Avoided deforestation can be characterized as the use of financial incentives to reduce rates of deforestation and forest degradation, with much of the focus on forests in tropical countries.

While avoided deforestation, as a policy issue, is not new, the current debate in academic and policy circles on including it in future climate change mitigation strategies such as the Clean Development Mechanism is gathering pace - and this debate is only likely to intensify as negotiations continue over what should be included in the successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to...

For decades, social scientists have searched for factors that shape pro-environmental
behaviour. However, only a few studies have investigated the causes and
consequences of participation in environmental organizations. This book fills the gap by analysing in detail the determinants of environmental participation and its consequences in different parts of the world.

Benno Torgler, Maria A. Garcia-Valinas and Alison Macintyre seek the answer to several questions regarding who is working towards positive outcomes for our environment, what sort of social and...

How can we build the institutions that will promote the cooperation needed to meet our intertwined environmental and economic needs? Efforts to meet these twin goals in New York City's watershed collaborations offer some guidance. The experience provides lessons in addressing scattered sources of pollution, encouraging environmentally compatible economic development, and coping with conflicts that are part of the collaboration process. It also yields insights into what we need to work effectively towards sustainable economic development.

This book identifies many barriers to...

This book aims to show that economics in general and non-market valuation methods in particular, together with participatory and engineering tools, can facilitate the design and implementation of the different European policies in relation to mitigation of water stress. The results presented in this book derive from AquaStress, an EU funded integrated project, delivering interdisciplinary methodologies to help mitigate water stress problems. The project draws on both academic and practitioner skills to generate knowledge in technological, operational management, policy, socio-economic, and...

Significant advances have occurred in recent years in Europe and in North America in addressing agri-environmental policies. Land use issues tend to be more pressing in Europe than in the US as a whole because of different spatial exigencies. Because these advances have taken place within individual academic disciplines, there has been something of a loss of synergy and often efforts are duplicated.

While important institutional and legal differences still exist between the two continents, the sharing of recent scientific advances will benefit scientists on both sides of...

The controversy over genetically modified (GM) crops in industrialized countries is paralleled by a loud debate over their potential role in developing countries, with supporters claiming that GM crops are the best hope for reducing rural poverty and hunger, and opponents predicting that they can only bring corporate control of peasant agriculture and environmental disaster. This book offers an examination of the performance of the new technology in the broader context of the agricultural institutions that govern its generation.

Environmental policy may produce effects which go beyond the scope of the specific policy's initial aim. Reforestation, for example, generates positive benefits not only in the shape of climate protection but also in the shape of the combat of biodiversity loss and it may also raise the attractiveness of a region for tourists. There are several examples of environmental policies, generating initially unintended co-effects. These co-effects are not always positive, of course.

This book addresses the wide range of (co-)effects associated with environmental policies which may increase...

This volume assembles a group of eminent scholars to look at the problem of growth and environment from the perspective of environmental regulation. The questions addressed are: How does economic growth interact with regulation, and what are the best approaches to regulation in use today?

The context for the volume is the current situation in China, where twenty years of rapid growth have created a situation in which there are both demands for environmental regulation and needs for choosing a future development path. The advent of "A Macro-Environmental Strategy" for China...

Eco-innovation is becoming a conceptual reference point for many regional and international public policies and management strategies. This field of research has been focusing on how environmental innovation is particularly related to the intensity of emissions and economic performance. There are two reasons for this growing interest. The first is that environmental performance is one of the main economic policy goals of European countries, thanks to its relevance to the Lisbon Strategy and the Goteborg priorities for sustainable development. The second, which is partly linked to the...

Policy and management decisions are often made on financial grounds. However, the economic value of the benefits that people derive from ecosystems, that is, ecosystem services, may not be fully recognised and hence ecosystem considerations may not be incorporated adequately into decision-making processes. This is particularly true for regulating services, the benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes, the valuation of which requires an interdisciplinary approach. In essence, valuation is a problem solving strategy and a problem is a problem, it does not respect the...