The Ethics and Politics of Environmental Cost-benefit Analysis PDF Download

Author: Karine Nyborg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041558650X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Putting a price tag on the environment is controversial. The aim of this book is to discuss some of the ethical and political issues arising in the context of applied cost-benefit analysis and environmental valuation - and to do so using economic analysis, but in a language accessible to non-specialists. In particular, the author emphasizes the fundamental, but surprisingly often poorly understood distinction between normative and positive analysis, and the implications of this distinction for practical use of cost-benefit analyses.

Author: Karine Nyborg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136304738
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
Putting a price tag on the environment is controversial. This book discusses ethical and political aspects of environmental cost-benefit analysis: why controversies must be expected, why they should be taken seriously, and how they can be handled in practice. Cost-benefit analysis is commonly thought of as a method for ranking projects according to their contributions to social welfare. The starting point of the present book is different. Rather than providing a final ranking, the purpose of a project analysis is to enable participants in a democratic decision-making process to make their own well-founded rankings of projects, according to their own normative views. Since ethical and political views differ, the analysis should be useful as factual background for any reasonable social welfare judgement. This purpose faces the analyst with quite different challenges than the purpose of ranking projects. The argument of the book is based on economic theory, but with a strong emphasis on readability and applicability. It is aimed at those – economists and non-economists alike – who use or are faced with cost-benefit analysis and environmental valuation in their work: politicians, employees of ministries and regulatory agencies, students, journalists, consultants and researchers. No particular prior knowledge of economics is required.

Author: Bert van Wee
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1849809658
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Prof. van Wee draws on extensive research and nearly three decades of professional experience to shine a welcome spotlight on a neglected yet critical area of transportation research and practice: the role of ethics in the ex ante evaluation of infrastructure projects and transportation policies. Aiming more to raise questions and provoke thought than to provide answers, his balanced and systematic treatment of the subject makes the book an invaluable resource one which should be on the shelves and (more importantly) in the minds of every transportation policymaker, planner, and modeler. Patricia L. Mokhtarian, University of California, Davis, US This book on transport ethics fills a clear gap in the literature. Many researchers and practitioners in the transport field are aware that transport policies have important ethical dimensions, but these have not been systematically explored in the literature. Bert van Wee did a great job by bringing transport and ethics together. His decision to focus on ex ante evaluations of transport policies works out very well, since it enables him to achieve considerable depth on a theme that might otherwise be too broad. Piet Rietveld, Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Transport impacts on all aspects of our lives and businesses, but the inclusion of ethics is not seen as a central concern. This book fills a major gap in the literature, through its understanding of the many important dimensions of ethics and its treatment of a range of situations in transport, through asking about the why, what and how as it relates to ethics. The clear conclusion is reached that ethics should feature much more prominently in all transport decisions, but that it is also context specific in both time and space. The approach adopted is transparent and informative, and the author guides the reader through the main conceptual and theoretical issues, using examples to illustrate the range of important ethical choices raised in the evaluation of transport policies and practices. David Banister, University of Oxford, UK This insightful book discusses the use of Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) for transport policy options from an ethical perspective. Each detailed chapter deals with issues such as; the use and ethical aspects of CBA in transport, social exclusion, the environment and long term sustainability, safety, ethics of research and modelling transport. It summarizes ethics-based critics on CBA and discusses their relevance for accessibility, the environment and safety. In addition it explores ethical dilemmas of doing CBAs and CBA related research. The book concludes with possible avenues for furthering exploring the links between transport and ethics. Transport and Ethics will appeal to researchers in the area of CBA for transport, postgraduate and undergraduate students in transport economics, transport policy, transport planning and transport geography, as well as policy makers in the area of transport.

Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 926401005X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
An in-depth assessment of the most recent conceptual and methodological developments in cost-benefit analysis and the environment.

Author: Donald VanDeVeer
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780534561888
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 674

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Book Description
Consisting of an assortment of landmark essays and the best in contemporary scholarship, this anthology delves deeply into the most pressing environmental issues of our times. Articles included in this anthology are distinguished for their relevance to real-life policy making and for their ability to promote rich and lively discussion about controversial matters. In addition, the editors' careful organization of the topics and illuminating section previews keep students focused on the most essential points of current environmental debates.

Author: Elisabete A. Silva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317917022
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 764

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Planning Research Methods is an expansive look at the traditions, methods, and challenges of research design and research projects in contemporary urban planning. Through case studies, an international group of researchers, planning practitioners, and planning academics and educators, all recognized authorities in the field, provide accounts of designing and implementing research projects from different approaches and venues. This book shows how to apply quantitative and qualitative methods to projects, and how to take your research from the classroom to the real world. The book is structured into sections focusing on Beginning planning research Research design and development Rediscovering qualitative methods New advances in quantitative methods Turning research into action With chapters written by leading scholars in spatial planning, The Routledge Handbook of Planning Research Methods is the most authoritative and comprehensive handbook on the topic, providing both established and ground breaking coverage of spatial planning research methods. The book is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate level students, young professionals and practitioners in urban, regional, and spatial planning.

