de los incentivos REDD en Bolivia. Esta herramienta está basada en un modelo econométrico-espacial de la deforestación en el periodo 2001-2005, y usa información sobre cobertura forestal, tasas de deforestación, condiciones geograficas, y causantes de la deforestación, así como los costos de oportunidad agrícolas, para más de 120.000 píxeles en todo el país. Se trata de un modelo de equilibrio parcial, en el sentido que toma en cuenta el hecho de que reducciones en la deforestación en un lugar causarán una reducción en la oferta de productos agrícolas, lo que a su vez hará subir los precios agrícolas y aumentará la presión para deforestar en otro lugar (fugas de carbono). El modelo nos puede ayudar a resolver preguntas como: ¿donde es más probable que funcione REDD?, ¿cuanto dinero necesitamos para reducir la deforestación en cierto porcentaje?, ¿cuales son los potenciales problemas de REDD?

У статті розглянуто проблеми екологізації діяльності підприємств паливноенергетичного комплексу у контексті формування передумов забезпечення їх екологоекономічної ефективності та конкурентоспроможності. Досліджено особливості трансформації паливно-енергетичного комплексу України, його структуру, проблеми розвитку. Доведено залежність процесів макроекономічних трансформацій від ефективності трансформацій галузей паливно-енергетичного комплексу. Розкрито механізми впливу підприємств паливно-енергетичного комплексу на навколишнє природне середовища, а також екологічні і економічні наслідки такого впливу. Розглянуто сутність політики екологізації діяльності підприємства, об’єкти та напрями екологізації, її переваги та роль у забезпеченні розвитку підприємства. Визначено причини відсутності мотивів формування політики екологізації підприємствами паливноенергетичного комплексу. Проаналізовано правову базу формування екологічної політики в Україні, екологізації економічного розвитку. Встановлено, що практичне втілення принципів екологічної політики у господарську практику підприємств ускладнюється проблемами інституційного характеру. Розкрито багатоаспектний та суперечливий характер поняття «екологізація», який відображає тенденції розвитку сфери природокористування в цілому. Доведено, що екологізація – це інструмент, який дозволяє мінімізувати еколого-економічні збитки на рівні підприємства, формує передумови інноваційного розвитку підприємства та його стратегічної конкурентоспроможності. Охарактеризовано моделі політики екологізації з урахуванням рівня розвитку організаційної культури підприємств та можливостей її реалізації. Запропоновано підхід до вибору моделі екологізації діяльності сучасного підприємства. Обґрунтовано напрями та інструменти реалізації політики екологізації підприємств паливно-енергетичного комплексу. The article deals with the problems of ecologization of activity of enterprises of the fuel and energy complex in the context of forming the preconditions for ensuring their ecological and economic efficiency and competitiveness. The peculiarities of the transformation of the fuel and energy complex of Ukraine, its structure, problems of development are investigated. The dependence of the processes of macroeconomic transformations on the efficiency of transformations of branches of the fuel and energy complex is proved. Mechanisms of influence of enterprises of fuel and energy complex on the environment, as well as ecological and economic consequences of such influence are revealed. The essence of ecologization policy of the enterprise, objects and directions of ecologization, its advantages and role in ensuring the development of the enterprise are considered. The reasons for the lack of motives for forming the environmental policy by enterprises of the fuel and energy complex are determined. The legal base of ecological policy formation in Ukraine, ecologization of economic development is analyzed. It is established that the practical implementation of the principles of environmental policy in the economic practice of enterprises is complicated by institutional problems. The multidimensional and contradictory nature of the concept of «ecologization» is revealed, which reflects the tendencies of the development of the sphere of nature use in general. It is proved that ecologization is an instrument that minimizes environmental and economic losses at the enterprise level, forms the preconditions for the innovative development of the enterprise and its strategic competitiveness. The models of ecologization policy are described, taking into account the level of development of organizational culture of enterprises and the possibilities of its realization. The approach to choosing the model of ecologization of activity of a modern enterprise is offered. The directions and tools of realization of the ecologization policy of the fuel and energy complex enterprises are substantiated.

This study proposes a new approach to survey-based empirical welfare analysis, which combines a new design of the conjoint experiment of Hainmueller et al. (2014) and a non-parametric rational choice model. We focus on the welfare impact of a multi-attribute policy and report the identification result of the marginal component effect on the distribution of willingness-to-pay. As an illustration, the paper evaluates a water improvement policy package for the not previously analyzed floating settlements on Inlay Lake, Myanmar. Our estimation result shows that the average surplus gain from the lake water quality improvement is at least as large as 5.9% of the average annual per capita income of those on the lake. Moreover, attributes such as toilet provision have a clear welfare effect., We gratefully acknowledge financial support for the study by the Hiroshima University TAOYAKA Program for creating a flexible, enduring, peaceful-society, funded by the Program for Leading Graduate Schools, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the Sumitomo Foundation #153421. In addition, the field experiment was in part financially supported by the Japanese Grant Aid for Human Resource Development Scholarship (JDS) Program.

Certification is intended to improve management of and environmental outcomes in developing country forests. Yet we know little about whether and how it actually generates such benefits. To address that question, we analyze 1,162 corrective action requests (CARs) issued after third-party inspections of a diverse set of 35 forests in Mexico certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). CARs detail the changes in procedures and on-the-ground conditions that forest managers must make to either obtain or retain certification. Our analysis indicates that a relatively small proportion of CARs required major changes in on-the-ground environmental conditions. The majority focused on social and legal issues, and the vast majority called for only minor procedural changes. In general, forest managers complied with CARs expeditiously, and the number of CARs they received declined over time. We hypothesize that these findings were at least partly driven by the tendency of FSC certification to attract already-sustainably managed forests and by the governance challenges of community forestry in developing countries. One implication is that policymakers using FSC certification to generate environmental benefits may want to target forests with less-than-stellar management — particularly in the case of reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) initiatives that emphasize improvement beyond business-as-usual — and to build the community and legal institutions needed for sustainable forestry.

