Working Paper 16-02 - The New Economic Geography : a survey of the literature

This overview of the literature dedicated to the new economic geography intends to highlight the main mechanisms, which contribute to explain the spatial concentration of economic activity, in particular the formation of cities and industrial districts. This should provide some guidelines for an empirical analysis of the determinants of the spatial distribution of economic activity in urban areas in Belgium and for suggestions of economic policy instruments capable of influencing location choices.

Internationally tradeable emission certificates: efficiency and equity in linking environmental protection with economic development

Three topics dominate the formulation an international greenhouse-gas regime as part of an effective global environmental policy. Efficiency, equity, and uncertainty. And three major policy instruments are discussed as regards the implementation of the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change: A carbon tax/C02-charge, joint implementation, and tradeable emission certificates. This paper tries to answer a question that has not been rigidly asked before: How could tradeable emission certificates be tailored in such a way as to be of benefit to the developing countries, to facilitate global environmental protection and economic development at the same time, and to meet both the efficiency and the equity criterion in international relations. Next to market organization and rules of procedure, allocation of the entitlements is crucial. The author suggests a dynamic formulae, by which the initial allocation of certificates starts on the basis of current greenhouse-gas emissions but over time turns towards equity in the form of equal per capita emissions. In this way, making emission entitlements tradeable among countries implies not only that a globally effective limit to total emissions is attained with certainty, but also that the current unfair allocation of emission entitlements is consecutively shifted in favour of the poor countries. --

Globalisation and the environment: On triangle concepts and three pillars' strategies

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Global environmental governance: speeding up the debate on a world environment organization

With the beginning of the new millennium, the longstanding need for reform of the United Nations system has gained new momentum. Efficiency gains and better coordination are desirable, though not sufficient to bring about improvement in international relations. There is need, therefore, to look for institutional innovations that would upgrade the pressing tasks of environmental and development policy in the eyes of national governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations, improve the institutional setting for the negotiation and implementation of new agreements and action programs, and strengthen the action capacity of the developing countries on these matters. The present essay points to and elaborates the need . for global environmental governance with the help of a »World Environment and Development Organization» within the United Nations system, and outlines the shape it might be given. --Global environmental problems,capacity building for development and environmental protection,UN reform,WEDO

How to lead world society towards sustainable development?

In political terms it all started with the World Commission on Environment and Development which in its 1987 report Our Common Future stated that ...humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED, p. 8). The Commission defined sustainable development as ... a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investment, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs (WCED, p. 9; italics added), Sustainable development thus deals with two fundamental issues, i.e. inter-generational equity and comprehensive structural adjustment. --

Bioregionalism: a pragmatic European perspective

In Europe, the recent debate on globalisation of the economy has - ironically - given a notable push for various concepts of regionalisation. Regions always played a strong role in people's perceptions of a good life, but regions were predominantly understood as political boundaries of states, provinces or counties. Bioregionalism, however, addresses the biological basis for a sustainable future. This concept gains in importance with the acknowledgement that ecological limits exist and that the ecological footprint of modern society is too large to be sustained in the future. Some preliminary steps have been made in Europe to define - or even impose - such limits, which in the end could lead to new and different patterns of regional development. -- Die jüngste Debatte um die Globalisierung der Wirtschaft hat in Europa - ironischerweise - eine Reaktivierung verschiedener Konzepte der Regionalisierung bewirkt. Regionen haben stets eine Rolle gespielt bei der Frage nach Identität und gutem Leben, doch wurden sie zumeist nur als politische Grenzen (von Ländern, Provinzen oder Kreisen) verstanden. Bioregionalismus meint dagegen die biologisch-physikalische Basis einer nachhaltigen, zukunftsfähigen Entwicklung. Dieses Konzept erhält Gewicht mit der Anerkennung bestimmter ökologischer Grenzen der Entwicklung und der Erkenntnis, daß der ökologische Fußabdruck (ecological footprint) der modernen Gesellschaft zu groß geworden ist, um verallgemeinerbar und zukunftsfähig zu sein. Einige vorläufige Schritte sind in Europa unternommen worden, Regionen neu, das heißt auch ökologisch zu definieren, was zu neuen und damit unterschiedlichen Mustern regionaler Entwicklung führen kann.