Anil Markandya

Environmental Sustainability and Cost-Benefit Analysis

Efforts to ‘operationalize’ a concept of sustainability into appraisal methods for practical decisionmaking have been few and generally unpersuasive. In this paper it is argued that this need not be the case if a set of environmentally compensating, or ‘shadow’, projects within an overall portfolio are used to ensure a sustainability objective of setting a constraint on the depletion and degradation of the stock of natural capital. This can be achieved through both a ‘weak’ and a ‘strong’ sustainability criterion. In both cases the resulting optimum differs from the efficient optimum of the conventional cost-benefit criterion, but the basic cost-benefit model remains intact.

Natural environments and the social rate of discount

In recent years environmental concerns have given rise to a discussion of the appropriate discount rate to use in project appraisal to allow for the interests of future generations. This paper argues that the environmental critique of discounting is not persuasive, that arguments for adjusting discount rates do contain persuasive elements, but adjusting discount rates is a clumsy way of handling these legitimate concerns. Introducing sustain-ability criteria into cost-benefit is a better course to follow since otherwise too heavy a burden is placed on the discount rate.

A New Blueprint for a Green Economy

Preface 1. Introduction 2. Blueprint for a Green Economy in the 21st Century 3. Sustainable Development 4. Progress in Valuing the Environment 5. Accounting for the Environment and Sustainability 6. Progress in Prices and Incentives for Environmental Improvement 7. Towards a Green Global Economy 8. Conclusion

Sustainable Development: Economics and Environment in the Third World

Preface * Sustainable Development: Ecology and Economic Progress * Discounting the Future * Economic Appraisal and the Natural Environment * Sustainable Development in the Upper Watersheds of Java * Sustainable Forest Management in the Outer Islands of Indonesia * Natural Resources in the Economy of Sudan * Sustainable Development in Botswana * Natural Resources and Economic Development in Nepal * Sustainable Management of Amazonia * Index