An Economic Analysis Of Environmental Conflict Resolution

Environmental conflict resolution (ECR) is a process of negotiation that allows stakeholders in a dispute to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement on their own terms. The tools of ECR, such as facilitation, mediation, and conflict assessment, suggest that it fits well with other ideas for reforming environmental policy. First used in 1974, ECR has been an official part of policymaking since the mid-1990s. This is the first book to evaluate systematically the results of these efforts. The contributions to this book critically investigate the record and potential of ECR, drawing on perspectives from political science, public administration, regional planning, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and law.

This anthology discusses important issues surrounding environmental law and economics and provides an in-depth analysis of its use in legislation, regulation and legal adjudication from a neoclassical and behavioural law and economics perspective. Environmental issues raise a vast range of legal questions: to what extent is it justifiable to rely on markets and continued technological innovation, especially as it relates to present exploitation of scarce resources? Or is it necessary for the state to intervene? Regulatory instruments are available to create and maintain a more sustainable society: command and control regulations, restraints, Pigovian taxes, emission certificates, nudging policies, etc. If regulation in a certain legal field is necessary, which policies and methods will most effectively spur sustainable consumption and production in order to protect the environment while mitigating any potential negative impact on economic development? Since the related problems are often caused by scarcity of resources, economic analysis of law can offer remarkable insights for their resolution. Part I underlines the foundations of environmental law and economics. Part II analyses the effectiveness of economic instruments and regulations in environmental law. Part III is dedicated to the problems of climate change. Finally, Part IV focuses on tort and criminal law. The twenty-one chapters in this volume deliver insights into the multifaceted debate surrounding the use of economic instruments in environmental regulation in Europe.

This book asks under which conditions cooperation is in the interest of the riparian countries sharing international waters, and how institutions must be designed to realize potential gains of cooperation.

Conflict is a major facet of many environmental challenges of our time. However, growing conflict complexity makes it more difficult to identify win-win strategies for sustainable conflict resolution. Innovative methods are needed to help predict, understand, and resolve conflicts in cooperative ways. Agent-Based Modeling of Environmental Conflict and Cooperation examines computer modeling techniques as an important set of tools for assessing environmental and resource-based conflicts and, ultimately, for finding pathways to conflict resolution and cooperation. This book has two major goals. First, it argues that complexity science can be a unifying framework for professions engaged in conflict studies and resolution, including anthropology, law, management, peace studies, urban planning, and geography. Second, this book presents an innovative framework for approaching conflicts as complex adaptive systems by using many forms of environmental analysis, including system dynamics modeling, agent-based modeling, evolutionary game theory, viability theory, and network analysis. Known as VIABLE (Values and Investments from Agent-Based interaction and Learning in Environmental systems), this framework allows users to model advanced facets of conflicts—including institution building, coalition formation, adaptive learning, and the potential for future conflict—and conflict resolution based on the long-term viability of the actors’ strategies. Written for scholars, students, practitioners, and policy makers alike, this book offers readers an extensive introduction to environmental conflict research and resolution techniques. As the result of decades of research, the text presents a strong argument for conflict modeling and reviews the most popular and advanced techniques, including system dynamics modeling, agent-based modeling, and participatory modeling methods. This indispensable guide uses NetLogo, a widely used and free modeling software package, to implement the VIABLE modeling approach in three case study applications around the world. Readers are invited to explore, adapt, modify, and expand these models to conflicts they hope to better understand and resolve.

It has always been thought that some level of pollution and waste is unavoidable in development projects. But no one has made much effort to quantify and assess the extent of this sort of damage. In this book a group of analysts from the Asian Development Bank and from the East West Center propose a means of constructing useful economic evaluations of the impacts of development projects on the environments in which they are constructed. This study demands the systematic evaluation of all the intentional and unintentional consequences of development initiatives before they are determined upon. It is essential reading for development economists, analysts and bankers. Originally published in 1986

This revised and updated guide to the environmental economics of development projects demonstrates how the environmental impacts of projects can be translated into monetary values. The theoretical bases are examined, and the techniques themselves given detailed exposition, supported by extensive case studies illustrating a wide range of applications. The text should become a useful complement to all standard forms of project analysis.

Increasing world demands for water call for new institutions and rules to minimize economic and political conflicts. Growing water quality problems from industry and agriculture only further exacerbate supply problems. Such conflicts can jeopardize economic and, in some parts of the world, even social order. To help understand the benefits and pitfalls of possible alternative organizations, the contributors focus on local, interregional and international cases, using a variety of economic analysis methods. Practitioners, students, and scholars will find this work a valuable resource in water policy, environmental policy, resource economics, and civil engineering.