We explore the implications of an increase in clean technology spillovers between developed and developing countries. We build a game of abatements in which players are linked with technology spillovers determined by an initial choice of absorptive capacities by developing countries. We show that, within a non-cooperative framework, the response of clean technology investments in developed countries to an increase in cross-country technology spillovers is ambiguous. If the marginal benefits of these additional abatements are not sufficiently high, developed countries have a strategic incentive to decrease investments. Such a strategic response jeopardizes the initial effects of an increase in technology spillovers on climate change mitigation and decreases the incentives for developing countries to enhance their absorptive capacities., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This paper tests for a carbon Kuznets curve (CKC) by examining the carbon emissions per capita–GDP per capita relationship individually, for 21 OECD countries over 1870–2010 using a reduced-form, linear model that allows for multiple endogenously determined breaks. This approach addresses several important econometric and modeling issues, e.g., (1) it is highly flexible and can approximate complicated nonlinear relationships without presuming a priori any particular relationship; (2) it avoids the nonlinear transformations of potentially nonstationary income. For 10 of 14 countries that were ultimately estimated, the uncovered emission–income relationship was either (1) decoupling—where income no longer affected emissions in a statistically significant way, (2) saturation—where the emissions elasticity of income is declining, less than proportional, but still positive, or (3) no transition—where the emissions elasticity of income is (or very near) unity. For only four countries did the emissions–income relationship become negative—i.e., a CKC. In concert with previous work, we conclude that the finding of a CKC is country-specific and that the shared timing among countries is important in income-environment transitions.

Malnutrition is recognized as a major issue among low-income households in developing countries with long-term implications for economic development. Recently, crop diversification has been recognized as a strategy to improve nutrition and health, and as a risk coping strategy used by farmers in the face of climate change. However, there is no systematic empirical evidence on the role played by crop diversification in improving human health. We use the Tanzania National Panel Survey to investigate whether crop diversification could be considered as a promising agricultural strategy to improve child health in Tanzania. We use fixed effects panel estimation to control for unobserved heterogeneity, and perform several robustness checks including placebo tests to test the validity of our findings. We find a positive and significant effect of crop diversification on long-term child nutritional status, in particular for very young children and children living in households with limited market access.

This paper examines the profitability of investing according to environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in the U.S. and Europe. Based on data from 2003 to 2017, we show that a portfolio long in stocks with the highest ESG scores and short in those with the lowest scores yields a significantly negative abnormal return. Interestingly, this is caused by the strong positive return of firms with the lowest ESG activity. As we find that increasing ESG scores reduce firm risk (particularly downside risk), this hints at an insurance-like character of corporate social responsibility: Firms with low ESG activity need to offer a corresponding risk premium. The perception of ESG as an insurance can be shown to be stronger in more volatile capital markets for U.S. firms, but not for European firms. Socially responsible investment may therefore be of varying attractiveness in different market phases.

This research work has been conducted under the Training Program for University Professors of the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (AP2010-3810). The authors are also grateful for the funds awarded by the Government of the Balearic Islands through the Special Action Program (AAEE025/2012) and for the financial support from the CICYT Program of the Spanish Government (ECO2010-22143). Environmental cost-benefit analysis has traditionally assumed that the value of benefits is sensitive to their timing and that outcomes are valued higher, the sooner in time they occur following implementation of a project or policy. Though, this assumption might have important implications especially for the social desirability of interventions aiming at counteracting time-persistent environmental problems, whose impacts occur in the long- and very long-term, respectively involving the present and future generations. This study analyzes the time sensitivity of social preferences for preservation policies of adaptation to climate change stresses. Results show that stated preferences are time insensitive, due to sustainability issues: individuals show insignificant differences in benefits they can experience within their own lifetimes compared to those which occur in the longer term, and which will instead be enjoyed by future generations. Whilst these results may be specific to the experimental design employed here, they do raise interesting questions regarding choices over time-persistent environmental problems, particularly in terms of the desirability of interventions which produce longer-term benefits. Postprint

The authors are grateful for the financial support provided by four Finnish Ministries (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Transport and Communications and Ministry of Finance), the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas); the Danish Strategic Research Council; the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA, Fkz 3710 25 202); and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. MC gratefully acknowledges the support of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Foundation for Polish Science. NH thanks MASTS for funding part of his work. How willingness to pay for environmental quality changes as incomes rise is a central question in several areas of environmental economics. This paper explores both theoretically and empirically whether or not the willingness to pay (WTP) for pollution control varies with income. Our model indicates that the income elasticity of the marginal WTP for pollution reduction is only constant under very restrictive conditions. Our empirical analysis tests the null hypothesis that the elasticity of the WTP for pollution control with respect to income is constant, employing a multi-country contingent valuation study of eutrophication reduction in the Baltic Sea. Our findings reject this hypothesis, and estimate an income elasticity of the WTP for eutrophication control of 0.1–0.2 for low-income respondents and 0.6–0.7 for high-income respondents. Thus, our empirical results suggest that the elasticity is not constant but is always less than one. This has implications for how benefits transfer exercises, and for theoretical explanations of the environmental Kuznets curve. Publisher PDF

