Economics And Engineering Of Unpredictable Events

In recent decades, the intensification of unpredictable events including the Covid-19 outbreak, Brexit, trade warfare, religion-inspired terrorism and civil wars, and climate change has resulted in serious loss of human lives and property, a decrease in biodiversity and natural hazards (with long-term negative impacts on environment), and impeded social and economic development. Economics and Engineering of Unpredictable Events: Modelling, Planning and Policies provides an integrated view of the management of unpredictable events incorporating three major perspectives: economic management, environmental planning and engineering models. Contributors from economics, planning, regional science, and engineering address key questions including; How resilient are human societies and their habitats? What should societies do to shift from being vulnerable to being more resilient? And what role should planning and policies play to protect communities and the natural environment? The chapters cover academic debates, conceptual reflections, case studies, methods, and strategy development with particular reference to mitigation and adaptation in face of unpredictable events. This book is of particular interest to readers of economic policy, urban and regional planning and engineering.

There has been a burgeoning interest in energy security in recent years due to the transformation of the energy landscape through deepening market deregulation, rising environmental challenges, growing energy hunger, and significant political changes. Depicting energy security as an evolving concept that absorbs economic and political conditions, this book adopts an economic approach to energy security in the international gas market. Uniquely, the book explores the theoretical assumptions and practical consequences attached to both demand and supply-side security in global energy markets. It investigates why energy exporters are so protective of independence in energy exports. The book also looks at the critically important issue of environmental aspects of energy security, particularly around climate change. It also analyses the potential for a cartel in the international gas market, similarly to the oil industry. This book will be of much interest to readers in energy economics, energy security, energy policy, IR/security studies, and relevant policy-makers.

In response to the damage caused by a growth-led global economy, researchers across the world started investigating the association between environmental pollution and its possible determinants using different models and techniques. Most famously, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesizes an inverted U-shaped association between environmental quality and gross domestic product (GDP). This book explores the latest literature on the environmental Kuznets curve, including developments in the methodology, the impacts of the pandemic, and other recent findings. Researchers have recently broadened the range of the list of drivers of environmental pollution under consideration, which now includes variables such as foreign direct investment, trade expansion, financial development, human activities, population growth, and renewable and nonrenewable energy resources, all of which vary across different countries and times. And in addition to CO2 emissions, other proxies for environmental quality – such as water, land, and ecological footprints – have been used in recent studies. This book also incorporates analysis of the relationship between economic growth and the environment during the COVID-19 crisis, presenting new empirical work on the impact of the pandemic on energy use, the financial sector, trade, and tourism. Collectively, these developments have improved the direction and extent of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis and broadened the basket of dependent and independent variables which may be incorporated. This book will be invaluable reading for researchers in environmental economics and econometrics.

Many emerging economies are on the front line of the devastating impacts of global warming such as desertification and extreme weather events, but, for historical and political reasons, they follow ambitious growth targets with seemingly little concern for climate change and environmental degradation. Focusing on the case of Turkey, this book investigates the economic impacts of possible climate change policies to help meet the required mitigation targets and transition to a low carbon economy. In order to reach net-zero targets by 2050 in compliance with the Paris Agreement, Turkey must introduce policies that promote low carbon investments, green jobs and low carbon employment more broadly. This book explores the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of a carbon pricing mechanism by developing an econometric vector autoregression (VAR) model to analyse key data sets. This time series analysis provides insights on a macro level, dealing with aggregate data in which the role and complexity of micro interferences disappear, allowing for the discovery of patterns and changes over time. Thus, the book contributes to the literature on methodology by arguing that time series analysis is one of the best-fitting approaches to estimate possible impacts of climate change policies on an economy. Additionally, the results of the model are compared and contrasted with similar data from other emerging economies to identify potential common policy solutions between countries at a similar stage of development. This book is vital reading for researchers interested in climate policy, the economics of climate change and environmental economics.

Environmental finance and green banking are central drivers of the transition to a sustainable economy and essential components in solutions to climate change. This book presents the latest research on theory and practices in these interdisciplinary fields, incorporating both public and corporate finance. It introduces three parts – environmental investing and financing, green banking and environmental policies in the public sector. The book explores the current trends, dynamics and ways forward for environmental finance and green banking, including fundamental theories (e.g., environmental Kuznets curve) and comparisons between traditional and green bond efficiency, corporate governance practices and disclosure, green central banking, climate finance, sustainable strategies, green Islamic banking, and public climate fund management in multi-country contexts. The contributors to this book highlight significant challenges ahead while recognizing potential opportunities, such as the revolution in green investments and trading in green bonds. This book is a welcome addition to the literature on environmental economics and finance and the economics of sustainability and climate change.

The speed with which the various economies recover from the Covid-19 pandemic will significantly determine the economic pressure placed on the environment in the medium-to-long-term. Furthermore, the pandemic has highlighted the strong interrelations between natural and societal systems, with societal resilience depending on a resilient environmental support system. In this context, the book argues that the pandemic represents a wake-up call for financial systems to be better prepared for the climate crisis and social risk, and has provided a stimulus to scale down the reliance of the global economy on fossil fuels. The first part of the book provides a deep and creative discussion between leading international researchers and experts on the policy options and financial instruments which can help to catalyze the green finance transition in the post-Covid-19 era. The contributions show that sustainable finance is emerging as a powerful tool to advance the transition towards a more environmentally and socially sustainable economic model. Instruments such as sovereign green bonds, green securities, and other sustainability-related securities can play a significant role in the post-Covid-19 world to fund economic stimulus and to lead the way to new and more sustainable future. The second part of the book supports the debate by highlighting a number of selected case studies on financing transitions in different regional contexts including Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. The book marks a significant contribution to the literature on environmental economics and finance, climate change, and sustainability transitions. Chapter 12 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

In 2015, the United Nations decided to establish the goal of achieving “zero hunger” in the world by 2030 through “outcome targets” such as eliminating hunger and improving access to food, ending all forms of malnutrition, promoting sustainable and resilient agriculture, and maintaining genetic diversity in food production. As a result of this decision, strategies are under way in different countries around the world in the form of political, academic, development, and non-governmental organization projects and programs. Five years later, these strategies have certainly generated results that need to be documented and analyzed so as to answer the following questions: what are the progress and success stories in terms of policies, innovations, technologies, and approaches to reach the zero hunger goal? What are the constraints and mitigation strategies? Are we really in a phase of transition towards the zero hunger goal? What new directions do we need to consider to achieve this goal, particularly in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, which affects all sectors of development around the world? Transitioning to Zero Hunger is part of MDPI's new Open Access book series Transitioning to Sustainability. With this series, MDPI pursues environmentally and socially relevant research which contributes to efforts toward a sustainable world. Transitioning to Sustainability aims to add to the conversation about regional and global sustainable development according to the 17 SDGs. The book series is intended to reach beyond disciplinary, even academic boundaries.

Modern optimization approaches have attracted many research scientists, decision makers and practicing researchers in recent years as powerful intelligent computational techniques for solving several complex real-world problems. The Handbook of Research on Modern Optimization Algorithms and Applications in Engineering and Economics highlights the latest research innovations and applications of algorithms designed for optimization applications within the fields of engineering, IT, and economics. Focusing on a variety of methods and systems as well as practical examples, this book is a significant resource for graduate-level students, decision makers, and researchers in both public and private sectors who are seeking research-based methods for modeling uncertain real-world problems. .