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Sustainability
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Balancing Environmental Resources and Economic Welfare
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Balancing Environmental Resources and Economic Welfare

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2016) | Viewed by 22928

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Roberto Roson

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Economics, Cà Foscari University, Venice 30121, Italy and IEFE, Bocconi University, Milan 20136, Italy
Interests: environmental economics; computable models for economic policy simulation; industrial organization of service industries
Dr. S. Amer Ahmed

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Development Prospects Group, The World Bank Group, USA
Interests: poverty; growth; demographic change; migration; climate change; food security

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The trade-off between objectives of preservation of environmental resources, on one hand, and objectives of economic development, on the other hand, clearly lies at the core of all sustainability issues. Balancing these potentially conflicting policy objectives requires a careful examination of all the complex economic, social, and environmental consequences of the alternative options available. This means that sensible policies must be supported by rigorous scientific analysis, considering also that “preservation” may have a different meaning for different environmental resources, and that the relative weights of environmental quality and economic well-being may vary in time and space. In this context, especially important are the distributional consequences of policies both at the regional level and in terms of income/wealth classes.

This Special Issue is aimed at collecting a number of outstanding contributions in this area. Papers referring, or critically assessing from various perspectives, the “Sustainable Development Goals” (likely to be adopted in a few months) are especially welcome, although this is not a strict requirement for a submission. In any case, papers selected for this Special Issue will be subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

Prof. Dr. Roberto Roson
Dr. S. Amer Ahmed
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Sustainable management
  • Economic development
  • Sustainable development
  • Sustainable development goals
  • Socio-economic impacts of environmental policies

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

3793 KiB  
Article
Integrating Economic and Ecological Benchmarking for a Sustainable Development of Hydropower
by Philipp Emanuel Hirsch, Moritz Schillinger, Katharina Appoloni, Patricia Burkhardt-Holm and Hannes Weigt
Sustainability 2016, 8(9), 875; https://doi.org/10.3390/su8090875 - 31 Aug 2016
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 5610
Abstract
Hydropower reservoirs play an increasingly important role for the global electricity supply. Reservoirs are anthropogenically-dominated ecosystems because hydropower operations induce artificial water level fluctuations (WLF) that exceed natural fluctuations in frequency and amplitude. These WLF have detrimental ecological effects, which can be quantified [...] Read more.
Hydropower reservoirs play an increasingly important role for the global electricity supply. Reservoirs are anthropogenically-dominated ecosystems because hydropower operations induce artificial water level fluctuations (WLF) that exceed natural fluctuations in frequency and amplitude. These WLF have detrimental ecological effects, which can be quantified as losses to ecosystem primary production due to lake bottoms that fall dry. To allow for a sustainable development of hydropower, these “ecological costs” of WLF need to be weighed against the “economic benefits” of hydropower that can balance and store intermittent renewable energy. We designed an economic hydropower operation model to derive WLF in large and small reservoirs for three different future energy market scenarios and quantified the according losses in ecosystem primary production in semi-natural outdoor experiments. Our results show that variations in market conditions affect WLF differently in small and large hydropower reservoirs and that increasing price volatility magnified WLF and reduced primary production. Our model allows an assessment of the trade-off between the objectives of preserving environmental resources and economic development, which lies at the core of emerging sustainability issues. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Balancing Environmental Resources and Economic Welfare)
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1982 KiB  
Article
Contribution of Forest Restoration to Rural Livelihoods and Household Income in Indonesia
by Nayu Nuringdati Widianingsih, Ida Theilade and Mariève Pouliot
Sustainability 2016, 8(9), 835; https://doi.org/10.3390/su8090835 - 24 Aug 2016
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 8538
Abstract
Forest resources remain vital to the survival of many rural communities, though the level of forest reliance varies across a range of sites and socio-economic settings. This article investigates variation in forest utilization across households in three ethnic groups living near a forest [...] Read more.
Forest resources remain vital to the survival of many rural communities, though the level of forest reliance varies across a range of sites and socio-economic settings. This article investigates variation in forest utilization across households in three ethnic groups living near a forest restoration area in Sumatra, Indonesia. Survey data were collected on 268 households, with a four-month recall period and three repeat visits to each selected household within a year. Random sampling was applied to select households in five villages and five Batin Sembilan (indigenous) semi-nomadic groups. Sampled households belonged to three ethnic groups: 15% were Batin Sembilan, 40% Local Malayan, and 45% Immigrant households. Indigenous households displayed the highest reliance on forests: 36% of their annual total income came from this source, as compared with 10% and 8% for Local and Immigrant households, respectively. Our findings showed that the livelihoods of indigenous groups were still intricately linked with forest resources, despite a rapid landscape-wide transition from natural forest to oil palm and timber plantations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Balancing Environmental Resources and Economic Welfare)
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255 KiB  
Article
Balance or Synergies between Environment and Economy—A Note on Model Structures
by Sarah Wolf, Franziska Schütze and Carlo C. Jaeger
Sustainability 2016, 8(8), 761; https://doi.org/10.3390/su8080761 - 13 Aug 2016
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 8244
Abstract
The UN sustainable development goals contain environmental, economic, and social objectives. They may only be reached, or at least it would be easier to reach them, if instead of a trade-off between these objectives that implies a need for balancing them, there are [...] Read more.
The UN sustainable development goals contain environmental, economic, and social objectives. They may only be reached, or at least it would be easier to reach them, if instead of a trade-off between these objectives that implies a need for balancing them, there are synergies to be reaped. This paper discusses how the structures of economic models typically used in policy analysis influence whether win–win strategies for the environment and the economy can be conceptualised and analysed. With a focus on climate policy modelling, the paper points out how, by construction, commonly used model structures find mitigation costs rather than benefits. This paper describes mechanisms that, when added to these model structures, can bring win–win options into a model’s solution horizon, and which provide a spectrum of alternative modelling approaches that allow for the identification of such options. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Balancing Environmental Resources and Economic Welfare)
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