Comments on a Note on Optimal Effort in the Maldivian Tuna Industry

Reasons are given why spatial differences in travel costs for tuna boats fishing in the same region may be of little significance in the Maldives. Claims are made that the fishing ground concept is of limited value in the case of a migratory species such as tuna and that there are practical difficulties in implementing the Campbell and Lindner tax/subsidy scheme, which in practice could give rise to a deadweight social loss. Furthermore, in the absence of empirical quantification, Campbell and Lindner give no real guide to optimal fishing effort policy in the Maldives.Environmental Economics and Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Economic Policy Instruments and Municipal Solid Waste Management for Sustainable Economic Development

In the past the assumption was that environment was free and unlimited and this led to both environmental damage and rapid resource depletion. Now humanity is realising that the natural environment is a scarce resource. Therefore the objective of growth should be to reduce the human induced (anthropogenic) waste to a level that is ‘acceptable’ to society, because it is scientifically impossible to completely eliminate the generation of anthropogenic waste. Also there is a need to balance growth with resource preservation so that the needs of the future generation will be balance with those of the present generation. Once scarcity is accepted, appropriate technology will be developed to minimise waste generation. This paper will demonstrate how waste reduction is consistent with the principle of sustainable development. The objective for sustainable development is to maximize service to throughput. Constant stock is required for sustainable development and with this the first sub objective is to maximize service and the other is to minimize throughput which is the entropic physical flow of energy for maintenance and renewal of the constant stock Minimization of throughput is achieved by adopting the 3 R principles of reduce, reuse and recycle. Environment is not a free good but a composite asset, and excessive waste generation leads to the undue depreciation of this asset reducing the services it is capable of providing

Municipal Solid Waste Management for Sustainable Development: Principles and Policy Instruments

There are a large number of definitions on sustainable development (see Pezzey; 1989). This paper will use some of those definitions that relate to economic activity only. The World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) under the chairmanship of Gro Brundtland, defined sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generation to meet their own needs" (WCED, 1987, p.43). The above definition is closely related to the concept of inter-generational equity, however the world does not operate on the basis of needs. The world operates on the basis of unlimited wants with limited resources. On this basis Pearce and Warford (1993) redefined sustainable development as "development that secures increases in the welfare of the current generation provided that welfare in the future does not decrease" (p. 49). This paper uses the definition put forward by Pearce and Turner (1990), who define sustainable development as development that "involves maximising the net benefits of economic development, subject to maintaining the services and quality of natural resources over time" (p. 24). This definition has the following implications on resource utilization by any generation: • Renewable resources should be utilised at a rate equal to or less than their natural rate of regeneration: and • Non-renewable resources should be utilised in a manner, subject to: • Resource substitutability; and Technological availability and the likelihood of technological progress

Marine Development and Socio-Economic Conflicts (Internal and External) of the Maldives

The Republic of Maldives is an archipelago consisting of 26 coral atolls, situated in the lndian Oecan, south-west of India. Its closest neighbour is India, which lies 595 km from the northern most atoll and the next closest is Sri Lanka, which is 670 km from the capital Male. The twenty-six coral atolls contain about 1,190 very small islands of which only 203 are inhabited. The longest island Gan, in Addu atoll, is about 7.2 km long. Male, the capital, occupies an island about 1.6 km long on the eastern side of Hale atoll. The total land area is only 298 square km, even though the area covered by the Republic is 90,000 square km. Because of this limited land mass and because of its lack of mineral and oil reserves and because of the fact that the agricultural potential is limited due to the alkaline nature of the soil, its poor water retention capacity and its lack of nitrogen, (Butany, 1976), the Maldives has a narrow resource base (Sathiendrakumar and Tisdell, 1985). Its main natural resources consist of fisheries and a marine environment conducive to international tourism. In general, the opportunities for alternative employment in coral based island economies are quite limited (Tisdell and Fairbairn, 1983). Thus the main prospect for economic development of Maldives lies in the possibility of exploiting the economic potential of its marine resources

Sustainable Development: Some Key Issues

This paper raises the question, how can sustainable development be achieved and what are the limiting constraints in achieving sustainable development? The main objective of this paper is to focus on key conceptual issues of 'sustainable development' with important operational implications for the attainment of 'sustainable development'. This paper is not designed to generate a general theory of sustainability. Even though there are various definitions of sustainable development, the paper uses the definition put forward by Peace and Warford (1993) which defines sustainable development as "development that secures increases in the welfare of the current generation provided that welfare in the future does not decrease" (Pearce and Warford, 1993, p. 49). Using this definition, the paper considers four important sub-objectives of sustainable development namely: equity and social justice issues, ecological issues, economic issues (maximising service to a given stock of resources) and environmental issues (minimising throughput to maintain a given level of stock. Using this frame work, the paper considers the conditions necessary for sustainable development namely: (1) maintaining a minimum population, (2) reducing poverty, (3) optimal depletion of non-renewable resources, (4) optimal depletion of renewable but exhaustible resources, (5) preventing environmental degradation and (6) improving energy efficiency. Finally, the paper also emphasises the need to change the current measurement of growth which fails to account for sustainability principles

Multinational Corporations and Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries: With special emphasis on Sri Lanka

The most significant development in international economic relations during the past two decades or so has been the spectacular rise in power and influence of multinational corporations. They have been seen as international carriers of capital, technology and skilled labour throughout the world. But it is difficult to calculate the distribution of benefits of international production between foreigners and nationals. Multinational corporations carry with them technologies of production, tastes and styles of living, managerial services and drives business practices such as advertising and the phenomenon of "transfer pricing". This paper focuses on the role of multinational corporations as a vehicle for foreign direct investment in developing countries with special emphasis on Sri Lanka. The paper highlights the reasons for corporate governance failures in some East Asian economies and highlights the need for corporate governance for foreign direct investment to have long-term benefits to the host countries. The paper concludes that FDI can be an important stimulus to economic and social development in Sri Lanka as long as the Multinational Corporations and host countries policies coincide to a larger extent. This may be possible with selective capital account liberalization in order to pursue with the interest of Sri Lanka's development objectives

Successful Globalisation Requires Good Corporate Governance: Some East Asian Experience

Corporate governance is the relationship between company's management, its board, its shareholders and other stakeholders (Monks and Minow, 1995; Redmond, 2000). Therefore, the function of corporate governance is to provide the structure through which shareholders, directors and managers set their broad objectives for the company and is a means of attaining those set objectives. In order to achieve those objectives, it is also entrusted with monitoring of performance (Redmond, 2000)

An Evaluation of Fisheries Policies Available to Australia for the management of Southern Blue Fin Tuna Fishery

In the absence of proper management, fishery resource tends to be exploited as a common property resource with a tendency towards over-exploitation. In the absence of appropriate property rights, the exploitation of a common property such as the fisheries may lead to over exploitation (and possible extinction of a species but not with migratory species such as the southern blue fin tuna) and externalities both contemporaneous and inter-generational. The paper aims to identify the various economic policy instruments that may be available and then uses a 'cubic' model to select the best model suitable for the blue fin tuna fishery. Price control is selected as the appropriate policy instrument, even though individual transferable catch quota is also a possibility. Price control is based on levying a tax on catches and is oriented towards economic efficiency