The Economics of Global Environmental Change

Book excerpt: The international community is increasingly confronted with global environmental problems, which lead to distributional conflicts, unresolved equity issues and asymmetric distribution of the costs and benefits of environmental policy. The complexity of such problems requires the development of an international institutional framework, capable of coping with the long-run international aspects of global environmental change. This book analyses some of the difficulties in the construction of such a framework and offers suggestions on how they might be overcome. The contributions in The Economics of Global Environmental Change address international trade, land-use change, biodiversity preservation, the management of water resources and the composition of water-related conflicts, global warming and strategic aspects of international environmental agreements. This book provides an in-depth insight to the current state-of-the-art for both economists and non-economists interested in global environmental change. It will also be of great interest to those wanting an introduction to the economic perspective of an increasingly relevant environmental core problem, as well as to students and researchers in political science.