This study evaluates the potential surplus gain of a water improvement policy and the causal effects of its components on choice probabilities for the floating people on Inlay Lake, Myanmar, based on a randomized conjoint field experiment. In our experimental design, respondents rank three options: two alternative policies and one status quo. We then present a method that enables us to estimate the minimum willingness-to-pay for a policy in the form of compensating variations under a set of weak assumptions using this conjoint data. Results show inter alia that the provision of toilet facilities and a collective wastewater treatment, and joint implementation of the policy by the government and local NGOs have a positive effects on the choice probabilities. Results also show that the surplus gain from a water-quality improvement policy is at least as large as 22.9% of the average annual per-capita income of those on the lake., The present work was in part conducted for methodological advancements in social science of and supported by the Hiroshima University TAOYAKA Program for creating a flexible, enduring, peaceful society, funded by the Program 19 for Leading Graduate Schools, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In addition, the field experiment was in part financially supported by Japanese Grant Aid for Human Resource Development Scholarship (JDS) Project.

In all societies, economic growth and development are followed as positive goals. However, they have negative effects in other fields such as environment. In recent years, discussions about externalities of globalization and free trade have shaped, proposing the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) and thereby revealing the massive share of trade and the importance of globalization in transferring pollutants. We have used the ARDL approach to cointegration to identify long run relationships between variables in the PHH models about Iran-China trade relationship on time series data (1987 to 2004). We separate dirty industries from green ones by ISIC codes. We present models for each ISIC codes and one model to examine whether the PHH could still be true if all dirty industries were aggregated. Results show that EKC is N-shaped and the share of manufacturing products in CO2 emission is enormous but output of our estimation didn’t support the PHH in aggregated model although in detailed models, such as models with 34 and 35 ISIC codes, the existence of PHH cannot be rejected.

The objectives of forest policy have been broadened from tangible products, such as wood and fiber, to ecosystem services. This broadening emphasizes the need to also estimate the value of biodiversity and the social benefits of tourism and recreation. While research on the species’ requirements has a long history, the issue of which habitat humans select to engage in tourism and recreation lags behind. In both cases, a major challenge is to consider the complete range of forest structure from a managed to a natural dynamic. Combining the approach used in landscape research with non-market valuation techniques, the aim of this study is to document human habitat selection for recreational purposes in a gradient of forest naturalness. The results indicate that respondents prefer older stands with vertical layering, irregularly spaced trees and a greater number of tree species. Our study thus indicates that forests that are managed (or left unmanaged) for biodiversity purposes are also likely to be attractive to humans. To conclude, while greater management intensity was associated with higher disutility regardless of the model employed, we do not perceive a risk of conflict between forest management designed to protect biodiversity and management targeting recreational value. Consequently, there is a need for spatially differentiated forest management that discriminates among different functions. The state ownership of all larger Polish forest massifs makes this zoning approach feasible.

We analyze the efficiency of urbanization patterns in a stylized dynamic model of urban growth with three sectors of production. Pollution, as a force that discourages agglomeration, is caused by domestic production. We show that cities are too large and too few in number in uncoordinated equilibrium if economic growth implies increasing pollution (‘brown growth’). If, however, production becomes cleaner over time (‘green growth’) the equilibrium urbanization path reaches the efficient urbanization path after finite time without need of a coordinating mechanism. We also generalize these results by taking other forms of congestion and urban land markets into account.

A growth-decomposition (scale, technique and composition effect) covering 62 countries and 7 manufacturing sectors over the 1990-2000 period shows that trade, through reallocations of activities across countries, has contributed to a 2-3 percent decrease in world SO2 emissions. However, when compared to a constructed counterfactual no-trade benchmark, depending on the base year, trade would have contributed to a 3-10 percent increase in emissions. Finally adding emissions coming from trade-related transport activities, global emissions are increased through trade by 16 percent in 1990 and 13 percent in 2000, the decline being largely attributable to a shift of dirty activities towards cleaner countries.

The energy transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources has important consequences for technological change and resource extraction. We examine these consequences by incorporating a nonrenewable resource and an alternative energy source in a market economy model of endogenous growth through expanding varieties. During the energy transition, technological progress is nonmonotonic over time: It declines initially, starts increasing when the economy approaches the regime shift, and jumps down once the resource stock is exhausted. A moment of peak-oil does no longer necessarily occur, and simultaneous use of the resource and the alternative energy source will take place if the return to innovation becomes too low. Subsidies to research and development (R&D) and to renewables production speed up the energy transition, whereas a tax on fossil fuels postpones the switch to renewable energy.

