Number of results to display per page
Search Results
962. Emissions Trading, Capital Flows and the Kyoto Protocol
- Author:
- Martin Ross, Robert Shackleton, Peter Wilcoxen, and Warwick J. McKibbin
- Publication Date:
- 12-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- We use an econometrically estimated multi-region, multi-sector general equilibrium model of the world economy to examine the effects of the tradable emissions permit system proposed in the 1997 Kyoto protocol, under various assumptions about that extent of international permit trading. We focus, in particular, on the effects of the system on international trade and capital flows. Our results suggest that consideration of these flows significantly affects estimates of the domestic effects of the emissions mitigation policy, compared with analyses that ignore international capital flows.
- Topic:
- Economics, Environment, and International Trade and Finance
963. Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Author:
- Jeffrey A. Frankel
- Publication Date:
- 06-1999
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- Growth targets for emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) by developing countries should be part of the effort to mitigate global climate change. This policy brief advances an approach for determining appropriate targets. They should be neither so tight as to retard economic development nor so generous as to confer enormous windfall gains. But where in this range should these targets be set? A fair allocation for potential new participants would fit the present pattern of emissions reductions agreed among industrialized countries at Kyoto in December 1997. Richer countries, in effect, agreed to make bigger sacrifices (on average) than did poor ones. Given uncertainty about the future, however, fixing the precise quantitative emission target now would create great risks regarding the ultimate stringency of the target. It would raise concerns that a target could turn out either unexpectedly stringent—unintentionally constraining economic development—or unexpectedly lax—resulting in emissions greater than in the absence of an agreement. Indexing emission targets to a country's gross domestic product (GDP) growth would moderate the effects of uncertainty.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Emerging Markets, and Environment
964. Population, Urbanization, Environment, and Security: A Summary of the Issues
- Author:
- Ellen Brennan
- Publication Date:
- 06-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Wilson Center
- Abstract:
- One of the most striking features of world population growth is the rising predominance of the developing world. Currently, 81 million persons are added annually to the world's population—95 percent of them in developing countries. The second striking feature is related to urban growth. Although the growth of world urban population has been slower than projected twenty years ago, it has nevertheless been unprecedented. In 1950, less than 30 per cent of the world's population were urban dwellers. Between 1995 and 2030, the world's urban population is projected to double—from 2.6 to 5.1 billion, by which time three-fifths of the world's population will be living in urban areas (United Nations 1998b). As in the case of total population, there will be a significant redistribution of world urban population between the developed and the developing regions. Currently, 59 million new urban dwellers are added annually— 89 percent in developing countries. By 2025-2030, 76 million will be added annually—98 percent in developing countries.
- Topic:
- Security, Demographics, Environment, and Industrial Policy
965. Sustainable Use of Biodiversity — What We Can Learn from Ecotourism in Developing Countries
- Author:
- Petra Stephan
- Publication Date:
- 11-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Development and Peace
- Abstract:
- The General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the year 2002 as "The International Year of Ecotourism". Multilateral development institutions such as the World Bank, the Global Environmental Facility, governments in developing countries, the tourism industry as well as local non-governmental organizations all over the world count on ecotourism as a supposed panacea for development and biodiversity protection. With assumed annual growth rates from ten up to thirty percent, ecotourism is often praised as the most dynamic sector in the tourism industry. But some of the stakeholders in the tourism industry seem to use a very extended definition of ecotourism. It includes wildlife watching as well as adventure tourism. Tourism products that are advertised under the label "eco" often only have in common, that they take place in nature. A lot of these offers can be called "ecotourism-light". They only add visits to protected areas to regular package tours, for instance. The concept of "ecotourism" seems to share this fate with the concept of "sustainable development": everybody talks about it and everybody defines it in accordance with one's own interests.
