The levelized costs of electricity generation for renewable energy technologies differ and fluctuate depending on factors including capital costs, operation and maintenance costs, utilization factors, and economic lives. In addition to these factors, In the case of fossil fuels, prices and heat rate are also responsible for fluctuations. There is a global movement in favor renewable energy. Many countries have announced carbon-free electricity within the next 30–40 years, which implies massive expansion of renewable energy technologies. The newer investment trends in electricity generation technologies indicate the same. Technological breakthroughs and cost reductions of energy storage technologies would further favor renewable energy technologies and would decrease their intermittency hurdles. Developments that expand the scaling effect of renewable energy and the potential improvement in efficiency through continued research and development could bring the cost of renewable energy further down in the future. When the levelized costs of electricity generation are estimated, the declining trends of renewable energy costs are observed and can to a large extent (but not fully) be explained by certain potential drivers. Particularly for wind and solar, these drivers include technological innovation/improvements that have increased efficiency, policy supports such as research and development funding, economy of scale both in the manufacturing of equipment (solar panels, wind turbines) and installation of plants, and monopoly rent dissipation due to increased number of manufacturers and suppliers. Competition among equipment manufacturers and project developers may also contribute to cost decline as could cost reduction through improved product efficiency related to technological improvements and innovations.
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Article
Economics of Renewable Energy: A Comparison of Electricity Production Costs Across Technologies
Govinda R. Timilsina and Kalim U. Shah
Article
Economics of Solar Power
Christine L. Crago
Energy from the sun has vast potential for powering modern society. The first decades of the 21st century saw a rapid increase in the deployment of solar power, with global solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity growing over 25-fold, from 23 GW to 627 GW, between 2009 and 2019. Growth in the solar PV market is supported by financial and regulatory incentives offered by many governments worldwide. These incentives include feed-in tariffs, rebates, and tax incentives, as well as market-support policies governing permitting and grid interconnection. Despite the rapid growth in solar PV capacity, solar electricity accounts for under 3% of global electricity generation, suggesting that there is huge potential for the solar PV market to expand and meet global energy demand.
Foremost among the benefits of solar power is its potential to drastically cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity sector. Solar electricity can also reduce local air pollution, and growth of the PV market can enhance energy security and contribute to the green economy. However, there are challenges to future expansion of the solar PV market. One of the key barriers is the cost of solar projects. Although as of 2020 the cost of utility-scale solar projects was beginning to be competitive with the cost of conventional energy sources, further reductions in costs are needed to achieve deeper penetration of solar electricity. Other challenges associated with solar electricity have to do with the predictable and unpredictable aspects of solar resource. On the one hand, solar resource varies predictably based on season and time of day. When solar electricity output coincides with peak electricity demand, solar electricity provides added value to the electrical grid. On the other hand, weather variation, air quality, and other factors can drastically alter predicted output from solar PV systems. The unpredictable aspect of solar electricity poses a major challenge for integrating solar electricity into the electrical grid, especially for high levels of penetration. Grid operators must either store electricity or rely on standby generators to maintain grid reliability, both of which are costly. Advances in storage technology and grid management will be needed if solar electricity is to be a major source of electricity supply.
Residential adoption of rooftop solar PV systems has led to the growth of “prosumers” (households that consume and produce electricity) and has provided a novel setting to examine several aspects of consumer behavior related to adoption of new technology and energy-use behavior. Studies show that financial incentives, pro-environmental preferences, and social interactions affect adoption of solar PV technology. Prosumers are also likely to consume more electricity after they install solar PV systems.
Decarbonization goals related to society’s response to climate change are expected to drive future growth in the solar PV market. In addition to technological advances, market mechanisms and policies are needed to ensure that the transition to an energy system dominated by solar and other renewables is accomplished in a way that is economically efficient and socially equitable.
Article
Economics of the Biodiversity Convention
Joanne C. Burgess
Biological diversity refers to the variety of life on Earth, in all its forms and interactions. Biological diversity, or biodiversity for short, is being lost at an unprecedented rate. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species estimates that 25% of mammals, 41% of amphibians, 33% of reef building corals, and 13% of birds are threatened with extinction. These biodiversity benefits are being lost due to conversion of natural habitat, overharvesting, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. The loss of biodiversity is important because it provides many critical resources, services, and ecosystem functions, such as foods, medicines, clean air, and storm protection. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse pose a major risk to human societies and economic welfare.