Climate change affects societies across the globe in various ways. In addition to gradual changes in temperature and other climatic variables, global warming is likely to increase intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. Beyond biophysical impacts, these also directly affect societal and economic activity. Additionally, indirect effects can occur; spatially, economic losses can spread along global supply-chains; temporally, climate impacts can change the economic development trajectory of countries. This thesis first examines how climate change alters river flood risk and its local socio-economic implications. Then, it studies the global economic response to river floods in particular, and to climate change in general. Changes in high-end river flood risk are calculated for the next three decades on a global scale with high spatial resolution. In order to account for uncertainties, this assessment makes use of an ensemble of climate and hydrological models as well as a river routing model, that is found to perform well regarding peak river discharge. The results show an increase in high-end flood risk in many parts of the world, which require profound adaptation efforts. This pressure to adapt is measured as the enhancement in protection level necessary to stay at historical high-end risk. In developing countries as well as in industrialized regions, a high pressure to adapt is observed - the former to increase low protection levels, the latter to maintain the low risk levels perceived in the past. Further in this thesis, the global agent-based dynamic supply-chain model acclimate is developed. It models the cascading of indirect losses in the global supply network. As an anomaly model its agents - firms and consumers - maximize their profit locally to respond optimally to local perturbations. Incorporating quantities as well as prices on a daily basis, it is suitable to dynamically resolve the impacts of unanticipated climate extremes. The model is further complemented by a static measure, which captures the inter-dependencies between sectors across regions that are only connected indirectly. These higher-order dependencies are shown to be important for a comprehensive assessment of loss-propagation and overall costs of local disasters. In order to study the economic response to river floods, the acclimate model is driven by flood simulations. Within the next two decades, the increase in direct losses can only partially be compensated by market adjustments, and total losses are projected to increase by 17% without further adaptation efforts. The US and the EU are both shown to receive indirect losses from China, which is strongly affected directly. However, recent trends in the trade relations leave the EU in a better position to compensate for these losses. Finally, this thesis takes a broader perspective when determining the investment response to the climate change damages employing the integrated assessment model DICE. On an optimal economic development path, the increase in damages is anticipated as emissions and consequently temperatures increase. This leads to a significant devaluation of investment returns and the income losses from climate damages almost double. Overall, the results highlight the need to adapt to extreme weather events - local physical adaptation measures have to be combined with regional and global policy measures to prepare the global supply-chain network to climate change. Der Klimawandel betrifft Gesellschaften weltweit auf verschiedenste Weise. Neben graduellen Veränderungen der Temperatur und anderer klimatischer Variablen werden wahrscheinlich auch die Intensität und die Häufigkeit von Extremwetterereignissen zunehmen. Diese beeinflussen neben ihren bio-physikalischen Auswirkungen auch unmittelbar die gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Aktivität. Zusätzlich können indirekte Effekte auftreten: Die räumliche Dimension umfasst die Ausbreitung wirtschaftlicher Schäden entlang globaler Versorgungsketten, zeitlich betrachtet können Klimaauswirkungen die wirtschaftlichen Entwicklungspfade von Ländern prägen. Die vorliegende Dissertation widmet sich zunächst der Frage, wie sich (Fluss-)Hochwasserrisiken und ihre gesellschaftlichen sowie wirtschaftlichen Implikationen durch den Klimawandel verändern. Weiterhin wird die Reaktionsdynamik des globalen ökonomischen Systems auf Klimawandel im Allgemeinen und auf Überschwemmungsereignisse an Flüssen im Speziellen untersucht. So werden die Risiken von schweren Fluss-Überschwemmungen für die nächsten drei Jahrzehnte global mit hoher räumlicher Auflösung berechnet. Zur Berücksichtigung von Unsicherheiten wird dabei auf ein Ensemble von Klima- und hydrologischen Modellen zurückgegriffen. Dabei werden die hydrologischen Modelle mit einem Flussverteilungsmodel, das die verbesserte Abbildung von Extrempegelständen an Flüssen ermöglicht, kombiniert. Die Berechnungen zeigen einen Anstieg des Überschwemmungsrisikos für weite Teile der Erde. Der damit einhergehende Anpassungsdruck wird in dieser Studie als Anpassung des Schutzniveaus berechnet, die notwendig ist, um das bestehende Überschwemmungsrisiko beizubehalten. Ein hoher Anpassungsdruck besteht dabei sowohl in Entwicklungs- als auch in Industriestaaten. Während in Ersteren oft erst adäquate Hochwasserschutzmaßnahmen ergriffen werden müssen, müssen Letztere oft ihr aktuelles Schutzniveau ausbauen. Weiterhin wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit das globale, agenten-basierte und dynamische Modell acclimate entwickelt, welches Kaskaden von indirekten ökonomischen Schäden im globalen Versorgungsnetzwerk modelliert. Acclimate ist als Anomalienmodell angelegt, dessen Agenten - Firmen und Konsumenten - durch Profitmaximierung versuchen, optimal auf lokale Störungen zu reagieren. Da das Modell sowohl Warenströme als auch die zugehörigen Preise nach Tagen aufgelöst abbildet, ist es besonders gut geeignet, die kurzfristigen ökonomischen Auswirkungen unvorhergesehener Klimaextreme zu beschreiben. Das dynamische Modell wird ergänzt durch ein neues statisches Maß, das die Abhängigkeiten zwischen regionalen Sektoren beschreibt. Dabei werden nicht nur die direkten Handelsverbindungen betrachtet, sondern auch solche höherer Ordnung. Es zeigt sich, dass diese für eine umfassende Abschätzung der Schadenskaskaden und damit der Gesamtkosten lokaler Extremereignisse nicht vernachlässigt werden dürfen. Zur Untersuchung der ökonomischen Reaktionsdynamik auf Hochwasserereignisse wird das acclimate-Modell für Simulationen von Flussüberschwemmungen angewandt. Bis zum Jahr 2035 wird dabei ein Anstieg des direkten Schadens prognostiziert. Dieser kann nur teilweise durch Marktmechanismen ausgeglichen werden, so dass die Gesamtschäden weltweit um 17% zunehmen - sofern keine zusätzlichen Anpassungsmaßnahmen getroffen werden. Für die USA und die EU zeigt sich, dass diese durch ihre Handelsverbindungen insbesondere zu China indirekt betroffen sind, da China starke direkte Flussüberflutungen zu erwarten hat. Die Entwicklungen der globalen Handelsbeziehungen in den letzten Jahren versetzen die EU jedoch in die Lage einen zunehmenden Teil dieser Verluste auszugleichen. In einem weiter gefassten Ansatz wird schlussendlich die Änderung des Investitionsverhaltens aufgrund der Schäden durch Klimawandel unter Zuhilfenahme des ökonomischen Wachstumsmodells DICE untersucht. Es lässt sich festhalten, dass auf einem optimalen ökonomischen Entwicklungspfad die Zunahme der Schäden bereits antizipiert wird, wenn Emissionen und dem darauf folgend die Temperatur ansteigen. Dies führt zu einer signifikanten Abwertung von Kapitalerträgen, was die direkten Verluste durch Klimaschäden nahezu verdoppelt. Insgesamt unterstreichen die Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit die Notwendigkeit der Anpassung an klimabedingte Extremwetterereignisse. Dazu müssen lokale, physikalische Anpassungsmaßnahmen durch regionale und globale Politikinstrumente ergänzt werden, um das globale Versorgungsnetzwerk adäquat auf den Klimawandel vorzubereiten.