- Topic:
- Emerging Markets, Environment, Globalization, and International Political Economy
966. States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World
- Author:
- Colin Kahl
- Publication Date:
- 04-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
- Abstract:
- Since the early 1990s, the National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States has identified civil strife in developing countries as an important threat to American interests and pointed to demographic and environmental pressures as potential sources of these conflicts. As the Clinton administration's 1996 NSS notes, “America's security imperatives... have fundamentally changed. The central security challenge of the past half century—the threat of communist expansion—is gone. The dangers we face today are more diverse... [L]arge-scale environmental degradation, exacerbated by rapid population growth, threatens to undermine political stability in many countries and regions.”President Clinton echoed these sentiments in a speech before the United Nations on June 26, 1997, declaring that efforts to preserve the planet's natural resources were “crucial not only for the quality of our individual environments and health, but also to maintain stability and peace within nations and among them.” Similar concerns have been voiced outside Washington. In 1991, for example, then NATO secretary general Manfred Worner argued that “[t]he immense conflict potential building up in the Third World, characterized by growing wealth differentials, an exploding demography, climate shifts and the prospect for environmental disaster, combined with the resource conflicts of the future, cannot be left out of our security calculations...”And, in an influential and particularly apocalyptic article entitled “The Coming Anarchy,” Robert Kaplan went so far as to suggest that the environment was “the national-security issue of the early twenty-first century. The political and strategic impact of surging population, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions... will be the core foreign-policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate...”
- Topic:
- Security, Economics, Environment, International Political Economy, and Third World
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, and Washington
967. The Political Economy of Energy Taxes, OECD 1973-1995: The Role of Political Institutions, Public Opinion and Ideology (A Pre-Test)
- Author:
- Svetlana Valerie Morozova
- Publication Date:
- 02-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- The paper presents a theoretical cross-national study of energy taxation, concentrating on the heavy fuel oil tax. It theoretically investigates the effects that public opinion, institutional corporatism and left-wing ideology may have on the cross-national variance in manufacturing energy taxes, controlling for the plausible influence of budget deficits, energy import-dependency and deindustrialization. It is hypothesized that in more corporatist nations public opinion supportive of energy conservation, in combination with the Left-wing ideology of governing legislative coalition, will lead to higher energy taxes. Deindustrialization, proxied by the declining employment and output value in/of energy-intensive industries is believed to be responsible for a certain share of energy tax variance in the OECD countries. Finally, it is argued that energy import-dependency brings affects national manufacturing energy taxes.
- Topic:
- Economics, Energy Policy, Environment, and Politics
968. Research on the Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes: A Review of the State of the Art
- Author:
- Detlef F. Sprinz
- Publication Date:
- 02-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- This paper reviews the current state of research on the effect of international environmental regimes. In particular, the various concepts of regime effectiveness and methods chosen to establish causal regime effects are compared, followed by a summary of the empirical findings on the degree of regime effectiveness and the explanation of its variation. Subsequently, a range of research challenges is outlined which needs to be addressed in order to make substantive progress, esp. in assessing international regimes over longer time horizons. The paper concludes with lessons which the study of the effect of international environmental regimes offers for international political economy.
- Topic:
- Environment, International Cooperation, and International Political Economy
969. Ideas Toolkit: The Role of Culture in the Transboundary Air Pollution Issue in Northeast Asia
- Author:
- Kenneth E. Wilkening
- Publication Date:
- 02-1999
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- This paper outlines a general approach for analyzing the role of culture in international environmental policymaking. It draws on work in anthropology and foreign policy analysis. As a first step in investigating the role of culture in international environmental policy, culture needs to be viewed as a “toolkit of environmental ideas.” The second step is to delimit broad definitions of culture to a more workable forms. Three forms are offered (following Hudson 1997a): culture as organization of environmental meaning, environmental shared-value preferences, and templates for environmental action. The third step is to answer three basic questions relative to the specific definition of culture employed: who draws what environmentally-related ideas from the ideas toolkit, how are these ideas employed in the political arena, and how do these ideas, originally drawn upon for political purposes, change and ultimately end up changing the set of environmentally-related ideas in the toolkit. In the political arena the ideas are assumed to be embodied in a “discourse.” The terminology of discourse and the body of theory built up around it is then used as a vehicle for examining the role of culture and cultural change in international environmental policymaking. A rough and preliminary attempt is made to provide a concrete example of the above approach in relation to the role of culture in the transboundary air pollution issue in Northeast Asia.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Environment, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Israel and Northeast Asia
970. Environmental Trends in Transition Economies
- Publication Date:
- 10-1999
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
- Abstract:
- The collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union brought the region's serious environmental problems to the attention of the international community. Although the countries in this vast area of the world are remarkably diverse, central economic planning had created a common pattern of environmental problems. Notable among these problems were levels of industrial pollution that, in many places, threatened human health; widespread land and water degradation (particularly in the former Soviet Union); and the persistent neglect of nuclear safety and nuclear waste management.
- Topic:
- Economics, Emerging Markets, and Environment
- Political Geography:
- Eastern Europe and Soviet Union