The CBD was established in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio “Earth Summit”) and enacted in 1993. The international treaty aims to conserve biodiversity and ensure the sustainable use of the components of biodiversity and the equitable sharing of the benefits derived from the use of genetic resources. The CBD has near universal global participation with 196 parties signatory to the treaty. The non-legally binding commitments established in 2010 by the CBD are known as the Aichi Targets. They include the goal of conserving at least 17% of terrestrial and inland water habitats and 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020.
Biodiversity continues to decline at an unprecedented rate and the world faces “biological annihilation” and a sixth mass extinction event. There are several underlying causes of the continuing loss of biodiversity that need to be addressed. First, the CBD Aichi Targets are not ambitious enough and should be extended to protect as much as 50% of the terrestrial realm for biodiversity. Second, it is difficult to place an economic value on the range of direct, indirect, and nonuse values of biodiversity. The failure to take into account the full economic value of biodiversity in prices, projects, and policy decisions means that biodiversity is often misused and overused. Third, biodiversity is a global public good and displays nonrival and nonexcludable characteristics. Because of this, it is difficult to raise sufficient funds for conservation and to channel these funds to cover local conservation costs. In particular, much of the world’s biodiversity is located in (mainly tropical) developing countries, and they do not have the incentive or the funds to spend the money to “save” enough biodiversity on behalf of the rest of the world. The funding for global biodiversity conservation is $4–$10 billion annually, whereas around $100 billion a year is needed to protect the Earth’s broad range of animal and plant species. This funding gap undermines CBD’s conservation efforts. Governments and international organizations have been unable to raise the investments needed to reverse the decline in biological populations and habitats on land and in oceans. There is an important role for private-sector involvement in the CBD to endorse efforts for more sustainable use of biodiversity and to contribute funds to finance conservation and habitat protection efforts.
Article
Economics of the Genuine Progress Indicator
Junior Ruiz Garcia
The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is an interesting alternative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an indicator of society’s development. Historically, GDP has been used by policymakers, media analysts, and economists as the main indicator of development, even though economics textbooks often state that it is not a measure of social welfare. Strictly speaking, GDP is only an indicator of the production of economic goods and services, not an index of well-being or development. It does not include the environmental, social, or economic costs of producing goods and services. The theoretical basis of GDP is conventional macroeconomics, which adopts an isolated economic system as the object of analysis. In this approach, there is no flow of matter and energy to produce economic goods and services. The economy is considered a perpetual motion machine that does not need material and energy to produce and which consequently does not generate waste. However, the economy is a subsystem open to the flow of matter and energy, supported by a closed, natural subsystem—the global environmental system. In practice, the production of economic goods and services is dependent on the continuous flow of matter and energy from the environment, and inherently, the result of GDP is also the generation of waste. The GPI adopts this perspective. In the 1990s, Daly and Cobb created the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), hereafter termed GPI. The objective was to incorporate environmental, social, and economic costs associated with GDP growth, and to generate an indicator that reflected a genuine development of society. The GPI has been estimated for several countries, including the United States, Australia, China, and Brazil. This indicator is neither perfect nor complete for assessing development or human well-being, but it is superior to GDP. Despite technological development, there has been an unequivocal increase in environmental degradation, contrary to the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The result of environmental degradation has been an increase in the environmental, social, and economic costs of GDP growth. However, these costs have been ignored by policymakers, companies, and society in their production and consumption decisions. Improving the GPI and its estimates can provide better information for decision making by economic and political agents.
Article
The Economics of the Law of the Sea
Till Markus and Gerd Markus
The Economics of the Law of the Sea (LoS) quite generally investigates how the LoS has developed in the past, how it functions at present, and how it could serve in the future. It explores economic factors that shape the LoS, assesses its economic effects, and evaluates different legal options from an economic perspective with a view to achieving specific goals. Accordingly, it can address a large variety of topics and pick from a wide range of ideas, analytical frames, and tools.
