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Does money blur perspectives for a better life? Lifting the money veil from our yardsticks of progress, income and wealth, reveals the trade-offs of economic growth. The book presents new indicators of the social, economic and ecological impacts of our lifestyles and production techniques. The indicators help to identify those responsible for these impacts and account for their accountability in terms of environmental and other ("social") costs. Sustainable development is to bring about long-term prosperity without undermining its natural foundation. For the assessment of the opaque concept we need both, physical impact measures and environmentally modified ("green") indicators of income, capital and output. Peter Bartelmus opens the dialogue between frequently hostile camps of economists and environmentalists, data producers and users, and scientists and policy makers. Together, they may steer us towards a sustainable future. Practitioners in business, government and civil society will find valuable tools for making their work more sustainable.
The article analyses Japanese approaches to dealing with eco-efficiency from an institutional perspective. Our main outlook is that though promising attempts have been made despite the overall economic crisis, a better horizontal coordination among both administrations and businesses is required. The governance processes can be analysed following approaches developed by New Institutional Economics and related policy analysis. The paper is divided into three sections. The first introduces the concept of eco-efficiency and explains the demand for regulatory policies from theories of market failures; the paper argues in favour of innovationoriented regulation. The second examines how a nation's institutional capabilities influence knowledge generation towards new solutions that sell on the markets; the "capacity-building approach" as developed by Martin Jänicke is explicitly discussed. The third section discusses contemporary Japanese policies with regard to waste, energy and material flows both on the governmental and the business level. It explains how European approaches diffuse and merge with domestic Japanese institutions. However, governance of eco-efficiency is expected to continue to differ due to ongoing national differences and specific conditions of knowledge creation.
The paper sketches out a theoretical framework for analysing the interplay between eco-efficiency, cognition and institutions. It derives from analytical shortfalls of the prevailing literature, which features strongly engineering and business economics, by using insights from New Institutional Economics, from Cognitive Sciences and, partly, from Evolutionary Economics. It emphasises the role cognition and institutions play in the adoption of "green" technologies by firms. A cognitive perspective derives from recent research on simple heuristics and context-based rationality; it is proposed that those recent findings can serve to analyse decision-making of individual actors or firms and, thus, should complement economic analysis. A second proposition is that eco-efficiency and normative rules such as a Factor Four strongly rely upon institutions, i.e. the ability of institutions to evolve over time and the development of those institutions that are most appropriate to enhance technological change. In this regard, business institutions and competition are crucial, but regulatory needs remain in order to safeguard continuity of knowledge creation. The framework allows for an analysis why overall adoption of eco-efficiency still can be considered relatively slow and why some markets and firms are far ahead. As a brief case study the article reflects upon German waste law’s ability to enhance eco-efficiency.
Material flow analysis
(2002)
A policy framework for sustainable resource management (SRM) is required both to guarantee the materials and energy supply of the EU economy and safeguard the natural resource basis in the future. Goals and strategies for sustaining the metabolism of the economy are described. Data are presented on the material throughput and physical growth of the EU's economy, on total material requirements (TMR), its composition, the decoupling from economic growth, and the increased shift to other regions. A first future target Material Flow Balance (t- MFB) of the EU is outlined. Detailed data reveal the "top ten" resource flows. Policy design for SRM should aim at an integrated and balanced approach along the material flow, comprising resource extraction, the product cycle and final waste disposal. Strategies and potential instruments to manage fossil fuels, metals and industrial minerals, construction minerals and excavation are discussed. Possible priorities and examples are given for target setting, focusing on limited expansion of built-up area, reduced use of non-renewables, increased resource productivity, and shift to sustainable cultivation of biomass.
The reductionist trend of equalizing sustainable development with CO2 control needs to be reversed - notwithstanding the significance of climate change. Conventional, "compartmentalized" data systems impede an integrated vision and treatment of the paradigm. New accounts and balances focus on the interaction between environment and economy. "Greened" national accounts measure economic sustainability in terms of (produced and natural) capital maintenance; balances of material flows assess ecological sustainability as the dematerialization of production and consumption. Both concepts aim to preserve environmental assets. They differ however with regard to the scope, strength and evaluation of sustainability. First results for Germany indicate weak sustainability of the economy, owing to an increasing capital base. Strong sustainability is not in sight, though, since material throughput has not been reduced sufficiently. An "Alliance for Sustainable Development" is proposed to implement and sustain the paradigm.
