Environmental economics

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Environmental economics is a sub-discipline of economics which, from an economic point of view, deals with the question of the causes and possible solutions to environmental problems , taking into account the allocation problem of scarce environmental goods. There are z. B. Researches the effects of industrial management on the environment in order to be able to make recommendations for an economic environmental policy or for environmentally friendly production processes. The subject of environmental economics is environmental economics; Occasionally, however, the scientific discipline is addressed as environmental economics.

Environmental and Resource Economics

Traditionally, a distinction is made between environmental and resource economics . While resource economics deals with the analysis of the (optimal) use of natural resources in particular , sinks are mentioned as the subject of investigation in environmental economics. It can be said that traditionally understood resource economics deals with the natural inputs into the economic system, while environmental economics examines the outputs to nature or emissions.

Resource economics understood in this way is much older than environmental economics and can already be recognized in the work of David Ricardo , Thomas Robert Malthus and William Stanley Jevons ( The Coal Question ). Ecosystem services and the optimal use of renewable raw materials were initially not an issue , with a few exceptions such as in the second half of the 19th century in forestry work by Martin Faustmann and Max Preßler . The efficient use of non-renewable resources , given their exhaustion, hardly played a role in the early days of resource economics; in the first decades of the 20th century it was briefly discussed more broadly, for example in the work of Richard Ely and Harold Hotelling ( The Economics of Exhaustible Resources ). Environmental economics only emerged after the Second World War.

The usefulness of the subdivision into environmental and resource economics is often questioned. Instead, the terms environmental economics (as a generic term for both sub-disciplines), environmental and resource economics (see the journal Environmental and Resource Economics ) or ecological economics are mentioned.

Economic environmental economics

Basics

Economic environmental economics deals with the consideration and investigation of the relationships between the economy and the natural human environment. For the economic analysis, environmental goods are only relevant from the perspective of scarcity. In a market economy system with predominantly private goods, environmental goods are consumed directly in consumption or indirectly through use in the production process. Scarcity demands efforts to restore used environmental goods, to limit the consumption of these environmental goods or to reduce a factor that pollutes the environment. This is where the allocation problem comes into play and the question of an appropriate distribution of environmental goods arises.

Initial problem

The solution of the allocation problem presupposes the knowledge of some properties of the environmental goods. The starting point of reflection on the causes of environmental problems is the contradiction that natural resources (etc. such as clean air, pure water) on the one hand through the increasing environmental pollution to a scarce have become so not (any longer) Unlimited available Good, on the other hand simultaneously but still have the character of free or public goods . Against this background, wherever the use of environmental services is not regulated, there is a risk of their continued exploitation through overuse , which is stimulated and strengthened by the fact that, due to the nature of environmental services as a public good, the possibility of externalization of costs or of taking so-called " free rider positions " consists. There are also additional burdens imposed on the individuals of an economy by the economic activities of other economic agents. One speaks here of "external effects". In the production sector, these lead to a discrepancy between private and social marginal costs by influencing the production possibilities of other producers. External effects sometimes bypass the regular markets and are not integrated (“internalized”) into the price signals. Damage occurs in a variety of ways: in the form of known pollution such as the pollution of water bodies and the extermination of entire plant and animal species, but also in the form of not fully clarified connections such as the unclear consequences of the greenhouse effect or an increase in cancer in polluted areas.

Possible solutions

The possibility of solving environmental problems is obvious from this perspective : If it is possible to make environmental services into economic goods by integrating them into the market , i.e. by pricing them, according to their scarcity , then the incentives that were previously misguided in the direction of misuse and overuse will turn towards a the careful and economical use of natural resources. In other words: only when market prices , as Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker puts it, tell the full ecological truth , will the scarcity and preciousness of natural resources become conscious and the subject of everyday economic decisions. Overall, the internalization is intended to ensure the performance of the market mechanism with an efficient allocation result even in the presence of external effects.

Instruments that achieve the required market integration of natural resources are called market-oriented instruments of environmental policy . Examples of this are eco taxes , incentive taxes or the trading of emission rights . In contrast to price control based on the eco-tax and incentive taxes, the emission certificates approach is based on volume control. The advantage of such solutions is the resulting dynamic economic incentive for companies and households to carry out further environmental protection measures in the interests of saving their own costs , at least as long as the marginal costs of additional environmental protection do not exceed the marginal costs of additional environmental pollution (which is reflected in the tightening of tax rates or a shortage of Pollution rights can be controlled). Relevant in this context is the Coase theorem , which examines the possibility that the damaging party (causer) and the injured party (affected person) negotiate with each other about the level of the external effect. The prerequisite for an economically efficient internalization of external effects through negotiations between two parties is a clear assignment of property rights to the environmental goods, through which the external effect is conveyed. Such regulatory approaches to environmental policy, on the other hand ( laws and ordinances that, for example, stipulate certain behavior or limit values ​​on the part of the state) are only accepted where they serve to avert ecological risks in the short term (e.g. CFC ban), but otherwise with a reference on the lack of dynamic environmental protection incentives judged as inefficient and therefore rejected. Regulatory interventions will continue to be permitted if the transaction costs for implementing a market-based solution exceed the hoped-for gain in efficiency .

The goal of neoclassical environmental economics is not to reduce environmental pollution, but to limit it to its optimum. This optimum of environmental pollution is where the marginal utility of the environmental pollution just justifies the marginal damage.