Studies in this area can, for example, investigate economic drivers that have influenced the development of the modern LoS, analyze general economic characteristics of ocean resources, explore the economics of specific ocean-related activities governed by the LoS (exploiting the sea floor, fishing, protecting coasts against sea level rise, etc.), and assess important economic effects of selected LoS measures (drawing boundaries, creating marine enclosures, and establishing permit regimes). Economic analyses of the LoS are particularly valuable in linking information regarding facts and norms, for example, by illuminating the economic dimensions of conflicts to lawyers or translating specific regulatory approaches into costs and benefits. In this way, it may contribute to managing oceans more rationally, efficiently, sustainably, and peacefully.
Article
The Economics of Tropical Rainforest Preservation
Carlos Eduardo Frickmann Young
Tropical forests are among the most biodiverse areas on Earth. They contribute to ecosystem functions, including regulating water flow and maintaining one of the most important carbon sinks on the planet, and provide resources for important economic activities, such as timber and nontimber products and fish and other food. Rainforests are not empty of human population and are sites of ethnically and culturally diverse cultures that are responsible for many human languages and dialects. They also provide resources for important economic activities, such as timber and nontimber products.
However, tropical deforestation caused by the expansion of agricultural activities and unsustainable logging continues at very high levels. The causes of forest loss vary by region. Livestock is the main driver in the Amazon, but commercial plantations (soybeans, sugar cane, and other tradable crops) also have an impact on deforestation, in many cases associated with violent conflicts over land tenure. In Southeast Asia, logging motivated by the tropical timber trade plays an important role, although palm oil plantations are an increasing cause of deforestation. In Africa, large-scale agricultural and industrial activities are less important, and the most critical factor is the expansion of subsistence and small-scale agriculture. However, trade-oriented activities, such as cocoa and coffee plantations in West Africa and logging in Central Africa, are becoming increasingly important.
Public policies have a strong influence on these changes in land use, from traditional community-based livelihood practices to for-profit livestock, cultivation, and timber extraction. Investments in infrastructure, tax and credit incentives, and institutional structures to stimulate migration and deforestation represent economic incentives that lead to deforestation. Poor governance and a lack of resources and political will to protect the traditional rights of the population and environmental resources are another cause of the continuous reduction of tropical forests.
Consequently, deforestation prevents the expansion of economic activities that could be established without threats to the remnants of native forest. There are also negative social consequences for the local population, which suffers from the degradation of the natural resources on which their production is based, and is hampered by air pollution caused by forest fires. In some situations, a vicious cycle is created between poverty and deforestation, since the expansion of the agricultural frontier reduces the forest areas where traditional communities once operated, but without generating job opportunities.
New approaches are required to reverse this paradigm and to lay the foundation for a sustainable economy based on the provision of ecosystem services provided by tropical forests. These include (a) better governance and public management capacity, (b) incentives for economic activities compatible with the preservation of the tropical forest, and (c) large-scale adoption of economic instruments to support biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Public policies are necessary to correct market failures and incorporate the values of ecosystem services in the land use decision process. In addition to penalties for predatory actions, incentives are needed for activities that support forest preservation, so the forest is worth retaining rather than clearing. Improving governance capacity, combining advanced science and technology with traditional knowledge, and improving the management of existing activities can also help to ensure sustainable development in tropical forest regions.
Article
Economics of Waste Minimization, Recycling, and Disposal
Rawshan Ara Begum and Sofia Ehsan
With rapid population growth and urbanization around the world, waste generation (solid, liquid, and gaseous) is increasing. Waste management is a critical factor in ensuring human health and environmental protection, which is a major concern of both developing and developed countries. Waste management systems and practices, including collection, transport, treatment, and disposal, vary between developed and developing countries or even in urban and rural areas. In response, economic models have been developed to help decision-makers choose the most efficient mix of policy levers to regulate solid waste and recycling activities. The economic models employ different kinds of data to estimate the factors that contribute to solid waste generation and recycling, and to estimate the effectiveness of the policy options employed for waste management and disposal. Thus, economic analysis plays a crucial role in the proper and efficient management of solid waste, and leads to significant developments in the field of environmental economics to reflect the costs of pollution related to waste, measure the environmental benefits of waste management, find cost-efficient solutions, and shape policies for environmental protection and sustainable development. Economic assessment and cost-benefit analysis help to determine optimal policies for efficient use of resources and management of waste problems to achieve sustainable waste management, especially in developing and least developed countries. Crucial challenges include issues such as the limits of waste hierarchy, integration of sustainable waste management, public-private cooperation, and linear versus circular economy.
