Decision Making and Sustainable
Development
Unit 2: 环境决策与可持续发展
Useful Words and Expressions
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Risk – 风险
Probability – 可能性 (概率上的)
Possibility – 可能性 (一般意义上的)
Benefit – 效益
Assessment – 评价
Exposure – 暴露
Pollutant – 污染物
Toxin – 毒素
Priority – 优先
Regulatory – 规则的
Monitor – 监测 (动词)
Useful Words and Expressions
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Threshold – 阈值
Perception – 感觉、感受
Consumption – 消耗、消费
Supply – 供应、供给
Demand – 需求
Emission – 发出、发射
Subsidy – 补助、补贴 (来自政府的)
Sustainable – 可持续的
Renewable – 可更新的
Adaptable – 可采用的
Institutional – 制度的
Measuring Risk
•
•
•
Two primary factors in most decisions:
– Risk: how likely is it that something will
happen?
– Cost: what is the cost of this course of
action?
Risk analysis involves defining a mathematical
probability relating the likelihood of an event
(adverse effect).
Probability and Possibility
– Probability:
Probability quantitative – how likely
– Possibility:
Possibility qualitative – if or not
Risk Analysis and Decision Making
Decision-Making Process: The assessment, cost, and
consequences of risks are all important to the decision-making
process.
Risk Assessment
–
Environmental risk assessment uses
facts and assumptions to estimate
probability of harm to human health or the
environment resulting from exposure to
pollutants, toxins, or management
decisions.
™ Estimates typically based on broad
assumptions to ensure a lack of
complete knowledge does not result in
an underestimation of risk.
Risk Assessment
–
–
Over the past decade, the largest impact
has come in practices involving
carcinogens.
carcinogens
Risk assessment is also being used to help
set regulating priorities and supporting
regulatory action.
致癌率随食用频度降低
致癌率随食用频度降低
高频度鲑鱼食用导致高致癌率
Cancer Risk and Fish Consumption: A study by the national Wildlife
Federation provides estimates for cancer risks associated with the
consumption of sport fish.
Risk Management
•
Risk Management: A decision-making process
that includes:
– Assigning priorities to different risks.
– Determining necessary funding to reduce risks
to an acceptable level.
– Deciding where greatest benefit will be
realized from limited funds.
– Determining acceptable level of risk.
– Planning, enforcement, and monitoring.
Risk Management
•
•
Politics of risk management frequently focus
on adequacy of supporting scientific
evidence.
Defining the extent of the problem helps
determine the rest of the management
process.
– Below a certain risk threshold,
threshold action may
be unnecessary.
True and Perceived Risks
•
•
•
People often overestimate frequency and
seriousness of sensational causes of death,
and underestimate risks from familiar
causes.
Elimination of all risk is impossible.
impossible
An on-going dilemma is:
Should the government spend the most
money on areas with the greatest impact,
impact
or areas where the most people are
upset?
upset
True and Perceived Risks
•
Ultimate Question:
– What degree of risk is acceptable ?
™ Negligible Risk – Point of no significant
health or environmental risk.
™ Public generally perceives involuntary
risks as greater than voluntary risks,
risks
and newer technologies as greater risks
than more familiar technologies.
technologies
Risks of Death
(Deaths per million hours of exposure)
–
–
–
–
–
–
40,000
Mountain Climbing
3,000
Cigarette Smoking
2,560
Swimming
Air Travel
500
100
Struck by Lightning
Living near nuclear power plant
0.5
Perception
of Risk:
Professional
regulators
and the public
do not always
agree on
what risks
are.
Economics and the Environment
•
•
Environmental problems are primarily
economic problems.
– Economics deals with resource allocation.
allocation
Economic Concepts
– Economic good/service is anything defined
as scarce.
scarce
™ Resource is anything that contributes to
making desired goods and services
available.
– Supply is the amount of the good/service
available for purchase/consumption.
