This paper considers self-enforcing international environmental agreements when countries are asymmetric with respect to emission-related benefits and environmental damage. Considering these asymmetries simultaneously yields large stable coalitions, also without the option of transfers between signatories. However, these large stable coalitions are only possible if they include countries that have relatively high marginal benefits and a relatively low marginal environmental damage. This type of countries hardly contributes to the common good and the gains of cooperation from including this type of countries in the stable coalition are small. This confirms a persistent result in this literature that large stable coalitions usually go hand in hand with low gains of cooperation. Without the option of transfers it is always better to have a small stable coalition with countries that matter than a large stable coalition with countries that do not matter. Only with transfers might a large stable coalition be able to perform better.

We study the effects of providing subsidies to the fisheries in small island developing states (SIDS), where fisheries are important to both the food security and livelihoods of the populations. By analyzing data on current and potential catch and computing the potential catch losses from the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of SIDS, we find that, collectively, SIDS have currently overfished their waters to the extent that their current catch is just under 50 per cent of the maximum catch potential. This catch loss results in direct and indirect food security impacts in terms of losses in healthy, varied and nutrient-rich food, revenues, incomes and economic impacts in SIDS. Our results also demonstrate that capacity-enhancing subsidies contribute to overfishing while the effect of good subsidies is unclear and needs further analysis.

We analyze the performance of the Federal Industrial Inspection Program operated by the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) in Mexico City. We seek to answer three questions: What drives the inspections? What determines non-compliance? And what drives imposition of fines? We use firm-level data that identify certain characteristics of the firms, PROFEPA's inspections, compliance results and fines for all air polluting firms under the Program during the period January 2000–October 2008. We obtain three main results. First, PROFEPA's inspections have focused on larger firms devoted to industrial activities located in poor and dense municipalities. Second, past inspections were significant and have a high marginal effect on compliance. Third, the severity of the infraction was not relevant to the decision to impose a fine but rather to its amount.

The European Union (EU) is now discussing a legislation proposal to ban illegal timber from the EU market. We use the ICES model to estimate the reallocation of global demand and timber imports following the EU legislation. We aim to assess the economic impacts and measure the potential emission reduction resulting from the introduction of this policy. Results show that an EU ban targeting only log imports is not effective in reducing illegal logging, but its main effect is the removal of illegal logs from international markets. Additionally, the unilateral EU ban increases secondary wood production in illegal logging countries as their exports become relatively more competitive. Through this mechanism, part of the banned illegal timber will re-enter international trade flows ‘hidden’ as processed wood. Extending the ban to timber processed products eliminates this effect and reinforces direct carbon emissions reduction from logging activities.

This paper analyzes North-South negotiations over climate change abatement. We consider that northern countries have an incentive to negotiate over a transfer to the southern countries in exchange for their abatement efforts rather than reducing their emissions at home. We study the incentives for northern and southern countries to form negotiation-coalitions at each side of the bargaining table and the impact of these negotiation-coalitions on the final outcome. We show that the incentives can be separated into direct efficiency gains, as fixed costs savings, and indirect bargaining power gains. Depending on the relative values of these gains, we determine the equilibrium of the game. We also show that bargaining power gains encourage southern countries to negotiate separately while they encourage northern countries to unite, and that this hinders the formation of the grand coalition.

Electronic waste generated from the consumption of durable goods in developed countries is often exported to underdeveloped countries for reuse, recycling and disposal with unfortunate environmental consequences. The lack of efficient disposal policies within developing nations coupled with global free trade agreements make it difficult for consumers to internalize these costs. This paper develops a two-country model, one economically developed and the other underdeveloped, to solve for optimal tax policies necessary to achieve the efficient allocation of economic resources in an economy with a durable good available for global reuse without policy measures in the underdeveloped country. A tax in the developed country on purchases of the new durable good combined with a waste tax set below the domestic external cost of disposal is sufficient for global efficiency. The implication of allowing free global trade in electronic waste is also examined, where optimal policy resembles a global deposit-refund system.

A choice experiment was applied to measure the existence value of an endemic moss. We assessed value separation, embedding or warm glow and ‘ethical’ motivations. We exemplify our application by valuing an inconspicuous moss endemic to Chile's sub-Antarctic region. The choice experiment was administered to a sample of local residents of Navarino Island (southern Chile). The design isolates the existence value by requiring respondents to make simultaneous tradeoffs between moss existence value, five other biodiversity-related values and income changes. Insensitivity to scope was addressed by using degrees of extinction risks. We predominantly use a willingness-to-accept design of the payment vehicle to avoid protest responses. A meaningful marginal value for the existence of an endemic species for Navarino island residents was documented. The design, based on varying degrees of extinction risk, avoided a strong effect of warm glow. No protest responses motivated by ethical concerns were encountered.

The occupation of the last remaining tropical forests has been an initiative of many developing nations that is debated by the global community due to impacts on soil erosion, biodiversity loss and contributions to global climate change. Arguments against development range from the irreversible nature of tropical deforestation to the synergistic losses associated with environmental degradation and continued poverty. The focus of this paper is to determine if evidence of market advancements and growth can be found in an Amazonian settlement, thus providing counter-evidence for the boom–bust pattern of development that has been predicted for much of the Amazon. Using panel survey data (for four survey waves between 1996 and 2009), we find trends that are consistent with the industrial life cycle, suggesting a pattern that is more consistent with growth, development and consolidation.

