Governing the Environment: Salient Institutional Issues

by Albert Breton (Editor), Giorgio Brosio (Editor), Silvana Dalmazzone (Editor), Giovanna Garrone (Editor)

Overview

Environmental policy, focusing on the control of pollution and on over-exploitation, easily overlooks the extensive range of interconnections between economic activities and natural systems. In this timely book, a number of specialists examine how crucial aspects of complex environmental problems and policy can be dealt with in decentralized governmental systems.

Bridging the gap between the conventional environmental federalism literature and advances in environmental and ecological economics that have been made over the last two decades, this innovative book explores alternative solutions to the problem of assigning powers over the environment. It deals with important issues in environmental governance including interjurisdictional contracting, discounting, risk management, eliciting compliance, and environmental accounting - in each case concentrating on the comparative advantage of governments at different jurisdictional levels in implementing optimal policies.

Offering a comprehensive approach to environmental policy, this book will be a valuable resource for researchers and students in environmental economics, environmental politics, governance and decentralization. It will also benefit practitioners and policy-makers with responsibilities over the environment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847203977
Publisher:	Edward Elgar Publishing
Publication date:	11/30/2009
Series:	New Horizons in Environmental Economics series
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Edited by Albert Breton, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Toronto, Canada, Giorgio Brosio, Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Turin, Italy, Silvana Dalmazzone, Assistant Professor of Economic Policy, University of Turin, Italy and Giovanna Garrone, Research Fellow, University of Turin, Italy

Table of Contents

Contents:

Preface

1. Introduction
Albert Breton, Giorgio Brosio, Silvana Dalmazzone and Giovanna Garrone

PART I: INSTITUTIONS: ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM OF ASSIGNING POWERS OVER THE ENVIRONMENT
2. Contracts in the Vertical Assignment of Powers Over the Environment
Anthony Scott

3. Privatization and Environmental Governance
Marcia Valiante

4. The Contribution of Community Institutions to Environmental Problem-Solving
Elinor Ostrom

5. Bicameralism and Environmental Legislation
Giorgio Brosio

6. Fashioning Entitlements: A Comparative Law and Economic Analysis of the Judicial Role in Environmental Centralization in the United States and Europe
Jason Scott Johnston and Michael G. Faure

7. Compliance in Decentralized Environmental Governance
Albert Breton and Pierre Salmon

PART II: ISSUES IN ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE: THE COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE OF DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT
8. Environmental Federalism with Regards to Accidental Pollution
Klaas T. van ’t Veld and Jason F. Shogren

9. Losing the Lands of Plenty? Time Scale and Discounting in Environmental Governance
Sarah Lumley

10. Environmental Accounting at Different Levels of Government: The State of the Art
Silvana Dalmazzone and Alessandra La Notte

Index

Editorial Reviews

'This volume - the second by this editorial team - addresses many of the issues to be resolved if we are to manage environmental public goods efficiently and sustainably. What is the right scale of governance? What makes for effective public-private partnership? What makes governance systems effective? When do we need supranational governance? Given the complex nature of social-ecological systems these are hard questions. Breton and his collaborators answer them in ways that are both convincing and insightful. A very valuable contribution.'

Charles Perrings