Article
Economics of Water Scarcity in China
Yong Jiang
Water scarcity has long been recognized as a key issue challenging China’s water security and sustainable development. Economically, China’s water scarcity can be characterized by the uneven distribution of limited water resources across space and time in hydrological cycles that are inconsistent with the rising demand for a sufficient, stable water supply from rapid socioeconomic development coupled with a big, growing population. The limited water availability or scarcity has led to trade-offs in water use and management across sectors and space, while negatively affecting economic growth and the environment. Meanwhile, inefficiency and unsustainability prevail in China’s water use, attributable to government failure to account for the socioeconomic nature of water and its scarcity beyond hydrology.
China’s water supply comes mainly from surface water and groundwater. The nontraditional sources, wastewater reclamation and reuse in particular, have been increasingly contributing to water supply but are less explored. Modern advancement in solar and nuclear power development may help improve the potential and competitiveness of seawater desalination as an alternative water source. Nonetheless, technological measures to augment water supply can only play a limited role in addressing water scarcity, highlighting the necessity and importance of nontechnological measures and “soft” approaches for managing water. Water conservation, including improving water use efficiency, particularly in the agriculture sector, represents a reasonable strategy that has much potential but requires careful policy design.
China’s water management has started to pay greater attention to market-based approaches, such as tradable water rights and water pricing, accompanied by management reforms. In the past, these approaches have largely been treated as command-and-control tools for regulation rather than as economic instruments following economic design principles. While progress has been made in promoting the market-based approaches, the institutional aspect needs to be further improved to create supporting and enabling conditions. For water markets, developing regulations and institutions, combined with clearly defining water use rights, is needed to facilitate market trading of water rights. For water pricing, appropriate design based on the full cost of water supply needs to be strengthened, and policy implementation must be enforced.
An integrated approach is particularly relevant and greatly needed for China’s water management. This approach emphasizes integration and holistic consideration of water in relation to other resource management, development opportunities, and other policies across scales and sectors to achieve synergy, cost-effectiveness, multiple benefits, and eventually economic efficiency. Integrated water management has been increasingly applied, as exemplified by a national policy initiative to promote urban water resilience and sustainability. While economics can play a critical role in helping evaluate and compare alternative measures or design scenarios and in identifying multiple benefits, there is a need for economic or social cost–benefit analysis of China’s water policy or management that incorporates nonmarket costs and benefits.
Article
Economics of Water Security in India: Need for Strengthening Natural Capital
V. Ratna Reddy
Water security forms the basis for achieving multi-dimensional poverty alleviation. Water security is necessary for moving toward sustainable development. It reduces poverty and improves quality of life. Achieving water security is increasingly becoming a policy challenge in most of the developing countries like India. Water security is a comprehensive concept that comprises access to quantity and quality for different users and uses, ensuring environmental, economic, and social sustainability in the long run. It needs to be achieved at different scales (i.e., household, regional, and national levels). This calls for an integrated approach incorporating hydrological, socioeconomic, and ecosystem aspects. Water resources accounting is critical for ensuring water security. Resource accounting helps in identifying efficient and optimum allocation of resources to various components of water security. Integrating the costs of strengthening the natural resource base and environmental externalities is likely to help sustaining services in the long run. Integrating the economics of protecting the natural resource base into the planning and designing of service delivery is critical in this regard.
Article
The Economics of Watershed Management
Brent M. Haddad
Watersheds are physical regions from which all arriving water flows to a single exit point. The shared hydrology means that other biophysical systems are linked, typically with upper-gradient regions influencing lower-gradient ones. This situation frames the challenge of managing economic and other uses of watersheds both in terms of individual activities and their influence on other connected processes and activities. Economics provides concepts and methods that help managers with decision making in the complex physical, biological, and institutional environment of a watershed. Among the important concepts and methods that help characterize watershed processes are externalities, impacts of economic activity that fall upon individuals not party to the activity, and third parties, individuals impacted without consent. Public goods and common pool resources describe categories of things or processes that by their nature are not amenable to regular market transactions. Their regulation requires special consideration and alternative approaches to markets. Benefit-cost analysis and valuation are related methods that provide a means to compare alternative uses of the same system. Each is based on the normative argument that the best use provides the greatest net benefits to society. And intergenerational equity is a value orientation that argues for preservation of watershed processes for the benefit of future generations. The need for effective watershed management methods pushed 20th-century economists to adapt their discipline to the complexity of watersheds, from which emerged subdisciplines of natural resource economics, environmental economics, and ecological economics. The field is still evolving with a growing interest in data gathering through land-based low-cost data collection systems and remote sensing, and in emerging data analysis techniques to improve management decisions.
