Economic and Environmental Impacts of Various Climate Policy Scenarios

The purpose of the paper is to compare various climate policies within a cost-benefit analysis framework in a world divided in five regional groups. Global cooperation is compared with non cooperative behavior and partial cooperation (coalition of countries cooperating while others do not) in terms of economic and environmental impacts. The next step is to deviate from an economic analysis of cooperative and non cooperative policies to study the impacts of various hypothetical climate policies as well as policies discussed from the Earth Summit to the Kyoto Protocol: uniform reduction, different stabilization policies and policies associated with the Kyoto Protocol. This more pragmatic issue, which is less aimed at efficiency, demonstrates that an "ideal"scenario does not exist, because economic and environmental objectives do not necessarily coincide. It also shows that the Kyoto Protocol was probably more directed towards an environmental rather than an economic goal and examines an alternative option for retaining the participation of the United Sates

Biological reserves Rare Species and the Opportunity Cost of Diversity

The preservation of species diversity generally suggests protection of either the greatest number of species possible or all species. Requiring representation of each species in at least one parcel in the system and seeking the minimum number of parcels in the reserve system to achieve this requirement is termed the Species Set Covering Problem (SSCP). Nonetheless, it is important, as well, to consider the rarest of species, as their populations are the most in need of protection to assure their survival. This paper uses zero-one programming models and an existing data set to study species protection, rarity and the opportunity costs of diversity. We employ for this purpose an integer programming model that uses the SSCP format to require at least one representation of each and every species, but that seeks in addition protection of the rarest species. This is achieved by maximizing redundant coverage of those species designated as rare. Results are then compared to those of the SSCP. Recognizing that resources available for conservation purchases could well be insufficient to represent all species at least once, we structure a model aimed at trading-off first coverage of the greatest number of species against redundant coverage of rare species. We develop a tradeoff curve for this multi-objective problem in order to evaluate the opportunity cost of covering more species as redundant coverage of rare species decreases ­and vice versa. Finally, various possible rarity sets and various budget proxies are considered along with their impacts on conservation policies, Pareto optimality and on the opportunity cost of diversity

Sustainability and the Environmental Kuznets Curve Conjecture: An Introduction

In December 1954, Simon Kuznets delivered his Presidential Address at the American Economic Association about economic growth and income inequality [...