Author: Frank Ackerman
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459604253
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
As clinical as it sounds to express the value of human lives, health, or the environment in cold dollars and cents, cost-benefit analysis requires it. More disturbingly, this approach is being embraced by a growing number of politicians and conservative pundits as the most reasonable way to make many policy decisions regarding public health and the environment. By systematically refuting the economic algorithms and illogical assumptions that cost-benefit analysts flaunt as fact, Priceless tells a ''gripping story about how solid science has been shoved to the backburner by bean counters with ideological blinders'' (In These Times). Ackerman and Heinzerling argue that decisions about health and safety should be made ''to reflect not economists' numbers, but democratic values, chosen on moral grounds. This is a vividly written book, punctuated by striking analogies, a good deal of outrage, and a nice dose of humor'' (Cass Sunstein, The New Republic). Essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of human health and environmental protection, Priceless ''shines a bright light on obstacles that stand in the way of good government decisions''.

Author: Tevfik F. Nas
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498522513
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Drawing on the principles of welfare economics and public finance, this second edition of Cost-Benefit Analysis: Theory and Application provides the theoretical foundation for a general framework within which costs and benefits are identified and assessed from a societal perspective. With a thorough coverage of cost-benefit concepts and their underlying theory, the volumecarries the reader through the steps of a typical evaluation process, including the identification, measurement, and comparison of costs and benefits, and project selection. Topics include alternative measures of welfare change, such as the concepts of consumer surplus and compensating and equivalent variation measures, shadow pricing, nonmarket valuation techniques of contingent valuation and discrete choice experiment, perspectives on what constitutes a theoretically acceptable discount rate, the social rate of time preference, income distribution, and much more. The book also focuses on real-world applications of cost-benefit analysis in two closely related areas—environment and health care—followed by an examination of the current state of the art in cost-benefit analysis as practiced by international agencies.

Author: Martin Peterson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190652276
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Autonomous cars, drones, and electronic surveillance systems are examples of technologies that raise serious ethical issues. In this analytic investigation, Martin Peterson articulates and defends five moral principles for addressing ethical issues related to new and existing technologies: the cost-benefit principle, the precautionary principle, the sustainability principle, the autonomy principle, and the fairness principle. It is primarily the method developed by Peterson for articulating and analyzing the five principles that is novel. He argues that geometric concepts such as points, lines, and planes can be put to work for clarifying the structure and scope of these and other moral principles. This geometric account is based on the Aristotelian dictum that like cases should be treated alike, meaning that the degree of similarity between different cases can be represented as a distance in moral space. The more similar a pair of cases are from a moral point of view, the closer is their location in moral space. A case that lies closer in moral space to a paradigm case for some principle p than to any paradigm for any other principle should be analyzed by applying principle p. The book also presents empirical results from a series of experimental studies in which experts (philosophers) and laypeople (engineering students) have been asked to apply the geometric method to fifteen real-world cases. The empirical findings indicate that experts and laypeople do in fact apply geometrically construed moral principles in roughly, but not exactly, the manner advocates of the geometric method believe they ought to be applied.

Author: Felix Ekardt
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030192776
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This book proposes a holistic transdisciplinary approach to sustainability as a subject of social sciences. At the same time, this approach shows new ways, as perspectives of philosophy, political science, law, economics, sociology, cultural studies and others are here no longer regarded separately. Instead, integrated perspectives on the key issues are carved out: Perspectives on conditions of transformation to sustainability, on key instruments and the normative questions. This allows for a concise answer to urgent and controversial questions such as the following: Is the EU an environmental pioneer? Is it possible to achieve sustainability by purely technical means? If not: will that mean to end of the growth society? How to deal with the follow-up problems? How will societal change be successful? Are political power and capitalism the main barriers to sustainability? What is the role of emotions and conceptions of normality in the transformation process? To which degree are rebound and shifting effects the reason why sustainability politics fail? How much climate protection can be claimed ethically and legally e.g. on grounds of human rights? And what is freedom? Despite all rhetoric, the weak transition in energy, climate, agriculture and conservation serves as key example in this book. It is shown how the Paris Agreement is weak with regard to details and at the same time overrules the growth society by means of a radical 1,5-1,8 degrees temperature limit. It is shown how emissions trading must – and can – be reformed radically. It is shown why CSR, education, cooperation and happiness research are overrated. And we will see what an integrated politics on climate, biodiversity, nitrogen and soil might look like. This book deals with conditions of transformation, governance instruments, ethics and law of sustainability. The relevance of the humanities to sustainability has never before been demonstrated so vividly and broadly as here. And in every area it opens up some completely new perspectives. (Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Club of Rome, Honorary President) Taking a transdisciplinary perspective, the book canvasses the entire spectrum of issues relevant to sustainability. A most valuable and timely contribution to the debate. (Prof. Dr. Klaus Bosselmann, University of Auckland, Author of “The Principle of Sustainability”) This books breathes life into the concept of sustainability. Felix Ekardt tears down the barriers between disciplines and builds a holistic fundament for sustainablility; fit to guide long-term decision-making on the necessary transformation and societal change. (Prof. Dr. Christina Voigt, Oslo University, Dept. of Public and International Law)