This study analyzed the relationship between economic growth and emissions of eight environmental air pollutants (carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulfur oxide (SOx), carbon monoxide (CO), non-methane volatile organic compound (NMVOC), and ammonia (NH3)) in 39 countries from 1995 to 2009. We tested an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for 16 individual industry sectors and for the total industrial sector. The results clarified that at least ten individual industries do not have an EKC relationship in eight air pollutants even though this relationship was observed in the country and total industrial sector level data. We found that the key industries that dictated the EKC relationship in the country and the total industrial sector existed in CO2, N2O, CO, and NMVOC emissions. Finally, the EKC turning point and the relationship between economic development and trends of air pollutant emissions differ among industries according to the pollution substances. These results suggest inducing new environmental policy design such as the sectoral crediting mechanism, which focuses on the industrial characteristics of emissions., Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 23(3), pp.2802-2812; 2016

This paper tests for a sulfur Kuznets curve by examining the sulfur emissions per capita-GDP per capita relationship individually, for 25 OECD countries over 1950–2005 using a reduced-form, linear model that allows for multiple endogenously determined breaks. This approach addresses several important econometric and modeling issues, e.g., (i) it is highly flexible and can approximate complicated nonlinear relationships without presuming a priori any particular relationship; (ii) it avoids the nonlinear transformations of potentially nonstationary income. The predominant post-1950 income–sulfur emission relationship—the case for 24 of the 25 countries studied—was either (i) inverted-Vs, where the emission–income relationship became negative, or (ii) decoupling, where income no longer affected emissions in a long-run, statistically significant way. Seventeen of the 21 transitional breaks uncovered occurred over 1965–1978; hence, in concert with previous work, we conclude that shared timing among countries is important in income–environment transitions.

How does economic science inform the study of sustainable development? In his new book, Jeffrey D. Sachs analyzes the challenges of achieving economic growth while protecting the environment and achieving an equitable distribution of resources. This review presents an overview of this ambitious book with special emphasis on the role of the objectives of local and national leaders and their incentives to pursue the sustainability agenda. Given the huge migration to cities now playing out in the developing world, special attention is paid to the role of urbanization as a cause of sustainability opportunities and challenges. (JEL Q01, Q54, Q56, R11)

Energy sectors of most industrialized countries are marked by a long history of state and corporate-owned and highly centralized energy generation (mostly from fossil-based sources) and distribution. Although technological developments and pressures from social/ecological movements resulted in an increased uptake of renewable energy (RE) technologies since the early 1990s, the application of these technologies have since predominantly taken place through largescale projects owned by corporate actors. In response, an increasing number of individuals and community groups have been forming renewable energy cooperatives (RE co-ops) in recent years to provide bottom-up and collective solutions to their local needs and global environmental issues. The goal of this literature review is to summarize the demonstrated impacts of RE co-ops in the economic, social and environmental realms. Thereby, their impact on community development and role in accelerating the transition towards a sustainable energy sector is assessed. Findings of this review show that successful RE co-ops generated positive outcomes for their members and the wider community while accelerating the social and perceptual dimensions of the global energy transition. However, it has also been revealed that RE co-ops’ success in generating positive impacts is often limited by various community-specific factors and by financial and perceptual barriers to their emergence and development.

Local ecosystem services have been significantly affected by land cover changes associated with rapid urbanization in China. Based on the 2000 and 2010 land cover data products with 30-m resolution, we examined the similarities and differences in the impacts of land cover change on ecosystem service values (ESV) at three coastal urban agglomerations in China between 2000 and 2010 (Liaodong Peninsula (LP), Jing-Jin-Ji (JJJ) and Shandong Peninsula (SP)). A rapid evaluation method developed by Xie et al. (2008) was used to derive an ecosystem service value coefficient. The most significant change was an increase in artificial surfaces, due to urban expansion, which mainly occurred on cultivated land. The greatest loss in total ESV (2273 million Chinese Yuan) occurred in SP, due to the large decrease in wetland areas, because this service has the highest estimated coefficient. The second greatest loss in ESV (893 million Yuan) occurred in JJJ, due to the urban expansion of major cities. In contrast, ESV increased (72 million Yuan) in LP. This study demonstrates that urban expansion does not necessarily lead to a net decline in ESV. In conclusion, land use and land cover policymaking should consider the sustainability of ecosystem services in relation to economic growth.

