Climate change mitigation presents us with a social dilemma: while mitigation benefits everyone, individuals lack the incentive to alter their behaviour, since they can reap its benefits while failing to reduce their own emissions.

In Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Implementing Architectures for Agreement, edited by Joseph E. Aldy and Robert N. Stavins. Cambridge University Press, pp 563-398.

China began enforcing a system of pollution levies in 1982. However, senior environmental officials expressed doubt that this system was improving the environment and, in 1996, they began to place greater reliance on mill closure as the penalty for poor environmental performance. Since then, managers have found means of subverting many of the intended mill closures, and this causes us to return to the question of the abatement efficiency and effectiveness of the levies.

Organic certification in Costa Rica improves coffee growers’ environmental performance

Using a choice experiment, this paper investigates how Swedish citizens value three environmental quality objectives. In addition, a follow-up question is used to investigate whether respondents ignored any attributes when responding.

The paper analyses the economic impacts of climate change-induced adjustments on the performance of the Tanzanian economy, using a country-wide CGE model. The general equilibrium framework enables comparison of the effects of climate change to the overall growth of the economy, as responsiveness to shocks is likely to depend on the macroeconomic structure of the economy.

This paper explores whether any investment products or strategies in South Africa take environmental sustainability into account. By looking at how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are used in investment decision making, we found that most socially responsible investment products and responsible investment strategies largely focus on infrastructure, development, and black economic empowerment.

Initiatives certifying that farms and firms adhere to predefined environmental and social welfare production standards are increasingly popular. According to proponents, they create financial incentives for farms and firms to improve their environmental and socioeconomic performance. This paper reviews the evidence on whether sustainable certification of agricultural commodities and tourism operations actually has such benefits.

Unique survey data from a contingent valuation study conducted in three different countries (China, Sweden, and the United States) were used to investigate the ordinary citizen’s willingness to pay (WTP) for reducing CO2 emissions. We found that a large majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase.

Improving soil carbon through conservation agriculture in developing countries may generate some private benefits to farmers, as well as sequester carbon emissions, which is a positive externality to society. Leaving crop residue on the farm has become an important option in conservation agriculture practice. However, in developing countries, using crop residue for conservation agriculture has the opportunity cost of feed for livestock.