Specific tasks

Mostly the economically oriented environmental economics is understood as part of the welfare economics . Environmental economics can thus be classified as a problem-specific extension of the neoclassical mainstream of economics. An essential task is the development of instruments for the market integration of natural resources in the decision-making process for public and private environmental interventions.

Another task is the evaluation of programs and measures with environmental impact from the point of view of economic efficiency (" environmental evaluation "). The central analytical tool for this task is the most environmentally advanced economic cost-benefit analysis (Engl. Cost-benefit analysis ). The largest area of ​​application of cost-benefit analyzes in Germany is federal transport infrastructure planning, in which only a few environmental impacts have been taken into account so far. A significant expansion of the environmental-economic cost-benefit analysis compared to the general economic cost-benefit analysis consists in the use of the Total Economic Value approach to determine the consequences of interventions, projects and programs.

The environmental economic accounts (UGR) of the German federal and state statistics could in principle take on similar analysis tasks.

Differentiation from ecological economics

Scientists who refuse to orientate themselves towards neoclassics tend more towards ecological economics . In practical work, however, there is a continuum between the two schools or an overlap between the participating scientists. Some scientists do not use the term to distinguish it from neoclassical environmental economics, but rather as a generic term under which resource and environmental economics are summarized.

Business environmental economics

Corporate environmental economics examines the effects between a company's environmental impact and its economic success. In addition to the question of how the fulfillment of legal requirements or its own environmental goals can be managed as cost-effectively as possible, environmental economics also investigates the extent to which a company can specifically use ecological aspects as a competitive advantage. Furthermore, the environmental economics should show a company the possibilities to meet the environmental requirements of the market, the state and society.

Magazines

Environmental economics journals include:

See also

literature

  • Jörn Altmann: environmental policy, data, facts, concepts for practice . Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-8252-1958-5 .
  • Klaus Georg Binder: Basic features of environmental economics . Munich 1999, ISBN 3-8006-2232-7 .
  • Alfred Endres: Environmental Economics . 3., completely revised and significantly expanded edition. Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-019721-3 .
  • Bruno S. Frey : Environmental Economics. 3rd, exp. Edition. Göttingen 1992, ISBN 3-525-33581-4 .
  • Franz Jaeger : Nature and Economy. Economic foundations of a policy of qualitative growth. Cur / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7253-0405-X .
  • Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker : Earth policy. Ecological realpolitik on the threshold of the century of the environment. 4th, act. Edition. Darmstadt 1994, ISBN 3-534-80144-X .
  • Lutz Wicke : environmental economics. A practice-oriented introduction. 4th edition. Munich 1993, ISBN 3-8006-1720-X .
  • Rainer Marggraf , Sabine Streb: Economic evaluation of the natural environment. Theory, political significance, ethical discussion. Spectrum, Heidelberg / Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86025-206-2 .
  • Roland Menges : Environmental Economics. In: Compendium of Economic Theory and Economic Policy I. Wiesbaden 2019, pp. 561–706, ISBN 978-3-658-21776-1 .
  • MA Drupp, JN Meya, S. Baumgärtner, MF Quaas: Economic inequality and the value of nature. In: Ecological Economics. Volume 150, 2018, pp. 340-345.
  • Justus Wesseler (Ed.): Environmental Costs and Benefits of Transgenic Crops. Springer Press, Dordrecht, NL 2005.
  • Justus Wesseler, Hans-Peter Weikard, Robert Weaver (Eds.): Risk and Uncertainty in Environmental and Resource Economics. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham 2003.
  • R. Perman, Y. Ma, J. McGilvray, M. Common: Natural resource and environmental economics . Pearson Education, 2003.
  • DJ Phaneuf, T. Requate: A course in environmental economics: theory, policy, and practice . Cambridge University Press, 2016.
  • Eberhard Feess, Andreas Seeliger: Environmental Economics and Environmental Policy. 4th, completely revised edition. Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-8006-4668-5 .
  • Hans Wiesmeth: Environmental Economics. Theory and practice in balance. Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 2003, ISBN 3-540-43839-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gabler Verlag (Ed.): Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon. Keyword: environmental economics , online on the Internet: http://wirtschaftslexikon.gabler.de/Archiv/12109/umweltoekonomik-v6.html
  2. ↑ Resource Economics . In: Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon. Retrieved January 23, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b Fritz Söllner: The history of economic thinking . 4th edition. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, ISBN 978-3-662-44017-9 .
  4. ^ TD Crocker: A Short History of Environmental and Resource Economics . In: Jeroen CJM van den Bergh (Ed.): Handbook of Environmental and Resource Economics . Edward Elgar, 1999, doi : 10.4337 / 9781843768586.00011 .
  5. ↑ a b c Partha Dasgupta : Nature in Economics . In: Environmental and Resource Economics . tape 39 , no. 1 , 2008, p. 1-7 , doi : 10.1007 / s10640-007-9178-4 .
  6. ^ Nils Droste, Jasper N. Meya: Ecosystem services in infrastructure planning - a case study of the projected deepening of the Lower Weser river in Germany . In: Journal of Environmental Planning and Management . tape 60 , no. 2 , February 1, 2017, ISSN  0964-0568 , p. 231–248 , doi : 10.1080 / 09640568.2016.1151405 .
  7. ↑ L. Wicke et al.: Operational environmental economics. Verlag Vahlen, 1992, ISBN 3-8006-1357-3 , p. 19.