Article
Economic Value of Reducing Exposure to Environmental Health Risks
W. Kip Viscusi and Rachel Dalafave
Valuing the benefit of reduced exposures to environmental health risks requires assessment of the willingness to pay for the risk reduction. Usual measures typically estimate individual local rates of substitution between money and the reduced probability of the adverse health impact. Benefit-cost analyses then aggregate individuals’ willingness to pay to calculate society’s willingness to pay for the health risk reduction benefit. The theoretical basis for this approach is well established and is similar for mortality risks and health outcomes involving morbidity effects. Researchers have used both stated preference methods and revealed preference data that draw on values implicit in economic decisions. Continuing controversies with respect to valuation of environmental health impacts include the treatment of behavioral anomalies, such as the gap between willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept values, and the degree to which heterogeneity in values because of personal characteristics such as income and age should influence benefit values. A considerable literature exists on the value of a statistical life (VSL), the local tradeoff between fatality risk and money, which is used to value mortality risk reductions. Many VSL estimates use data from the United States for regulatory analyses of environmental policies, but several other countries have distinct valuation practices. There are empirical estimates of the benefits associated with reducing the risks of many environmental health effects, including cancer, respiratory diseases, gastrointestinal illnesses, and other health consequences that have morbidity effects.
Article
The Economic Value of Water
Michael Hanemann and Dale Whittington
In economics, the value of an item—including water—to a person is defined as the most of something else of value (typically money, but sometimes time) the person is willing to give up to obtain that item (willingness to pay) or the minimum compensation the person would want to receive in exchange for forgoing the item (willingness to accept). These are measures of gross value; they are in principle quantitative; and they are subjective and idiosyncratic to the individual and the circumstances. The economic value of an item is not measured by its price. It is likely to vary with the amount of the item and should not be taken as a constant. A core conceptual distinction is between use value and nonuse value. A person’s use value for an item is the value that she places on the item from motives connected with the use of the item by someone, whether her own use or that of someone else. Nonuse value is the value she places on an item from motives not directly connected with the use of that item by anybody in any tangible way. For example, a person may value water to drink (a use value), but he may also value having water remain in its natural state (a nonuse value). Consumptive uses are use values, but nonconsumptive uses can also be use values (e.g., swimming in a lake). Other conceptual distinctions include that between wet water and paper water (water that exists on paper but is not actually accessible or usable), and that between raw water alone versus water accompanied by the infrastructure necessary to store it and convey it so as to make it available for use.
Article
Ecosystem Benefits of Large Dead Wood in Freshwater Environments
Ellen Wohl
Large wood in freshwater environments is downed, dead wood pieces in river channels, floodplains, wetlands, and lakes. Large wood was historically much more abundant in freshwaters, but decades to centuries of deforestation and direct wood removal have decreased wood loads—volumes of large wood per unit area—in freshwaters around the world. The widespread public perception that large wood is undesirable in freshwater environments contrasts with scientific understanding of the beneficial effects of large wood. Large wood tends to increase the spatial heterogeneity of hydraulics, substrate, channel planform, and the floodplain and hyporheic zone in rivers. This equates to greater habitat diversity and refugia for organisms, as well as energy dissipation and storage of materials during floods, which can increase the resilience of the river to disturbances such as wildfire, drought, and flooding. Similarly, wood in lakes increases lakeshore and lakebed heterogeneity of hydraulics, substrate, habitat, nutrient uptake, and storage of particulate organic matter and sediment. Large wood in rivers and lakes provides an array of vital ecosystem functions, and both individual species and biotic communities are adversely affected by a lack of wood in rivers and lakes that have been managed in a way that reduces wood loads. River and lake management are now more likely to include protection of existing large wood and active reintroduction of large wood, but numerous questions remain regarding appropriate targets for wood loads in different environmental settings, including potential threshold wood loads necessary to create desired effects. Large wood can also directly and indirectly enhance carbon storage in freshwater environments, but this storage remains poorly quantified.
