Author: Jacques Richard
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000637387
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 145
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Book Description
The solutions and tools generally offered to policymakers on environmental issues – such as carbon pricing and environmental taxation – most often emanate from neoclassical economists. This book shows that the tools of these economists are ineffective for the job and must be replaced by methods from the sphere of ecological accounting. The work has four main themes: First, the book provides a presentation and criticism of the tools traditionally proposed by neoclassical economists. Adopting a historical perspective, this section shows how these tools have evolved over time and explores some of the theoretical criticisms which have been leveled at them. Second, the book shows how mainstream economists have moved away from more pragmatic and efficient solutions because of their ignorance of the realities of management, in particular, corporate accounting, and their ideologically driven desire to avoid attacking the capitalist model. Third, a toolkit of anti-capitalist ecological accounting is outlined, showcasing the distinct advantages of this approach for the environmental crises. And finally the book considers the concrete possibilities of a rapid application of these new tools to combat the immediate threats we are facing. The book will interest all readers who want to understand how anti-capitalist ecological accounting can contribute to cooling and saving the planet, in particular readers in ecological economics and accounting.
Author: Ranjula Bali Swain
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000655369
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
The informal economy – broadly defined as economic activity that is not subject to government regulation or taxation – sustains a large part of the world's workforce. It is a diverse, complex and growing area of activity. However, being largely unregulated, its impact on the environment has not been closely scrutinised or analysed. This edited volume demonstrates that the informal sector is a major source of environmental pollution and a major reason behind the environmental degradation accompanying the expansion of economic activity in developing countries. Environmental regulation and economic incentive policies are difficult to implement in this sector because economic units are unregistered, geographically dispersed and difficult to identify. Moreover, given their limited capital base, they cannot afford to pay pollution fees or install pollution abating equipment. Informal manufacturing units often operate under unscientific and unhealthy conditions, further contributing to polluting the environment. The book emphasizes and examines these challenges, and their solutions, encountered in various sectors of the informal economy, including urban waste pickers, small-scale farmers, informal workers, home-based workers, street vendors, and more. If the informal sector is to "Leave no one behind" (as the Sustainable Development Goals promise) and contribute to "inclusive growth" (an objective of the green economy), then its impact on the economy as well as the environment has to be carefully considered. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on both the informal economy and sustainable development, and will be of great interest to readers in economics, geography, politics, environment studies and public policy more broadly. Chapter 4 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license
Author: Robert Costanza
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231513240
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 543
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Book Description
Ecological economics is a new transdisciplinary approach to understanding and managing the ecology and economics of our world for sustainability on local, regional, and global scales. The previous isolation of these two fields has led to economic and environmental policies that have been mutually destructive rather than reinforcing in the long term. This book brings together these two disciplines in chapters covering the basic worldview of ecological economics; accounting, modeling, and analysis of ecological economicl systems; and necessary institutional changes and case studies.
Author: Joy E Hecht
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1136525645
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
This book presents national environmental, or 'green' accounting as it has developed in Europe and other parts of the world. It introduces the most recent methods developed through the United Nations Statistical Department and other international organizations, but bridges the gap between the superficial treatment of environmental accounting in economics textbooks and environmental literature, on the one hand, and the highly technical manuals of international organizations, on the other. Joy Hecht begins with a history and introduction to national income accounting. The first part of her book explains how the environmental accounts build on the structure of the 1993 System of National Accounts. She then shows the UN approach to accounting applied to pollution, recycling, and the management of natural resources such as forests, minerals, and fisheries. The third section discusses how the accounts approach green GDP and other macroeconomic indicators. The book concludes by going beyond the UN structures to discuss other adjusted macroeconomic measures and how accounting data can be used to build them. National Environmental Accounting is a non-technical introduction to an increasingly important field. It is a must-read for anyone interested in how environmental accounts can help society move towards greater sustainability.
Author: Sanja Tišma
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000653382
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 113
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Book Description
This book demonstrates that a holistic approach to the bioeconomy is essential if it is to achieve its full potential in driving economic growth while simultaneously providing ecological, social and technological benefits. Definitions of the ‘bioeconomy’ vary but in general it incorporates the ways in which societies manage and distribute their primary or secondary biological resources for further use in everyday life (e.g. food, materials, and energy). The classical sectors related to the bioeconomy have therefore been agriculture, forestry and aquaculture, now extended to include bioenergy, biofuels, biochemicals, and other processing and service industries. There are also related new concepts such us the blue economy, the green economy, and the circular economy. This book integrates these definitions, sectoral analyses and new concepts into a fully rounded study of the bioeconomy. It is argued that the key aims in the coming years have to be the harmonization of public policies between different sectors, regulation of legislative framework for the bioeconomy, and clear communication of these issues. In particular, the book argues that a strengthening of the monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of the bioeconomy on society is an essential starting point. For this to be effective, appropriate indicators need to be established and defined for the monitoring of the effects of these resilient policies related to bioeconomy and their impact on local and regional development and quality of life. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the bioeconomy including students and scholars of ecological economics, environmental economics, sustainability, innovation, and regional development.