The tree-growing sector is considered to be an important supplier of food and raw material for industry worldwide. Increasingly competitive decisions regarding international investment in orchards depend on business analysis. This study compares three apple orchards situated in Cluj-Napoca, on the Eastern limits of the Transylvanian Plain, Romania. While the climatic and soil conditions are relatively consistent among the three orchards, the technical and economic results (expressed in hectares) vary due to the use of three different technological systems of apple production: extensive, intensive, and super-intensive. The study compares the life cycle, starting with age of fructification, production level (quantity and quality), costs (investment and production costs—divided into material costs, mechanical costs, human costs, and overhead costs), income, profit (including rate of profit), and investment efficiency: Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and Payback Period (PP). It was observed that the most economically efficient technological system in terms of investments is the super-intensive one, with a higher production level, a higher share of Extra Class apples, and a younger age of initial fructification. However certain inconveniences of this system—such as a more expensive investment, a higher cost of running the business throughout the year, and a reduced life cycle—cannot be ignored.

During the last few years, the issues of energy efficiency and energy saving have dominated the buildings research field. New constructions are based on efficient design and, because of this, the real challenge is to retrofit existing buildings. Italian standards impose thermal transmittance limits for opaque and transparent surfaces, according to the climatic area. In order to understand buildings’ energy behavior, an accurate analysis, carried out by employing advanced calculation codes and instrumental diagnosis—provided by the use of heat flow meter, surface temperature probes and thermal imaging camera—is needed. In this paper, a structure built in the 50 s has been analyzed, by means of a measurement campaign, to investigate the building’s characteristics and its vulnerability. Finally, some retrofit hypotheses have been evaluated by means of a well-known dynamic code. All investments have to be analyzed under a financial point of view, considering materials and installation costs. For this reason, the payback time has been calculated in order to understand how quickly the energy upgrading can be repaid.

This article examines developments in the renewable electricity sector in Brazil and China since 2000. The two countries share many interests with respect to solar and wind power, but institutional differences in state–business relations led to different outcomes. In China, in a context of corporatist state–business relations, state interventions were more far-reaching, with the state coordinating with state-owned banks, offering large financial and investment incentives to state-owned or state-connected enterprises. By contrast, in Brazil’s public–private partnerships, state support to promote renewable energies was shaped by a stronger preference for competitive auctions and stricter financing rules. The differences in state–business relations help explain the observed developmental trajectories in wind and solar power.

With an increased awareness of sustainability issues, natural ventilation has become an elegant method for reducing the costs and environmental effects of the energy that is used to maintain comfortable indoor air quality rather than using mechanical ventilation. The windows in many industrial buildings are continuously open to exhaust pollutants and intake fresh air. Though windows are functional and efficient for natural ventilation, rainwater is able to penetrate through the windows during wind-driven rain. For industries in which the moisture content affects the quality of the product, the intrusion of a large amount of rainwater through windows must be prevented without compromising the effective ventilation. The aim of this research is to determine an innovative design for windows to accomplish the optimum of high ventilation and low rain penetration. For this purpose, windows are variously innovated and tested in full-scale measurements, reduced-scale wind-tunnel measurements and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). An artificial rain and wind velocity to mimic the average of the maximum values in Korea are created. The maximum reduction in rain penetration of over 98% compared to basic 90 degrees open windows is attained with only a 4%-9% decrement of ventilation efficiency in the two recommended designs.

We propose an ethical analysis as a method to reflect on how companies’ decisions promote sustainable development. The method proceeds by first identifying the choice according to financial business interests, and by then scrutinizing this choice according to consequentialist and deontological ethics. The paper applies the method to the choice of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) that a consortium of Brazilian companies (EGASUR) delivered as part of their project proposal for the realization of the Inambari hydropower dam in the Peruvian Amazon. We show that if an EIA is chosen based on the attempt to maximize the financial bottom line, it raises ethical issues both from a consequentialist perspective by involving negative consequences for various stakeholder groups, and from a deontological perspective by not complying with relevant rules, guidelines, and principles. The two ethical perspectives hence reveal where the consortium faces impediments to a genuine commitment to sustainability. Building on stakeholder interviews, observations of the project developments, and the executive summary of the actual EIA, we provide indications that EGASUR has indeed made a choice that resembles a decision based on financial interests.

Adaptation finance is designed to help vulnerable populations withstand effects of climate variability and change. However, levels of vulnerability seldom determine finance distribution. Political and economic preferences of national and local government decision-makers tend to direct funding streams. This article takes an institutional approach to adaptation finance allocation by comparing decentralized and devolved local governance structures managing adaptation finance in Kenya before and after the Constitution of 2010. Prior to reforms, funding was directed through decentralized mechanisms operating within district councils and local authorities; recently, devolution of political, administrative, and fiscal decision-making to county governments coincided with piloting of new local adaptation funds. Theory suggests that devolution institutionalizes more participative decision-making and fairer allocations. Evidence suggests vulnerable communities are indeed more likely to access, design, and receive allocations of finance in devolved political systems.

The goal set by the EU of quasi-zero energy buildings is not easy to reach for a country like Italy, as it holds a wide number of UNESCO sites and most of them are entire historical old towns. This paper focuses on the problem of the improvement of energy performance of historical Italian architecture through simple interventions that respect the building without changing its shape and structure. The work starts from an energy analysis of a building located in the historic center of Tivoli, a town close to Rome. The analysis follows the recommendations of the UNI TS 11300-Part1, which indicates how to evaluate the energy consumptions. The calculations were performed only on the building envelope, based on passive solutions and alternatives. Four passive strategies were examined and applied based on the location of the building and the non-alteration of the structure and the landscape. The obtained results impacted positively on the energy performance of the building: the annual energy saving reached a maximum value of 25%. This work shows how it is possible to improve the energy performance of an existing building achieving a significant energy saving with the respect of the building architecture, shape, function and the surrounding landscape.

