Sustainability and Environmental Valuation

For economists, sustainability and environmental valuation are connected in two ways. At the micro level, proper environmental valuation is required if projects are to be approved and rejected consistently with sustainability requirements. This is cost benefit analysis. At the macro level, many take the view that sustainability requires that national income measurement be modified so as to account for environmental damage. Such natural resource accounting is possible only if environmental damage is valued for incorporation into the economic accounts. The paper reviews the techniques that economists have developed for environmental valuation. In regard to cost benefit analysis and sustainability, it is noted that the technique on which most interest focuses, the Contingent Valuation Method, involves the extension of the domain of consumer demand analysis to include the natural environment. Contributions questioning the appropriateness of this are reviewed, and it is argued that they merit more attention from economists than they have received to date. In regard to natural resource accounting, it is argued that while there is little prospect of it achieving what its proponents claim for it, the modelling that it necessarily implies has the potential to both clarify valuation issues and play an important role in informing the policy process.sustainability, valuation, environment, contingent valuation, natural resource accounting, optimization

Attribute Causality in Environmental Choice Modelling

When selecting attributes in environmentalChoice Modelling studies, preference should begiven to those attributes that aredemand-relevant, policy-relevant, andmeasurable. The use of these criteria willoften result in a short list of environmentalattributes of which some are causally related. The inclusion of attributes that have a``cause-effect'' relationship may stimulate somerespondents to seek to understand the causalrelations among attributes in order to assigngreater meaning to the alternatives, andpotentially, simplify the decision makingprocess. This may have implications for theweights they assign to each of the attributeswhen identifying the preferred alternatives,and subsequently for the implicit prices and/orwelfare estimates. A test of the impact ofincluding an attribute that causesimpacts on ecosystem health as well as anattribute relating to ecosystem health effectson parameter estimates, implicitprices and welfare estimates is conducted. Twoquestionnaires are developed, one with the`causal' attribute included and one without. Acomparison of results indicates that when the`causal' attribute is included in the vector ofchoice attributes, the implicit value of asingle endangered species falls by 34 per centwhilst no significant difference is detected inthe parameter estimates. Importantly, however,estimates of compensating surplus for a givenpolicy package do not differsignificantly across the two treatments. Thisimplies that to the extent that the inclusionof a `causal' attribute reduces the implicitprices for one or more of the `effect'attributes, the associated loss in utility isapproximately offset by the utility nowassociated with the new attribute. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002attributes, choice modelling, valuation, vegetation,

Community values for environmental protection in a cane farming catchment in Northern Australia: a choice modelling study

Choice modelling is an emerging approach to estimating the non-use values of environmental services with multiple attributes. In this paper, results are reported of a choice modelling study conducted in the Herbert River District of North Queensland to estimate the value placed on the protection of natural vegetation in areas suitable for cane production by the local community. Resource use options that vary in the level of environmental protection and the level of agricultural production were presented as a series of choice sets and respondents were asked to choose among a set of three discrete alternatives in a given choice set. The alternatives in each choice set were described by four attributes, pertaining to the area of tea tree woodlands, the area of vegetation along rivers and in wetlands, regional income from cane production, and an environmental levy. The responses were analysed together with socio-economic data using a nested-logit discrete-choice model to estimate the community willingness-to-pay for the protection of natural vegetation. The results indicate that the environmental values of wetlands are comparable to returns from commercial production of sugar cane and that the values of teatree woodlands are comparable to returns from extensive grazing. It is argued that land allocation policies should recognise these values in tandem with commercial benefits of production to ensure that resources are used more efficiently

National and International Benefit Transfer Testing with a Rigorous Test Procedure

Benefit transfer, as a mean to transfer values from existing monetary valuation studies to new policy sites, has been in use for many years. This paper aims to analyze the forecasting quality of benefit transfer by applying a rigoroust-test – also referred to as Accuracy-t-test – that takes into account testing errors which were made in previous surveys. Beside the analysis of national benefit transfers based on two German contingent valuation studies additional efforts were made to investigate into the validity and accuracy of international benefit transfer by considering two Norwegian studies that employed a similar survey design. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004benefit transfer, contingent valuation method, water quality,

The multiple-channel cochlear implant: the interface between sound and the central nervous system for hearing, speech, and language in deaf people—a personal perspective

The multiple-channel cochlear implant is the first sensori-neural prosthesis to effectively and safely bring electronic technology into a direct physiological relation with the central nervous system and human consciousness, and to give speech perception to severely-profoundly deaf people and spoken language to children. Research showed that the place and temporal coding of sound frequencies could be partly replicated by multiple-channel stimulation of the auditory nerve. This required safety studies on how to prevent the effects to the cochlea of trauma, electrical stimuli, biomaterials and middle ear infection. The mechanical properties of an array and mode of stimulation for the place coding of speech frequencies were determined. A fully implantable receiver–stimulator was developed, as well as the procedures for the clinical assessment of deaf people, and the surgical placement of the device. The perception of electrically coded sounds was determined, and a speech processing strategy discovered that enabled late-deafened adults to comprehend running speech. The brain processing systems for patterns of electrical stimuli reproducing speech were elucidated. The research was developed industrially, and improvements in speech processing made through presenting additional speech frequencies by place coding. Finally, the importance of the multiple-channel cochlear implant for early deafened children was established