The secondary benefits of climate change mitigation: an overlapping generations approach

Climate change, Environmental regulation, Growth, Pollution, Health, Q25, Q28,

Economic effects of global warming under stock growth uncertainty: the European sardine fishery

Global warming of the oceans is expected to alter the environmental conditions that determine the growth of a fishery resource. Most climate change studies are based on models and scenarios that focus on economic growth, or they concentrate on simulating the potential losses or cost to fisheries due to climate change. However, analysis that addresses model optimization problems to better understand of the complex dynamics of climate change and marine ecosystems is still lacking. In this paper a simple algorithm to compute transitional dynamics in order to quantify the effect of climate change on the European sardine fishery is presented. The model results indicate that global warming will not necessarily lead to a monotonic decrease in the expected biomass levels. Our results show that if the resource is exploited optimally then in the short run, increases in the surface temperature of the fishery ground are compatible with higher expected biomass and economic profit.Financial aid from the European Commission (MYFISH, FP7-KBBE-2011-5, nº 289257), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ECO2009-14697-C02-02) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ECO2012-39098-C06-01 and ECO2012-35820) is gratefully acknowledged. The first draft of the paper was written while Jose María Da Rocha was visiting Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica-CSIC, and the hospitality extended by its members is gratefully acknowledged. Sebastián Villasante acknowledges the financial support of the Latin American and Caribbean 20 Environmental Economic Program, the Swedish International Cooperation Development Agency, the International Development Research Center, and the Pedro Barrié de La Maza Foundation. The author is also grateful to the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics (The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Sweden) for awarding him the Karl-Göran Mäler Scholarship