Why have only two of the eleven original members of the Western Climate Initiative implemented a cap-and-trade system? This article compares the implementation of cap-and-trade in California and Quebec versus in New Mexico and British Columbia. Ideas around the reality of anthropogenic global warming and the legitimacy of cap-and-trade created favorable context in three jurisdictions, although institutions condition the expression of these ideas in the policy-making process. Since parliamentary institutions concentrate power, elite consensus is more important in Canada, while in the United States public opinion plays a more significant role. However, ideational factors shaped by political institutions do not explain differences in cap-and-trade implementation. Growth in shale gas production, welcomed in British Columbia and New Mexico but resisted by Quebec and marginal in California, further explain different outcomes. Ideas, mediated by institutions, are the necessary prerequisites for action, while material factors influence policy instrument choice.

Using a sequential slack-based measure (SSBM) model, this paper analyzes the spatiotemporal disparities of urban land use economic efficiency (ULUEE) under environmental constraints, and its influencing factors in 270 cities across China from 2003–2012. The main results are as follows: (1) The average ULUEE for Chinese cities is only 0.411, and out of the 270 cities, only six cities are always efficient in urban land use in the study period. Most cities have a lot of room to improve the economic output of secondary and tertiary industries, as well as environmental protection work, (2) The eastern region of China enjoys the highest ULUEE, followed by the western and central regions. Super-scale cities show the best performance of all four city scales, followed by large-scale, small-scale and medium-scale cities. Cities with relatively developed economies and less pollutant discharge always have better ULUEE, (3) The results of slack variables analysis show that most cities have problems such as the labor surplus, over-development, excessive pollutant discharge, economic output shortage, and unreasonable use of funds is the most serious one, (4) The regression results of the influencing factors show that improvements of the per capita GDP and land use intensity are helpful to raise ULUEE. The urbanization rate and the proportion of foreign enterprises’ output account for the total output in the secondary and tertiary industries only have the same effect in some regions and city scales. The land management policy and land leasing policy have negative impact on the ULUEE in all the three regions and four city scales, (5) Some targeted policy goals are proposed, including the reduction of surplus labor, and pay more attention to environmental protection. Most importantly, effective implementation of land management policies from the central government, and stopping blind leasing of land to make up the local government’s financial deficit would be very helpful to improve the ULUEE of Chinese cities.

Urban development in China has attracted considerable scholarly attention. However, more work is still needed to examine and understand the mechanisms of urban land expansion, especially within the context of globalization/marketization, decentralization and urbanization. This paper analyzes urban land expansion and structural changes in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). We find that cities in the YRD are experiencing urban land expansion mainly characterized by the growth of residential and industrial land. The dominant characteristics of urban land expansion in cities have also varied within different development and administrative levels. Based on our conceptual framework, we have used multi-models to investigate the driving forces of urban land expansion and structural changes in the YRD. The results reveal that six influencing factors—foreign direct investment (FDI), labor, government competition, institution, population, and job-housing relations—facilitate land use change in the economic transition process. However, their impacts differ in cities in different geographical locations, as well as with different administrative levels. Finally, this paper discusses policies to promote sustainable urban land use in the YRD.

As global green trends became more prevalent, green marketing also developed into an important issue. Although prior literature explored the main factors affecting green trust, it was inconclusive as to how environmental friendliness could affect the green trust in green marketing. This study aims to focus on the positive influence of environmental friendliness on green trust, and explore the mediation effects of green satisfaction and green perceived quality. This study undertakes an empirical study by means of questionnaire survey. The respondents are consumers who have experience purchasing green products. This study applies structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypotheses. The findings of this study indicate that (1) environmental friendliness has a significant positive impact on green satisfaction, green perceived quality, and green trust, (2) both green satisfaction and green perceived quality positively affect green trust, and (3) green satisfaction and green perceived quality partially mediate the positive relationship between environmental friendliness and green trust.

Carbon footprints have been widely employed as an indicator for total carbon dioxide released by human activities. In this paper, we implemented a multi-regional input-output framework to evaluate the carbon footprints and embodied carbon flows for the eight regions of China from consumption-based perspective. It is found that the construction, electricity/stream supply, and machine manufacturing rank as the top sectors with the largest total carbon emissions. The construction sector alone accounts for 20%–50% of the national emissions. Besides the sectoral carbon footprints, regional footprints and their differences in carbon emissions were also observed. The middle region had the largest total carbon footprints, 1188 million ton, while the capital region ranked the first for its per capita carbon footprint, 7.77 ton/person. In regard to the embodied carbon flows within China, the study detected that the embodied carbon flows take up about 41% of the total carbon footprints of the nation. The northwest region and the eastern coast region are found to be the largest net embodied carbon exporter and importer, respectively. Further investigation revealed significant differences between production-based and consumption-based carbon emissions, both at sectoral and total amounts. Results of this paper can provide specific information to policies on sectoral and regional carbon emission reduction.

The increasing awareness of climate change and its impact on overall economic growth has encouraged many countries to pursue environmental friendly production and consumption of goods and services. Based on their comparative advantages, developing countries too are emerging as exporters of environmental goods and services (EGS) along with developed countries. An important question in this context is whether these emerging EGS exporting developing economies are able to realize their export potential fully. Using data between 1996 and 2010, this paper identifies the constraints that make India, which is one of the emerging EGS exporters, not able to realize its export potential of environmental goods (EG). The empirical results show that the growth of India's exports of EG was negatively affected by its ‘behind the border' constraints, such as weak infrastructure and institutions, while the effect of ‘explicit beyond the border' constraints, such as partner-countries' tariff and exchange rate on the exports of EG was relatively small. The reduction of India's trading partners' ‘implicit beyond the border' constraints, such as weak infrastructure and institutions has made significant contribution to India's exports of EG, especially during the period 2005 – 2010.

