Economics, Ethics, and Environmental Policy Contested Choices

by Bromley, Daniel W.; Paavola, Jouni

• ISBN13: 9780631229698
• ISBN10: 0631229698
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-05-14
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Economics, Ethics, and Environmental Policy: Contested Choices offers a comprehensive analysis of the ethical problems associated with basing environmental policy on economic analysis, and ways to overcome these problems. The volume has practical relevance because policy recommendations and choices based on economic analysis are often contested by critics. This book takes their criticism seriously. It seeks to clarify and defend the ethical foundations of environmental economics and examines what lessons environmental economics should draw from the criticism. As a result, the volume improves our understanding of the ethical foundations and implications of economic analysis of environmental problems and policy. The contribution is all the more important because the problem has not been extensively studied.

Author Biography

Daniel W. Bromley is Anderson-Bascom Professor of Applied Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has written and edited numerous books including Sustaining Development (1999), The Handbook of Environmental Economics (1995), Making the Commons Work (1992), Environment and Economy (1991), and Economic Interests and Institutions (1989). He is also the editor of the journal Land Economics, the oldest and most distinguished international journal in environmental and natural resources economics.

Jouni Paavola is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) at the University of East Anglia and an Associate Fellow at the Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics, and Society (OCEES), Mansfield College, Oxford, UK. He has authored a number of publications on economics, ethics, and history of environmental policy.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Contributors

Preface

Introduction

Contested Choices

Economics, Ethics, and Policy Choices

Are Choices Trade-offs?

The Ignorance Argument: What Must We Know to Be Fair to the Future?

Benefit-Cost Considerations Should Be Decisive When There is Nothing More Important at Stake

Environmental Policy as the Process of Reasonable Valuing

Ethical Concerns and Policy Goals

Rethinking the Choice and Performance of Environmental Policies

What to Do with Inconsistent, Non-Welfaristic and Undeveloped Preferences?

Awkward Choices: Economics and Nature Conservation

Ethical Dimensions of Policy Consequences

All Policy Instruments Require A Moral Choice as to Whose Interests Count

Efficient or Fair: Ethical Paradoxes in Environmental Policy

Trading with the Enemy: Examining North-South Perspectives in the Climate Change Debate

Social Costs and Sustainability

Ethics in Aaction: Emperical Analysis

Empirical Signs of Ethical Concern in Economic Valuation of the Environment

Motivating Existence Values: The Many and Varied Sources of the Stated WTP for Endangered Species

Environmental and Ethical Dimensions of the Provision of a Basic Need: Water and Sanitation Services in East Africa

Conclusions

Economics, Ethics, and Environmental Policy

Index

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