Alternatives For Environmental Valuation

How can we value the environment, this is the crucial issue that this book debates. The critical analyses carried out within the book by such figures as Nick Hanley and Jonathan Aldred are vital to ensuring that future economic growth is not achieved at the expense of our environment.

This volume consists of papers covering six key topics: cost-benefit analysis; the approaches of economists and ecologists; the pros and cons of alternative valuation methods; contingent valuation; environmental benefit estimates; and the establishment of research priorities.

The questionnaire-based Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) asks people what would they be willing to pay for an environmental good or attribute, or willing to accept for its loss. These papers consider the real value of such surveys.

This companion volume to Economic Instruments for Environmental Management presents essential information on the applications of economic valuation to environment and development. It draws on a three-year collaborative effort by research institutions around the world. Authoritative studies review the range of valuation methods used in developing economies, their purposes, the problems encountered and the quality of the results. Topics covered include the value of wildlife viewing, the conservation of rainforests, mangroves and coral reefs, supplying rural water, and controlling urban air pollution. The analysis reveals important methodological and contextual factors, highlighting key lessons and ways of strengthening future valuations. Written to be accessible to non-economists, the book provides source material for students and academics, and for policy-makers and professionals, using valuation methods to frame policy.

The monetary valuation of environmental goods and services has evolved from a fringe field of study in the late 1970s and early 1980s to a primary focus of environmental economists over the past decade. Despite its rapid growth, practitioners of valuation techniques often find themselves defending their practices to both users of the results of applied studies and, perhaps more troubling, to other practitioners. One of the more heated threads of this internal debate over valuation techniques revolves around the types of data to use in performing a valuation study. In the infant years of the development of valuation techniques, two schools of thought emerged: the revealed preference school and the stated preference school, the latter of which is perhaps most associated with the contingent valuation method. In the midst of this debate an exciting new approach to non-market valuation was developed in the 1990s: a combination and joint estimation of revealed preference and stated preference data. There are two primary objectives for this book. One objective is to fill a gap in the nonmarket valuation "primer" literature. A number of books have appeared over the past decade that develop the theory and methods of nonmarket valuation but each takes an individual nonmarket valuation method approach. This book considers each of these valuation methods in combination with another method. These relationships can be exploited econometrically to obtain more valid and reliable estimates of willingness-to-pay relative to the individual methods. The second objective is to showcase recent and novel applications of data combination and joint estimation via a set of original, state-of-the-art studies that are contributed by leading researchers in the field. This book will be accessible to economists and consultants working in business or government, as well as an invaluable resource for researchers and students alike.

Environmental Valuation in Developed Countries will be of interest to policy makers and economist in search of a variety of methodologies related to environmental valuation. Political Studies Review This is the second of two volumes of case studies that illustrate how environmental economists place values on environmental assets and on the flows of goods and services generated by those assets. The first volume, Valuing the Environment in Developing Countries, illustrates methodologies and applications of valuation techniques in the developing world; this volume concentrates on developed or wealthy nations where the first examples of economic valuation of the environment were carried out. This important book assembles studies that discuss broad areas of application of economic valuation from amenity and pollution through to water and health risks, from forestry to green urban space. In this, his last book, the late David Pearce brought together leading European experts, contributors to some two dozen case studies exploring the frontiers of economic valuation of natural resources and environmental amenity in the developed world. Essays on the role of valuation in environmental policy, environmental justice and green accounts are presented, and case study topics include: valuing forestry benefits GM crops water use and quality externalities in the electricity sector renewable energy benefits electricity transmission line disamenity urban greenspace chemical risks noise pollution. Economic valuation has undoubtedly made an important contribution to the environmental debate, and the contributors illustrate how sophisticated techniques have become, and how powerful their application can be. As such, this significant volume will prove essential reading for academics, researchers, students and practitioners in the field of environmental economics.

Nutrient recycling, habitat for plants and animals, flood control, and water supply are among the many beneficial services provided by aquatic ecosystems. In making decisions about human activities, such as draining a wetland for a housing development, it is essential to consider both the value of the development and the value of the ecosystem services that could be lost. Despite a growing recognition of the importance of ecosystem services, their value is often overlooked in environmental decision-making. This report identifies methods for assigning economic value to ecosystem servicesâ€"even intangible onesâ€"and calls for greater collaboration between ecologists and economists in such efforts.

Non-market valuation has become a broadly accepted and widely practiced means of measuring the economic values of the environment and natural resources. In this book, the authors provide a guide to the statistical and econometric practices that economists employ in estimating non-market values. The authors develop the econometric models that underlie the basic methods: contingent valuation, travel cost models, random utility models and hedonic models. They analyze the measurement of non-market values as a procedure with two steps: the estimation of parameters of demand and preference functions and the calculation of benefits from the estimated models. Each of the models is carefully developed from the preference function to the behavioral or response function that researchers observe. The models are then illustrated with datasets that characterize the kinds of data researchers typically deal with. The real world data and clarity of writing in this book will appeal to environmental economists, students, researchers and practitioners in multilateral banks and government agencies.

Contingent valuation is one of the means of incorporating socio-environmental considerations in cost–benefit analysis. The authors of this book have examined environmental valuation methods through the lens of cost–benefit analysis focused on three case studies in Japan: public parks, a bay wetland, and a recreational theme park. With implications for the world at large, the findings presented here serve as a valuable source of information on Japanese behavior regarding the valuation of environmental goods. New, alternative approaches and guidelines for cost–benefit analysis in the public and private spheres also are discussed. This volume makes an important addition to the library of all researchers and other scientists in the fields of environmental science and environmental economics.