The paper analyzes the impact of environmental information dissemination by an information agent in a product market duopoly. The information agent performs the task of disseminating information regarding a green and a polluting firm's environmental profiles to consumers differing in their preferences for the two firms’ products. The result reveals that, in the absence of information dissemination, the green firm earns a lower market share which necessitates the information agent's intervention to encourage the consumption of green product. Moreover, complete information dissemination regarding the green firm's environmental profile is sufficient to generate a higher market share for the green firm. The paper also finds that an increase in information dissemination regarding either of the two firms’ environmental profiles decreases environmental damage accrued to the society and encourages a greener consumption pattern. An eco-efficiency drive is shown to be self-corrective as it negates the need for the informational intervention.

Conservation practitioners are increasingly turning to incentive-based approaches to encourage local resource users to change behaviors that impact on biodiversity and natural habitat. Three such approaches are buyouts, conservation agreements and alternative livelihoods. We assess the design and performance of these types of marine conservation interventions through an analysis of 27 case studies from around the world. Here we focus on cases that are particularly relevant to designing incentives for Small Island Developing States. Many more opportunities exist for interventions that combine the strengths of these approaches, such as through performance-based agreements that provide funds for education or alternative livelihood development.

The Mekong River Basin (MRB) is a trans-boundary river shared by six countries. The governance by the Mekong River Commission (MRC) of the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) is weak. This study investigates the welfare effects in the year 2030 arising from strengthening the MRC's governance versus joint management of the entire MRB. Without joint management, strengthening the MRC's governance has a huge potential to achieve welfare gains and it requires that the interests of all stakeholders be equally balanced. A bargaining approach shows that the LMB has no incentive to negotiate with China and is better off strengthening the MRC's governance instead. If such strengthening could be realized, further welfare gains of joint management by a wider and stronger MRC, including China, would be very small.

Transboundary pollution is a particularly serious problem as it leads people located at regional borders to disproportionately suffer from pollution. In China, where the environmental policy is decentralized and where environmental conflicts between provinces have occurred several times, transboundary pollution is likely to exist. However, until now, nearly all the studies have focused on developed countries. In this paper we study whether transboundary pollution problems exist in China. To do so, we estimate whether, within Hebei province, polluting firms are more likely to set up in border counties than in interior ones. The estimations of a count-data model allow us to conclude that border counties are more attractive destinations for polluting firms than counties located within the province. Moreover, it appears that this effect has strengthened over time.

Assessing and empirically measuring the development impact of rainwater management innovations to inform related decisions remains conceptually and methodologically difficult. Whether it is empirically more appropriate to assess and measure the impact pathways than the impact per se remains an important methodological issue. This paper proposes a Rainwater–Livelihoods–Poverty Index (RLPI) as a comprehensive and participatory impact pathway assessment technique with measurable indicators recapitulating the sustainable livelihoods framework. The methodological contributions to rainwater impact assessment are two-fold. First, the RLPI explicitly incorporates intermediate processes and impact pathways as important factors affecting the development impacts of rainwater-related interventions. Second, the RLPI combines quantitative and qualitative household response data into a single yet meaningful quantitative impact indicator. This makes the methodology participatory, allowing farmers engagement to use their knowledge (as local expert observers) in informing rainwater management decisions. The methodology is empirically tested in Diga district (western Ethiopia) and validated using expert opinions.

We estimate the marginal willingness-to-pay for PM10 abatement in the three largest Mexican cities. We use a unique data set with actual market transactions at the household level from January 2003 to May 2004 and observed PM10 concentrations. We follow an instrumental variable approach to mitigate bias from omitted variables. We exploit the seasonality in PM10 concentrations due to rainfall patterns in those cities to construct a valid instrument for PM10. We find the house price–pollution elasticity to be around − 0.07 for Mexico City, − 0.05 for Guadalajara, and − 0.07 for Monterrey, implying that one unit reduction in PM10 levels is valued at US$41.73, 36.34 and 43.47, respectively. Our results indicate that urban residents of Mexico are willing to pay for cleaner air.

This paper presents the analysis of a choice experiment designed to estimate willingness-to-pay (WTP) to mitigate damages caused by invasive plant species in a rural community of Nepal. In order to address the cash constraints problem in a subsistence economy, two payment attributes, labour contribution and membership fee, were included in the choice sets. The results reveal that rural farmers have significant WTP for forest management activities, in terms of both cash and labour contributions. The results also suggest that rural farmers value their time in this context at a different rate from the current wage rate.

We examine the substitutability of waste and scrap exported from different countries by estimating the export demand functions of China. In particular, we focus on the export of other ferrous waste and scrap (HS code 720449) and other waste, parings and scrap of plastics (HS code 391590). It is shown that the substitutability of these wastes and scraps is weak among the exporting countries. Our empirical results imply that a uniform ban on trading hazardous waste, represented by the Basel Ban, could be an inefficient environmental policy.

The theoretical definitions of sustainability proposed in EDE's recent symposium, Sustainability and the Measurement of Wealth, are useful for measuring national wealth but not for measuring sustainability. Moreover, because they are based on market prices and extensions to them, the empirical estimates are not indicators of sustainability. Sustainable development is defined and a theoretic indicator is proposed using maximin theory.