Blueprint for a Green Economy

by Pearce, David W.; Markandya, Anil; Barbier, Edward B.

• ISBN13: 9781853830662
• ISBN10: 1853830666
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1989-12-01
• Publisher: Earthscan / James & James

Summary

The most influential account available of the policies needed to achieve sustainability in a national economy. A winner of the Guiseppe Mazzoti prize for literature, it is widely referred to by policy makers throughout the world, and has been adopted as a student text on a number of courses.

Table of Contents

Preface	xii
Introduction	1	(27)
The idea of sustainable development	1	(2)
Sustainable development as a bequest to the future	3	(1)
Economy and environment	4	(1)
Valuing the environment	5	(2)
Anticipatory and reactive environmental policy	7	(4)
The challenge of global pollution	11	(4)
Natural adaptation	15	(1)
Policy response	16	(2)
Summarizing the sustainable development approach to environmental policy	18	(1)
Growth versus the environment?	19	(9)
The Meaning of Sustainable Development	28	(23)
Economic development, development and economic growth	29	(1)
Environment, development and growth	30	(2)
Sustainable development	32	(1)
Sustainable development and the environment	33	(1)
Sustainable development as non-declining wealth	34	(3)
Sustainable development as non-declining natural wealth	37	(3)
Sustainability as resilience	40	(3)
Various meanings of constant capital stock	43	(2)
Importing and exporting sustainability	45	(2)
Conclusions on the meaning of sustainable development	47	(4)
Valuing the Environment	51	(42)
Economics and environmental values	51	(4)
The uses of monetary measures	55	(2)
Monetary value of national environmental damage and benefits	57	(3)
Total economic value	60	(3)
Total economic value and decision-making	63	(1)
Direct and indirect valuation	63	(1)
The hedonic price approach	64	(3)
Examples of hedonic price estimates of environmental quality	67	(2)
Contingent valuation	69	(2)
Travel-cost approaches	71	(4)
More on existence value	75	(2)
Empirical measures of option and existence value	77	(3)
Conclusions on valuing the environment	80	(13)
Annex: Difficulties in the Application of Estimation Techniques	82	(11)
Accounting for the Environment	93	(27)
Environmental accounting: the physical approach	95	(10)
Environmental accounting: the monetary approach	105	(8)
Environmental accounting: a physical or monetary approach?	113	(3)
The treatment of environmental accounts in the United Kingdom	116	(1)
Conclusions and recommendations	117	(3)
Project Appraisal	120	(12)
The basic analytics of project appraisal	120	(2)
Valuing environmental damage	122	(5)
An additional approach to project appraisal: integrating sustainability into cost-benefit analysis	127	(2)
Conclusions	129	(3)
Discounting the Future	132	(21)
The nature of discounting	132	(3)
Discounting and the environment	135	(1)
The environmentalist critique of discounting	136	(7)
Conclusions on ``environmental critiques'' of discounting	143	(1)
Discounting and natural resources	144	(1)
Should discount rates be adjusted because of environmental concern?	145	(6)
Conclusions	151	(2)
Prices and Incentives for Environmental Improvement	153	(33)
Levels of the economy at which sustainable development incentives are required	153	(1)
Markets and prices	154	(2)
The proper pricing of products and services	156	(1)
Making the polluter pay	156	(2)
Who is the polluter?	158	(2)
Sustainable development and the PPP	160	(1)
What are market-based incentives?	161	(1)
A carbon tax	162	(5)
The proper pricing of natural resources	167	(1)
Integrative environmental policy and market-based incentives	167	(1)
Incentives and energy conservation	168	(2)
Conclusions on pricing for sustainable development	170	(16)
Annex: Sustainable Development---A Gallery of Definitions	173	(13)
Index	186