During the UNCED conference in Rio de Janeiro 1992 unsustainable consumption and production patterns were identified as one of the key driving forces behind the unsustainable development of the world (Agenda 21, chapter 4). These consumption and production patterns are based on the European model of industrialisation, spread around the globe in the age of colonisation and brought to extremes by the upper-class of industrialised societies, in particular in the United States, but also in a number of countries in the South. Therefore, all states of the world share the task of developing sustainable consumption and production patterns, while particular responsibility rests with the industrialised nations of Europe, North America and Japan. They, and the thriving but small rich elite in the transition countries and in the South, form a global consumer society, with shared products, lifestyles and aspirations. As it is essential to support the transition towards sustainable development by providing the proper information in an operational manner, the UNCED conference has called for the development of suitable means of information, and in particular for the development of sustainability indicators applicable throughout the world (Agenda 21, chapter 40). The UNDESA set of indicators for changing consumption and production patterns offers helpful advice in this regard but still lacks the theoretical underpinning needed to consistently complete it by defining the few still missing indicators. This paper undertakes to suggest such a methodology based on the environmental space concept. It derives a set of science based indicators from this approach which are easily applicable in everyday life and analyses the environmental relevance of the consumption clusters chosen for analysis as well as the relevance of the phenomena characterised by the indicators suggested. As households are just one actor in the field of consumption, a qualitative assessment of influences is performed and the result depicting the key actors for each environmentally relevant consumption cluster is presented as an actor matrix.
This article provides a short account of the international climate negotiations that took place in Bonn from 16 to 27 July 2001. After the Sixth Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change failed in November 2000, the Parties had decided to suspend the meeting. The ministers present at the resumed session successfully adopted the "Bonn Agreement to the Kyoto Protocol", a set of political compromises for the most contentious issues left open by the Kyoto Protocol. Although many details had been transferred to the Seventh Conference of the Parties, November 2001 in Marrakesh, Morocco, the Bonn Agreement already paved the way for ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and its entry into force. The Marrakesh Accord adopted on 10 November 2001 transforms, with a few exceptions, this political agreement into bindinglegal text.
Strategic Environmental Assessment aims to incorporate environmental and sustainability considerations into strategic decision making processes, such as the formulation of policies, plans and programmes. In order to be effective, the assessment must take the real decision making process as the departure point. Existing SEA approaches are frequently tailored after an EIA model conceived from a rational perspective on decision making. However, there are good reasons to assume that most strategic decision making processes are characterised by a bounded rationality. Furthermore, the predictability of environmental consequences generally becomes weaker at strategic levels than at the project level and complexity increases in terms of the numbers of actors involved in the decision. This paper examines various theoretical perspectives to decision making and discusses the implications for decision support in general and SEA in particular. The authors argue that the design of the SEA must be more sensitive to the real characteristics of the decision making context.
The paper examines the "Declaration of German Industry on Global Warming Prevention (DGWP)" in its updated version of 1996. The analysis draws on the findings of empirical case studies in the cement and glass sector as well as on a general analysis of the policy process including monitoring experience so far. The findings emphasise the weak impact of the agreement on the most important driving forces for industrial energy consumption. However, an improved design and a more stringent procedural framework would allow better advantage to be taken of the particular strengths of the approach. The paper concludes by making a number of recommendations that would improve the scope and quality of commitments, and would enhance learning effects during the course of the policy process.
The contribution of natural resources and ecosystems to economic processes still remains under-assessed by market evaluation and productivity analysis. Following the historical lines of the classical productivity debate ranging from the French Physiocrats to early neoclassical growth theories, the productivity concept underwent a gradual transformation from its previous understanding based on natural resources and other environmental factors to its contemporary narrow notion. This paper claims that the course of the classical debate has shaped the scope of predominant contemporary analysis. Except for some very recent findings, multifactor productivity largely focusses on a two-factor model. Material Flow Analysis (MFA) provides a useful step for widening the measurement and notion of productivity.