Article
Ecosystem Management of the Boreal Forest
Timo Kuuluvainen
Boreal countries are rich in forest resources, and for their area, they produce a disproportionally large share of the lumber, pulp, and paper bound for the global market. These countries have long-standing strong traditions in forestry education and institutions, as well as in timber-oriented forest management. However, global change, together with evolving societal values and demands, are challenging traditional forest management approaches. In particular, plantation-type management, where wood is harvested with short cutting cycles relative to the natural time span of stand development, has been criticized. Such management practices create landscapes composed of mosaics of young, even-aged, and structurally homogeneous stands, with scarcity of old trees and deadwood. In contrast, natural forest landscapes are characterized by the presence of old large trees, uneven-aged stand structures, abundant deadwood, and high overall structural diversity. The differences between managed and unmanaged forests result from the fundamental differences in the disturbance regimes of managed versus unmanaged forests. Declines in managed forest biodiversity and structural complexity, combined with rapidly changing climatic conditions, pose a risk to forest health, and hence, to the long-term maintenance of biodiversity and provisioning of important ecosystem goods and services. The application of ecosystem management in boreal forestry calls for a transition from plantation-type forestry toward more diversified management inspired by natural forest structure and dynamics.
Article
Ecosystem Services
Leon C. Braat
The concept of ecosystem services considers the usefulness of nature for human society. The economic importance of nature was described and analyzed in the 18th century, but the term ecosystem services was introduced only in 1981. Since then it has spurred an increasing number of academic publications, international research projects, and policy studies. Now a subject of intense debate in the global scientific community, from the natural to social science domains, it is also used, developed, and customized in policy arenas and considered, if in a still somewhat skeptical and apprehensive way, in the “practice” domain—by nature management agencies, farmers, foresters, and corporate business. This process of bridging evident gaps between ecology and economics, and between nature conservation and economic development, has also been felt in the political arena, including in the United Nations and the European Union (which have placed it at the center of their nature conservation and sustainable use strategies).
The concept involves the utilitarian framing of those functions of nature that are used by humans and considered beneficial to society as economic and social services. In this light, for example, the disappearance of biodiversity directly affects ecosystem functions that underpin critical services for human well-being. More generally, the concept can be defined in this manner: Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems, in interaction with contributions from human society, to human well-being.
The concept underpins four major discussions: (1) Academic: the ecological versus the economic dimensions of the goods and services that flow from ecosystems to the human economy; the challenge of integrating concepts and models across this paradigmatic divide; (2) Social: the risks versus benefits of bringing the utilitarian argument into political debates about nature conservation (Are ecosystem services good or bad for biodiversity and vice versa?); (3) Policy and planning: how to value the benefits from natural capital and ecosystem services (Will this improve decision-making on topics ranging from poverty alleviation via subsidies to farmers to planning of grey with green infrastructure to combining economic growth with nature conservation?); and (4) Practice: Can revenue come from smart management and sustainable use of ecosystems? Are there markets to be discovered and can businesses be created? How do taxes figure in an ecosystem-based economy? The outcomes of these discussions will both help to shape policy and planning of economies at global, national, and regional scales and contribute to the long-term survival and well-being of humanity.
Article
Ecosystem Services and Human Health
Elisabet Lindgren and Thomas Elmqvist
Ecosystem services refer to benefits for human societies and well-being obtained from ecosystems. Research on health effects of ecosystem services have until recently mostly focused on beneficial effects on physical and mental health from spending time in nature or having access to urban green space. However, nearly all of the different ecosystem services may have impacts on health, either directly or indirectly. Ecosystem services can be divided into provisioning services that provide food and water; regulating services that provide, for example, clean air, moderate extreme events, and regulate the local climate; supporting services that help maintain biodiversity and infectious disease control; and cultural services.