Author: Salah El Serafy
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1781007365
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
'This is an important book. It not only serves as a valuable contribution to green accounting, it is a testament to Salah El Serafy's tireless efforts to reform the national income accounts in ways that would better reveal the sustainable product of nations and the value of development policies. No matter what differences the reader may have with some of the points made, there is no denying that the world would be a much improved place if the reforms suggested by El Serafy were implemented.' – Philip Lawn, Flinders University, Australia 'This book is a fabulous summary of Salah El Serafy's seminal contributions to "greening" national income accounts. If only we had employed the famous "El Serafy method" of investing depletion of non-renewable resources into renewable alternatives, the world would be in a much stronger and more sustainable place today. Hopefully it is not too late to take up this and El Serafy's many other recommendations for improving national income accounting.' – Robert Costanza, Portland State University, US Though scientists and environmentalists have long expressed concern over the rapid deterioration of the global environment, economists have largely failed to recognize the issue's relevance to their field. Salah El Serafy argues for an increased focus on the economic aspects of environmental degradation, calling for a fundamental shift in how economists measure and discuss national income. Through a combination of new material reflecting recent developments in the field and previously published essays that provide a history of green accounting, the author emphasizes the importance of considering natural resources as part of a nation's economic capital. Setting forth what has become known as the 'El Serafy Method', this fascinating and complex volume presents both the justification and the methodology for giving the environment a place in the global economic conversation. Students, professors, researchers and policymakers in the field of environmental and ecological economics will no doubt find much to appreciate in this thoughtful and comprehensive analysis of the intersection between economics and the environment.
Author: Dariusz Pieńkowski
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003824242
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
Drawing on a broad transdisciplinary background, this book compares distributive justice systems and related socioeconomic institutions within the liberal and sustainable development traditions. Confronting the capitalist worldview of prominent Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman, the book offers a theoretical framework for sustainable development: a new paradigm of economics grounded in environmental and social issues. The analysis takes as its starting point that the development and evolution of human beings is codetermined by socioeconomic institutions. These institutions facilitate models of society, morality and human behaviour: they are all social constructs. This matters because the liberal system of justice uses the claim that ‘life is unfair’ as the justification of socioeconomic inequalities, and it is these institutions which determine the concepts of fairness and justice. Therefore, the liberal system’s favouring of entrepreneurs should require advance measures to safeguard the interests of the losers—instead, it seeks to justify their misfortunes. It is argued that this liberal notion of fairness can only be fairly executed in conditions of perfect market competition, which have never existed. In contrast, the principles of sustainable development pay attention to the problems generated by the unjust and unfair distribution of resources and postulate wider use of the fairness formula ‘to each according to their needs’. It is thus more focused on fair ends than on fair procedures. This book is addressed to scholars and advanced students in ecological economics, environmental economics, economics of sustainable development and political science.
Author: Nicolas Befort
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100084689X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 166
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Book Description
The bioeconomy is steadily becoming more important in regional, national and European public policies. As it encompasses the transformation of agricultural, marine and organic resources into food, feed, fuels, energy and materials, the bioeconomy should become a major new industry, outlining the possibility of a post-fossil future. This book is the first attempt to depict the origins, formation and challenges of this new industry in terms of emerging institutions, innovation and economic strategies. The result of this work is that the substitution of raw materials alone is not enough to get out of the fossil economy. This book develops a political economy of the ecological transition which theorizes the transition as a new crisis of capitalism. This phase is characterized by stakeholders’ attempts to develop renewed rationales and strategies to take control of the reorganization of flows of natural resources, their outcomes and their evaluation. The proposed framework considers recent results in four complementary research strands: transition studies, institutional economics, ecological economics and the evolutionary economics of innovation. The book will be of interest to researchers interested in the development of the bioeconomy, and both researchers and students seeking to understand the role of heterodox economics in the ecological transition.
Author: Shi-Ling Hsu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108474829
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
Humankind must harness capitalism, not quash it, if it wants to save itself from ecological catastrophe.
Author: Judy Brown
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351798022
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 181
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Book Description
Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution of land and water, land-use changes, lack of equality and other problems at local, national and global levels represent a challenge for economics as a social science. Mainstream neoclassical economics may be able to contribute to a more sustainable society but it has also played a dominant role in a period where problems have been aggravated. A pluralist and democratic view of economics is therefore very much warranted. This book presents a multidimensional and ideologically more open view of economics: understanding economics in multidimensional terms is in accordance with the 17 sustainable development goals recognized by nations at the UN-level in 2015. Accordingly, approaches to decision making and accounting at the national- and business levels have to be reconsidered. Neoclassical Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) with focus on the monetary dimension and an assumed consensus about a specific market ideology to be applied is not compatible with democratic societies where citizen and actors in other roles normally differ with respect to ideological orientation. Environmental Impact Statements and Multi-Criteria methods are used to some extent to broaden approaches to decision-making. In this book, Positional Analysis is advocated as a multidimensional and ideologically open approach. Positional Analysis is based on a political economic conceptual framework (as part of ecological economics) that differs from neoclassical ideas of individuals, firms and markets. And since approaches to decision-making and to accounting are closely connected, a new theoretical perspective in economics similarly raises issues of how national and business accounting can be opened up to meet present demands among various actors in society. This perspective raises also numerous ethical questions at the science and policy interface that need to be properly addressed for sustainability decision making.
