Joan Pasqual

Sustainability in natural resource management

Abstract Sustainability is the objective that many disciplines indicate as being essential to the resolution of environmental degradation, although there is no agreement about what this term exactly means. This study defines environmental problems as externalities, most of these occurring between different generations. We analyze the reasons why traditional solutions for externalities do not work in the intergenerational context. Our conclusions are, on the one hand, that traditional methods for evaluating the costs and benefits affecting different generations should be improved. Secondly, an intergenerational redistribution of natural resource property rights is essential to guarantee equality of opportunities for all generations, and therefore to ensure sustainability. Adequate redistribution of property rights will depend on the type of resource, as well as on other factors such as the rate of return on its exploitation and the current generations’ propensity to consume. In all cases, however, sustainability is sufficiently guaranteed by conceding property rights, as a whole, to the future.

The importance of urban underground land value in project evaluation: a case study of Barcelona's utility tunnel

Abstract A case study of a utility tunnel in Barcelona has shown the importance, for evaluation purposes, of taking into account the value of the underground land used by a project. In the case studied, such a variable proved to be the key determinant for the feasibility of the project. However, in the past, underground land value has been consistently ignored; as a consequence, there are no established procedures in determining such values. This article proposes a practical procedure to determine the implicit market price of a given area and applies it to a benefit-cost analysis of Barcelonas utility tunnel project.

Optimal time-phasing of investment: a consolidated spurious model

Previous studies have presented a model to determine the profitability of delaying a project for a period. In the model it is implicitly assumed that no change affects the project during the period in question. This assumption is opposed to those usually made in dynamic models. Analysing the model, we see that the condition for the postponement of the project to be optimal is indistinguishable from the general profitability condition (net present value > 0): it is worth deferring unprofitable projects and not deferring the profitable ones. The problem these authors considered is thus non-existent, unless the model is modified to incorporate ad hoc assumptions