Economic Concepts
–
–
Demand is the amount of the good/service
consumers are willing to buy at various
prices.
Supply / Demand curve
™ Price reflects strength of demand for and
availability of the commodity.
¾ Demand > Supply
Price Raises
¾ Demand < Supply
Price Lowers
Factors That
Determine
Supply:
The supply of a
good or service
depends on the
several factors
shown here.
• Availability of
raw materials
• Cost of
obtaining
processing
• Degree of
completion
• Recycling
• Societal costs
Supply and Demand
(a) As a result of
increased interest in
recycling, the supply of
recycled newspapers
grew substantially
between 1970 and 1993.
The demand changed
very litter; therefore, the
price in 1993 was
extremely low.
(b) Beginning in 1994, the demand for recycled
newspaper and cardboard increased, thus the
price rose significantly. Prices were more stable
through 2000.
Market-Based Instruments (MBIs)
•
•
Provide incentive for people and companies
to reduce pollution by imposing costs on
pollution-causing activities.
Five basic categories:
– Information Programs - Make clear the
personal interests in pollution reduction.
– Tradable Emissions Permits - Give
companies the right to emit specified
amounts of pollutants.
Market-Based Instruments (MBIs)
–
–
–
Emission Fees, Taxes, Charges - Make
damaging activities more expensive.
Performance Bond / Deposit-Refund
™ Place surcharge on price of products
that is refunded upon return.
Subsidies - Monetary incentives designed
to reduce product costs.
™ Determine whether a policy generates
more social costs than social benefits.
Extended Product Responsibility
(EPR)
•
Relies on implementation of life cycle
analysis.
analysis
– Identify opportunities to prevent pollution
and reduce resource and energy use in
each stage of the product chain.
chain
™ Changes in product design and process
technology.
上游：概念+原材料供应+生产加工
中游：销售+使用
The Life Cycle of
a Typical Product
下游：(废品)收集+处理+最终处置
Cost-Benefit Analysis
•
•
Determine whether a policy generates more
social costs than social benefits.
benefits
Four steps:
– Identify the project.
– Determination of all impacts.
– Determination of the value of impacts.
– Calculation of net benefit.
Example: Costs and Benefits of Improving Air
Quality
与成本相关的内容：
(1) 设备安装与维护
(2) 技术设计
(3) 能源消耗
(4) 人员培训
(5) 监测
与效益相关的内容：
(1) 死亡与疾病率降低
(2) 呼吸问题减少
(3) 动植物危害减少
(4) 清洁费用降低
(5) 大气质量提高
(6) 眼刺激减少
(7) 异嗅问题减少
Example:
Costs and
Benefits of
Improving
Air Quality
经济成本
与
效益分析
环境成本
与
效益分析
评价比较
决策
Concerns with Cost-Benefit
Analysis
•
•
Not everything has an economical value.
Objects or resources devoid of economic
value may only survive if and when they
become “economic”.
Sustainable Development
Sustainable chart
承
受
性
公
可
•
可持续性
可行性
平
性
Sustainable Development
•
•
Sustainable Development:
Development meets present
needs without compromising ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.
Different school of thoughts
– Economic growth is essential to finance
pollution prevention and environmental
quality investments necessary to prevent
pollution.
™ Advocates rely on science and
technological advances.
Economics and Sustainable
Development
•
•
Economic and environmental well-being are
mutually reinforcing, and must be
simultaneously pursued.
Bottom Line:
– Sustainable growth and sustainable-use
are not interchangeable terms.
™ Major obstacle to sustainable
development in many countries is a
social structure that gives majority of
wealth to a tiny minority of the
population.
