The impact of regulatory compliance behavior on hazardous waste generation in European private healthcare facilities

Along with the increased provision of healthcare by private outpatient healthcare facilities within the EU countries, there is also an increase on waste generation from these facilities. A significant fraction of this waste is amongst the most hazardous of all wastes arising in communities, posing significant risks to people and the environment if inappropriately managed. The growing awareness that mismanagement of healthcare waste has serious environmental and public health consequences is reflected in the European waste legislation, aiming at waste prevention at the source and emphasizing the “management” aspects of the waste management process. Whether the increasingly large numbers of private healthcare facilities comply with the existing European waste legislation, and whether compliance with such legislation affects the fraction of healthcare waste classified as hazardous is an understudied subject. Using a large survey of private outpatient healthcare facilities, this study finds that although compliance with the law is far from ideal, it is the strongest factor influencing hazardous waste generation. These findings suggest that more public investments in monitoring healthcare facilities’ compliance with the law in EU countries is warranted, along with increased efforts to raise the facilities’ awareness of the cost savings brought about by compliance with the existing healthcare waste legislation

Anticipating the location of a waste collection point : an application based on Portugal

We study the optimal location of a waste facility in a horizontally differentiated duopoly where firms choose their location and price. The policymaker decides the location of a waste facility targeting social welfare maximization. Consistent with the observation of the location decisions of waste facilities in Portugal, we show that the optimal location of a waste facility is never in the city center under partial expost regulation. Ex-ante regulation ensures the highest level of social welfare, but from a theoretical point of view, it requires a waste facility located in the city center. A robustness check is then provided to justify that, in actual regulatory practice, a first-mover regulator maximizes social welfare without necessarily imposing the installation of a waste facility in the city center.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Climate change research and policy in Portugal

This article offers a review of research and policy on climate change in Portugal and is organized into three main themes: scientific knowledge and assessment of climate change; policy analysis and evaluation; and public engagement. Modern scientific research on meteorology and climatology started in Portugal in the 1950s and a strong community of researchers in climate science, vulnerabilities, impacts, and adaptation has since developed, particularly in the last decade. Nevertheless, there are still many gaps in research, especially regarding the economic costs of climate change in Portugal and costs and benefits of adaptation. Governmental policies with a strong emphasis on mitigation were introduced at the end of the 1990s. As greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise beyond its Kyoto target for 2012, the country had to resort to the Kyoto Flexibility Mechanisms in order to comply. Climate change adaptation policies were introduced in 2010 but are far from being fully implemented. Regarding public engagement with climate change, high levels of concern contrast with limited understanding and rather weak behavioral dispositions to address climate change. Citizens display a heavy reliance on the media as sources of information, which are dominated by a techno-managerial discourse mainly focused on the global level. The final part of the article identifies research gaps and outlines a research agenda. Connections between policy and research are also discussed

Does final energy demand in Portugal exhibit long memory? A fractional integration analysis

In this paper, we measure the degree of fractional integration in final energy demand in Portugal using an ARFIMA model with and without adjustments for seasonality. We consider aggregate energy demand as well as final demand for petroleum, electricity, coal, and natural gas. Our findings suggest the presence of long memory in all of the components of energy demand. All fractional-difference param- eters are positive and lower than 0.5 indicating that the series are stationary, although with mean reversion patterns slower than in the typical short-run processes. These results have important implications for the design of energy policies. As a result of the long-memory in final energy demand, the effects of temporary policy shocks will tend to disappear slowly. This means that even transitory shocks have long lasting effects. Given the temporary nature of these effects, however, permanent effects on final energy demand require permanent policies. This is unlike what would be suggested by the more standard, but much more limited, unit root approach, which would incorrectly indicate that even transitory policies would have permanent effects.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Surface vs. groundwater: the effect of forest cover on the costs of drinking water

Forests worldwide provide a variety of ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, soil protection and water purification. In particular, the minimal use of pesticides and fertilizers in forest operations coupled with the tree root system are associated with higher drinking water quality. However, forest coverage is expected to have a more influential impact in groundwater quality rather than surface as well as, consequently, on drinking water treatment costs. This study uses cross sectional data at firm level to assess the marginal effect of forest cover on drinking water treatment costs for the case of Portugal, the first of its kind for the country. Our analysis makes use of a range of GIS and spatial variables which capture the heterogeneity in local forest coverage. The results obtained suggest the existence of a positive and significant effect of local forest cover on water treatment cost savings of 0.056%. However, this effect applies to firms extracting water from groundwater intakes. Neighboring measures of forest coverage have a greater impact on costs from surface water firms. The crucial role of local forest coverage through groundwater provision relates to a problem of intertemporal variation of those costs. Given the expected impact of climate change on precipitation in some regions where drinking water is mostly supplied by groundwater intakes, and since around 97% of forest land is privately owned, these results may suggest that appropriate incentives (e.g., payments for ecosystem services) could contribute to ensuring the sustainable use of water and forest resources.publishe