With a rapidly growing global population, the demand for food and water will increase. Knowledge about ecosystems will provide opportunities for sustainable agriculture production in both terrestrial and marine environments. Diarrheal diseases and associated childhood deaths are strongly linked to poor water quality, sanitation, and hygiene. Even though improvements are being made, nearly 750 million people still lack access to reliable water sources. Ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, and lakes capture, filter, and store water used for drinking, irrigation, and other human purposes. Wetlands also store and treat solid waste and wastewater, and such ecosystem services could become of increasing use for sustainable development.
Ecosystems contribute to local climate regulation and are of importance for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Coastal ecosystems, such as mangrove and coral reefs, act as natural barriers against storm surges and flooding. Flooding is associated with increased risk of deaths, epidemic outbreaks, and negative health impacts from destroyed infrastructure. Vegetation reduces the risk of flooding, also in cities, by increasing permeability and reducing surface runoff following precipitation events.
The urban heat island effect will increase city-center temperatures during heatwaves. The elderly, people with chronic cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and outdoor workers in cities where temperatures soar during heatwaves are in particular vulnerable to heat. Vegetation and especially trees help in different ways to reduce temperatures by shading and evapotranspiration. Air pollution increases the mortality and morbidity risks during heatwaves. Vegetation has been shown also to contribute to improved air quality by, depending on plant species, filtering out gases and airborne particulates. Greenery also has a noise-reducing effect, thereby decreasing noise-related illnesses and annoyances. Biological control uses the knowledge of ecosystems and biodiversity to help control human and animal diseases.
Natural surroundings and urban parks and gardens have direct beneficial effects on people’s physical and mental health and well-being. Increased physical activities have well-known health benefits. Spending time in natural environments has also been linked to aesthetic benefits, life enrichments, social cohesion, and spiritual experience. Even living close to or with a view of nature has been shown to reduce stress and increase a sense of well-being.
Article
Ecotechnology
Astrid Schwarz
Ecotechnology is both broad and widespread, yet it has never been given a universally shared definition; this remains the case even in the early 21st century. Given that it is used in the natural, engineering, and social sciences, as well as in design studies, in the philosophy and history of technology and in science policy, perhaps this is not surprising. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to come up with an unambiguous definition for ecotechnology: It should be understood rather as an umbrella term that facilitates connections among different scientific fields and science policy and, in so doing, offers a robust trading zone of ideas and concepts. The term is part of a cultural and sociopolitical framework and, as such, wields explanatory power. Ecotechnology approaches argue for the design of ensembles that embed human action within an ecologically functional environment and mediating this relationship by technological means. Related terms, such as ecotechnics, ecotechniques, ecotechnologies, and eco-technology, are used similarly.
In the 1970s, “ecotechnology,” along with other terms, gave a voice to an unease and a concern with sociotechnical transformations. This eventually gave rise to the first global environmental movement expressing a comprehensive eco-cultural critique of society-environment relations. Ecotechnology was part of the language used by activists, as well as by social theorists and natural scientists working in the transdisciplinary field of applied ecology. The concept of ecotechnology helped to both establish and “smooth over” environmental matters of concern in the worlds of economics, science, and policymaking. The process of deliberation about a green modernity is still ongoing and characterizes the search for a constructive intermediation between artificial and natural systems following environmentally benign design principles.
During the 1980s, disciplinary endeavors flourished in the global academic world, lending ecotechnology more and more visibility. Some of these endeavors, such as restoration ecology and ecological engineering, were rooted in the engineering sciences, but mobilized quite different traditions, namely population biology and systems biology. To date, ecotechnology has been replaced by and large by other terms in applied ecology. Another strand of work resulted in the discipline of social ecology, which developed different focal points, most notably critical political economy and a concern with nature-culture issues in the context of cultural ecology. Finally, more recently, ecotechnology has been discussed in several branches of philosophy that offer different narratives about the epistemic and ontological transformations triggered by an “ecologization” of societies and a theoretical turn toward relationality.
