Discounting Environmental Benefits for Future Generations

2020 ◽  
pp. 109114212095967
Author(s):  
Liqun Liu ◽  
Andrew J. Rettenmaier ◽  
Thomas R. Saving

The standard approach to evaluating a long-term project is to use the social rate of time preference to discount the benefits and costs of future generations. A difficulty with this approach is that there is no consensus on the values of the required parameters that reflect intergenerational equity concerns. Assuming the existence of a coordinating debt policy, this article establishes a project evaluation rule that identifies Pareto-improving projects and is therefore free of value judgment. This article goes beyond the existing analysis of intergenerational discounting by exploring the implications of tax distortions in the capital market that drive a wedge between the gross (before-tax) and the net (after-tax) rates of return. Our project evaluation criterion is stricter than that recommended in government guidelines, causing fewer environmental projects to be accepted.

Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 1380
Author(s):  
Jan Andre Koch ◽  
Jan Willem Bolderdijk ◽  
Koert van Ittersum

Two prominently discussed sustainable food alternatives—lab-meat and edible insects—elicit disgust among consumers, thereby preventing acceptance. While providing prospective consumers with more information on, for instance, the environmental benefits of lab-meat has shown some success in increasing consumer acceptance, we argue that the disgust response—the main barrier to the societal acceptance of these foods—is not addressed. This is, we argue, because disgust is not the result of misperceptions (e.g., edible insects carry diseases) and thus unlikely to be overcome by information alone. Building on the latest insights into the social origins of disgust, this manuscript reviews an alternative strategy to foster the broader acceptance of sustainable food alternatives that currently elicit disgust. Specifically, we explain why and how public exposure could be a promising avenue for marketers to reduce consumers’ disgust response and thus increase the acceptance of sustainable food alternatives.


Britain possesses a forest area which is one of the smallest in Europe in relation to its population and land area. In the past, forests have been felled to make way for farming and to supply timber for ships, houses, fuel and metal smelting. Timber was a key to sea power, and repeatedly the availability of home timber supplies has proved crucial in time of war. The nation’s dwindling reserves of timber have been a source of anxiety since Tudor times and periodic surges of planting for timber production by private landowners took place until about 1850. Thereafter, interest faded with the advent of the iron ship, the Industrial Revolution and the availability of cheap timber imports. Govern­ ment activity was minimal until a national forest authority was formed in 1919 to create a strategic timber reserve. Since 1958 there have been frequent policy reviews to assess the changing needs of the nation for timber and the new values associated with the social and environmental benefits of forests.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (03) ◽  
pp. 391-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
David F. Burgess ◽  
Richard O. Zerbe

The social opportunity cost of capital discount rate is the appropriate discount rate to use when evaluating government projects. It satisfies the fundamental rule that no project should be accepted that has a rate of return less than alternative available projects, and it ensures that worthy projects satisfy the potential Pareto test. The social time preference approach advocated by Moore et al. fails to satisfy either of these criteria even in the unlikely case that the private sector behaves myopically with respect to a project’s future benefits and costs.


2013 ◽  
Vol 671-674 ◽  
pp. 496-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Yang Wang ◽  
Yun Peng Chu ◽  
Yong Yao ◽  
Yu Ping Zhu

China is a developing country, and also a quake-prone country. On the one hand is the Special national conditions that per capita energy shortage and frequent earthquakes, on the other hand is the social economy development and people's living environment requirements continue to increase, both of them raised new requirement of China’s residence system development. Light steel structure residence is energy conservation , environmental protection, safety and seismic, these unique advantages just to meet the current development of residential industry in China, so it has a good development prospect. This article start from the realistic background, around the application and development of our country’s light steel structure residence presently, mainly introduced the characteristics of light steel structure residence, the impact of construction industry, and the social benefits, environmental benefits, housing industrialization effective and comprehensive benefits it can produce.


2017 ◽  
pp. 40-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
М. V. Shchuryk ◽  
О. R. Nadraha

Processes of collection, processing, removal, storage and utilization of solid household wastes and garbage are analyzed. Problems associated with their organization were aggravating in Ukraine during the transition to the market-based economic model radically changing the waste treatment mechanisms operated in the period of administrative and command system. It is demonstrated that Ukraine still has no well-functioning management system enabling for the civilized treatment of household wastes, including their recycling and utilization. The process of household wastes and garbage removal is disorganized and erratic. The chaotic way of collecting household wastes and garbage, used in many countries as a resource supportive to the economic development, needs to be firmly rejected. The global practices show that the problems of utilization and reuse of household wastes and garbage can be dealt with through intensive innovating and intellectualization. The effectiveness of solutions to the above problems is also conditional on two key actors: local self-governance bodies and citizens concerned with the matter. Assurance of social and environmental benefits is their necessary component. By the current organization and economic principles, enterprises active in processing, utilization and storage of household wastes and garbage are assigned the key role in treatment of household wastes. The advanced organization and economic principles for collection, storage and utilization of household wastes and garbage in Ukraine can be introduced once the nation-wide conceptual model for the development of this economic activity is elaborated. It needs to rely upon the Keynesian model that accounts for not only the interests of capital, but conforms, in many ways, to the human values concerned with environmental protection. The mechanism for collection, removal, storage, utilization and processing of solid household wastes and garbage needs to be organized as a full-fledged component of the social reproduction process. The key problem which solution will help adopt the new organization and economic principles for utilization and disposal of wastes is to create the conditions for constructing waste recycling fact ories, including the system of preferences. As shown by practices of many developed countries, they ensure effective processing and recycling of household wastes and garbage and reduce the land areas required for wastes and garbage placement.


2021 ◽  
pp. 99-117
Author(s):  
Ihor Ishchenko ◽  
Olena Bashkeieva

The purpose of this article is to explore positioning and rebranding as tools for state security in global space, using the methodology of constructivism in international relations. The author hypothesizes that positioning the country as safe will be attractive only if there is a unifying factor based on the principles of consocial democracy. To achieve this purpose, the authors used several scientific approaches and methods: constructivism as a scientific paradigm; dialectical method; content analysis, and comparison. The article covers the following issues: Positioning and rebranding in modern conditions; Level of branding effectiveness in Ukraine; National identity as the basis for rebranding and state security; Rebranding states in the face of new challenges and threats. The essence of the conclusions is as follows: States will choose a partner for economic cooperation under difficult conditions in terms of political risks, benefits, and costs. This trend is about renewed positioning and rebranding to facilitate decisions on cooperation. The effectiveness of the existing state brand depends not only on creating an attractive external picture of the country’s positioning. Without a genuine alignment of the declared brand with the internal situation of the state, the political system as a whole, the congruent of the mental construct of the main political structures and the social environment, the brand will not be attractive to investors and the country will remain in an unstable environment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-86
Author(s):  
Sergii Boltivets

Among the threats and dangers of the future, our duty to the younger and future generations is to develop the instincts, feelings and self-preservation of children and young people, who by their very birth suffer from inventions, conflicts and crises inherited by all previous older generations. The dominants of future self-preservation are in the mental development of children and youth, the main of which we consider mental abilities, development of feelings and especially - a sense of empathy for all living things, as well as - the imagination of every child and young person. her own life and the lives of others. Our common methodology should be to understand that the social world is not simplified, but complicated, and we have a duty to prepare our children and young people to solve these complications.


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