Landsat images from 1979, 1988, 1999, 2008, and 2013 were used to analyze the landscape area change of salt pans lying on the coast of Tianjin. While initially (1979–1988), the area of Tianjin’s salt pan increased, later (1988–2013) it declined dramatically. In the first phase (1979–1988) of the studied period the primary roll-in landscape of the salt pan wasbarren land with an area of 60.0 km 2 . By 1988, the area of Tianjin’s salt pan rose to 457.8 km 2 . The main roll-out landscape of the salt pan during 1988–2013 was urban, barren land, village/town, harbor, and road whose area amounted to 69.8, 35.9, 27.3, 25.5 and 18.4 km 2 respectively. The roll-out barren land will be transformed to construction land ultimately. By 2013, the total loss reached 167.3 km 2 , which was 36.5% of the salt pan area of Tianjin in 1988. With the development of coastal economy, the salterns with a lower economic value were transformed to and replaced by land use types with a higher economic value. This trend would influence the production of sea salt and the development of sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate industries. Seawater desalination provides an opportunity for the restoration and compensation of salt production capacity. Based on the theory of circular economy and industrial symbiosis, in this article an industrial symbiosis model for sea salt production and sea water desalination is explored: “mariculture–power plant cooling–seawater desalination–Artemia culture–bromide extraction–sea salt production–salt chemical industry”. Through the application of this process sustainable development of the sea salt production in Tianjin could be achieved.

Urban ecological vulnerability is measured on the basis of ecological sensitivity and resilience based on the concept analysis of vulnerability. GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis (GIS-MCDA) methods are used, supported by the spatial analysis tools of GIS, to define different levels of vulnerability for areas of the urban ecology. These areas are further classified into different types of regulatory zones. Taking the city of Hefei in China as the empirical research site, this study uses GIS-MCDA, including the index system, index weights and overlay rules, to measure the degree of its ecological vulnerability on the GIS platform. There are eight indices in the system. Raking and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methods are used to calculate index weights according to the characteristics of the index system. The integrated overlay rule, including selection of the maximum value, and weighted linear combination (WLC) are applied as the overlay rules. In this way, five types of vulnerability areas have been classified as follows: very low vulnerability, low vulnerability, medium vulnerability, high vulnerability and very high vulnerability. They can be further grouped into three types of regulatory zone of ecological green line, ecological grey line and ecological red line. The study demonstrates that ecological green line areas are the largest (53.61% of the total study area) and can be intensively developed, ecological grey line areas (19.59% of the total area) can serve as the ecological buffer zone, and ecological red line areas (26.80%) cannot be developed and must be protected. The results indicate that ecological green line areas may provide sufficient room for future urban development in Hefei city. Finally, the respective regulatory countermeasures are put forward. This research provides a scientific basis for decision-making around urban ecological protection, construction and sustainable development. It also provides theoretical method references for future research into urban ecological vulnerability, including the introduction of GIS-MCDA methods into the field of urban ecological vulnerability, which expands the application for these techniques.

The evolution of Eco Industrial Parks (EIPs) in Italy is a development opportunity for many territories and companies. Starting from the initial experiences in the 1980s, the Eco Industrial Parks model has spread throughout many of the central and northern regions of the country. The key element of Italian Eco Industrial Parks is the management body, an entity provided by national legislation to manage and coordinate companies and to develop more environmentally sustainable production practices. The survey results describe the role and activities of the management bodies concerning the actions implemented, the interaction with the main stakeholders and the resources and investments. The following research introduces an important environmental management experience implemented in Italy.

A question fundamental to sustainable economic growth is whether a poor region tends to grow faster than a rich one, such that the poor region catches up with the rich region in terms of the level of per capita income. In this article, we apply the spatial panel data approach to the analysis of regional income convergence across 177 economic areas in the contiguous US states over the period from 1969 to 2009. Using data on per capita incomes in the functionally defined economic areas, we find that the absolute value of the estimated coefficient of the initial per capita income decreases in the spatial and time-period fixed effects spatial lag model and increases in the spatial and time-period fixed effects spatial error model. This result implies that the growth rate in a specific economic area will be not only directly affected by an exogenous shock introduced into that economic area but also be impacted more by both the indirect effects of the first-order neighboring economic areas and the induced effects of the higher-order neighboring economic areas. This gives helpful hints on the issue of spatial interaction and regional policy coordination to start a virtuous circle of sustainable economic growth.

Sustainability of nonprofit organizations is a key concern for today’s nonprofit scholars and practitioners. Building upon the nonprofit economics literature, the present paper introduces the distinction between the demand-side and supply-side determinants of nonprofit sustainability and makes the case for the discrepancy between them. This discrepancy presents not only a generic conceptual explanation of the nonprofit sustainability problems but is also applicable to the context of the European rural nonprofit sector. Three arguments are advanced. First, the notorious implementation problems of LEADER partnerships can be explained as a manifestation of the above discrepancy. Second, and related, the rural context implies the tendency of the supply-side determinants of nonprofit sustainability to undermine the demand-side ones. Third, recent empirical findings from the Czech Republic show that this tendency does not necessarily imply the possibility of a clear classification of the demand-side and supply-side sustainability determinants. Rather, those features of rural areas and communities that significantly affect the size of the local nonprofit sector exhibit a controversial entanglement of demand-side and supply-side identities.