Economics and Sustainable
Development
Five Characteristics That Defines Sustainability:
• Renewability – use of renewable resources
• Substitution – use renewable resources instead of
nonrenewable resources
• Interdependence – a system cannot be sustainable
unless the larger system which it belongs to is also
sustainable
• Adaptability – a sustainable community can absorb
shocks and can adapt to take advantage of new
opportunities
• Institutional commitment – a sustainable community
adopts laws and political processes that mandate
sustainability
External Costs
•
•
External costs are expenses related to a
product that are borne by someone other
than the individuals using the resource.
Pollution-prevention costs incurred to
prevent pollution can often be factored into
life-cycle analysis.
External Costs
•
Pollution costs can be broken down into two
major categories:
– Private or public expenditures to avoid
pollution damage once pollution has
occurred.
– Increased health costs and loss of use of
public resources because of pollution.
External Costs
Common Property Resource
Problems
•
Common (public) ownership essentially
means no owner.
– Strong tendency to overexploit and
misuse the resource.
– Common ownership makes it virtually
cost-free for anybody to cause pollution.
™ Cattle grazing on western public
rangelands.
Common Property Resource
Problems
Economic Decision Making and
the Biophysical World
•
For most natural scientists, many
environmental problems are symptoms of an
imbalance between socioeconomic system
and natural world.
– Human input is larger than ever.
™ Recognition of interdependence in
natural world is foreign to market-view.
™ Space and place is crucial in ecology,
but not necessarily crucial in economics.
Economics Environment and
Developing Nations
•
•
Majority of biological diversity found in
developing world, and threatened by
exploitation and development.
– Must borrow money from developed
nations to fund development.
Debt for Nature Exchanges
– Allow debt to be bought at discount but
redeemed at a premium for use in
conservation and sustainable development
projects.
Tragedy of the Commons
•
United States and other industrialized
nations consume far more than their share of
total world resource harvest each year.
– Much imported from less developed
nations.
Summary
•
•
•
•
Risk assessment is the use of facts and
assumptions to estimate the probability of harm to
human health or the environment.
People frequently overestimate new and unfamiliar
risks but underestimate familiar ones.
Environmental problems can be viewed as
economic problems and economic policies and
concepts play important roles in environmental
decision making.
making
Cost-benefit analysis is an important economic tool
which concerns with whether a policy generates
more social benefits than social costs.
Summary
•
•
•
•
Sustainable development is a newer school of
economic thought which is defined as actions that
address the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs.
Costs of pollution control include pollutionprevention costs and pollution costs which are
external costs imposed on society.
There is a strong tendency to overexploit and
misuse the resource when everyone shares
ownership of a resource. This is “The Tragedy of
the Commons.”
Commons
The approach of “Debt-for-nature exchange”
exchange is
gaining popularity.
Key Terms
•
Carcinogens
cancer-causing chemicals
•
Cost-benefit analysis
analysis to determine whether a policy generates
more social costs than social benefits
•
Demand
the amount of a product that consumers are
willing and able to buy
•
External costs
costs to society for waste disposal, pollution and
health due to environmental problems
Key Terms
•
Negligible risk
risk at a point there is really no significant health or
environmental impact
•
Pollution costs
expenditures to avoid pollution damage once pollution
has already occurred and the increased health costs and
loss of the use of public resources because of pollution
•
Pollution-prevention costs
costs incurred to prevent the pollution that would
otherwise result from some production or consumption
activity
•
Probability
a mathematic statement about how likely it is that
something will happen
Key Terms
•
Resources
anything that contributes to making desired goods and
services available for consumption
•
Risk assessment
the use of facts and assumptions to estimate the
probability of harm to human health or the environment
•
Risk management
a decision-making process of weighing policy alternatives
and selecting the most appropriate regulatory action
•
Subsidy
a gift from government to a private enterprise that is
considered important to the public interest
Review Questions
•
•
•
•
•
How is risk assessment used in
environmental decision making?
What are some of the concerns about the
use of cost-benefit analysis in environmental
decision making?
What are some examples of environmental
external costs?
Define what is meant by pollution-prevention
costs.
Describe the concept of debt-for-nature.