Article
Ecotourism
Giles Jackson
Ecotourism is responsible travel to natural areas that educates and inspires through interpretation—increasingly paired with practical action—that helps conserve the environment and sustain the well-being of local people. Ecotourism is the fastest-growing segment of the travel and tourism industry, and its economic value is projected to exceed USD$100 billion by 2027. Ecotourism emerged in the 1960s as a response to the destructive effects of mass tourism and has been embraced by an increasing number of governments, especially in the developing world, as a vehicle for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As an emerging, interdisciplinary field of study, ecotourism has reached a critical inflection point, as scholars reflect on the achievements and shortcomings of several decades of research and set out the research agenda for decades to come. The field has yet to achieve consensus on the most basic questions, such as how ecotourism is, or should be, defined; what makes it different from nature-based and related forms of tourism; and what factors ultimately determine the success or failure of ecotourism as a vehicle for sustainable development. This lack of consensus stems in part from the different perspectives and agendas within and between the academic, policy, and industry communities. Because it is based on measured and observed phenomena, empirical research has a critical role to play in advancing the theory and practice of ecotourism. However, scholars also recognize that to fulfill this role, methodologies must evolve to become more longitudinal, scalable, inclusive, integrative, and actionable.
Article
Effective Practices in Mitigating Soil Erosion from Fields
Vincenzo Bagarello
Soil erosion by water is a natural process that cannot be avoided. Soil erosion depends on many factors, and a distinction should be made between humanly unchangeable (e.g., rainfall) and modifiable (e.g., length of the field) soil erosion factors. Soil erosion has both on-site and off-site effects. Soil conservation tries to combine modifiable factors so as to maintain erosion in an area of interest to an acceptable level. Strategies to control soil erosion have to be adapted to the desired land use. Knowledge of soil loss tolerance, T, i.e., the maximum admissible erosion from a given field, allows technicians or farmers to establish whether soil conservation practices need to be applied to a certain area or not. Accurate evaluation of the tolerable soil erosion level for an area of interest is crucial for choosing effective practices to mitigate this phenomenon. Excessively stringent standards for T would imply over expenditure of natural, financial, and labor resources. Excessively high T values may lead to excessive soil erosion and hence decline of soil fertility and productivity and to soil degradation. In this last case, less money is probably spent for soil conservation, but ineffectively. Basic principles to control erosion for different land uses include maintaining vegetative and ground cover, incorporating biomass into the soil, minimizing soil disturbance, increasing infiltration, and avoiding long field lengths. Preference is generally given to agronomic measures as compared with mechanical measures since the former ones reduce raindrop impact, increase infiltration, and reduce runoff volumes and water velocities. Agronomic measures for soil erosion control include choice of crops and crop rotation, applied tillage practices, and use of fertilizers and amendments. Mechanical measures include contour, ridging, and terracing. These measures cannot prevent detachment of soil particles, but they counter sediment transport downhill and can be unavoidable in certain circumstances, at least to supplement agronomic measures. Simple methods can be applied to approximately predict the effect of a given soil conservation measure on soil loss for an area of interest. In particular, the simplest way to quantitatively predict mitigation of soil erosion due to a particular conservation method makes use of the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE). Despite its empirical nature, this model still appears to represent the best compromise between reliability of the predictions and simplicity in terms of input data, which are generally very difficult to obtain for other soil erosion prediction models. Soil erosion must be controlled soon after burning.
Article
Effects of Meteorological and Air Pollutant Factors on the Deaths from COVID-19 in Chinese Cities: A Spatial Panel Data Analysis
Faysal Mansouri and Zouheir Mighri
Coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic was first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Its human-to-human transmission was confirmed on January 20, 2020 and rapidly escalated into a global pandemic.
Coronavirus exponential spread has caused overwhelming challenges to global public health and left households and businesses counting huge economic losses.
These unprecedented global circumstances have forced policymakers to work under bilevel pressure: implement successful containment strategies and in the meantime get society and the economy to a new normal path—in other words, a trade-off between successful containment strategy and optimal reopening strategy.
As the pandemic evolves, a growing public and academic debate has taken place on the likelihood of the influence of meteorological factors as well as pollution elements on COVID-19 cycle. This potential association between meteorological factors and COVID-19 spread inevitably shapes containment strategies and social and economic reopening policy options.
An important growing literature has investigated this relationship using various statistical tools and approaches. Indeed, several researchers have attempted to provide evidence of statistical correlation between meteorological conditions as well as and air pollution factors and COVID-19 reported deaths?
Several studies have analyzed the association between meteorological factors and the spread of COVID-19 in local, regional, and global frameworks. A particular focus has been made on the identification of factors that might have impact on COVID-19 mortality rate as well as on the acceleration of diffusion of infection, for various countries including China.
