Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News

Some 2.6 billion people worldwide have one thing in common—they do not have access to sanitation—but the World Bank and the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) are helping change that.

To raise awareness for this crisis, this year’s World Water Day will focus on sanitation.

Worldwide, about 1.7 million deaths a year—90 percent of which are children—are attributed to unsafe water, poor sanitation and hygiene, mainly through infectious diarrhea. Access to sanitation, the practice of good hygiene, and a safe water supply could save 1.5 million children a year.

As the world’s largest investor in sanitation and wastewater, the Bank helps improve sanitation services that reduce illness, generate economic benefits, and reduce the environmental squalor that directly harms people around the globe. For the past 30 years, WSP, a multidonor partnership of the World Bank, has led or supported many of the advances made within the water and sanitation sector.

In only 14 years more than 1 billion people have gained access to sanitation. But because of population growth, the rate of sanitation provision needs to be doubled to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people without access to hygienic sanitation by 2015. Doubling the effort will not be easy, but it is achievable.

Sanitation and wastewater commitments have effectively tripled since 1990 and nearly doubled since 2002. This growth reflects increasing client concern, the effects of the MDGs, and the efforts of World Bank staff to raise the profile of sanitation and wastewater with clients.

Improved sanitation increases primary school enrollment, reduces illnesses so children miss fewer school days, increases productivity among adults, provides safety to women, and reduces the pollution of water resources.

The costs of environmental and health degradation due to inadequate water and sanitation services have been estimated at more than 1 percent of GDP in Colombia, 0.6 percent in Tunisia, and 1.4 percent in Bangladesh.

Sanitation access, good hygiene, and a safe water supply can save 1.5 million children a year.

Poor sanitation is responsible for at least $9 billion in economic losses per year in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam combined, says a new Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) study -- Economic Impacts of Sanitation in Southeast Asia.

Sanitation is a neglected aspect of development in countries where spending is limited. By examining the economic impacts of poor sanitation, and the potential gains from improved sanitation, this study provides evidence to support further investments in sanitation.

The most devastating impact of poor sanitation is an increased risk of infectious disease and premature death, accounting for more than $4.8 billion, or $12 per capita annually, according to the study.

Poor sanitation also contributes significantly to water pollution—adding to the cost of safe freshwater for households, and reducing the production of fish in rivers and lakes.

To find out more about what the World Bank, WSP, and their partners are doing to improve the sanitation situation, visit www.wsp.org and www.worldbank.org/watsan .

To order a free copy of this publication, please send your name and address to wsp@worldbank.org.

The World Bank www.WorldBank.org
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21693343~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html

On March 25, 2008, EPA held the acid rain auction giving private citizens, brokers and power plants the opportunity to buy and sell sulfur dioxide (SO2) allowances, as part of the cap and trade program to reduce acid rain. When fully implemented in 2010, the Acid Rain Program will have cut SO2 emissions by 50 percent from 1990 levels.

The national emissions cap and SO2 allowance trading work to create one of the most successful environmental programs to date. Each allowance is equivalent to one ton of acid rain-causing SO2, emitted from power plants. The Acid Rain Program uses a market-driven cap-and-trade system to cut SO2 emissions from power plants.

Since 1990, SO2 emissions have declined more than five million tons, and acid deposition in the eastern United States has declined by at least 30 percent improving the condition of lakes and streams. The Acid Rain Program has realized human and environmental benefits earlier, and at less cost, than would have occurred with conventional approaches. Current estimates indicate that program compliance costs are about 75 percent below those initially predicted by EPA.

The auction includes two types of allowances: 125,000 offered for use in 2008 and 125,000 additional allowances offered seven years in advance to help provide stability in planning for capital investments. These advance allowances will be available for use in 2015. The number of allowances a source purchases will not permit them to emit SO2 at a level that would violate the health-based national ambient air quality standard. The weighted average of winning bids for 2008 is $389.91.

For detailed results of the 2008 acid rain auction and information about the trading program visit: epa.gov/airmarkets/trading/2008/index.html
Data about allowance transactions are available at: epa.gov/airmarkets
For information about the acid rain program visit: epa.gov/acidrain/

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency www.EPA.gov
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/89cbb61795134fd685257419004c9367!OpenDocument

Abstract: Value assessment is a central element in an EIA for the understanding of the impacts of specified projects. The value assessment contains subjective elements and this may cause errors and difficulties in numeric value assessment methods. There is a need for transparent common criteria to promote discussion and understanding. A common criteria base already exists, but lack of communication between different management systems and different disciplines, all with different traditions in value assessment, makes the situation complex. In this article we have looked into the basic understanding of value linked to the investigation themes of natural environment, cultural heritage and society. The investigation themes linked to social science is difficult to incorporate into a common system, basically because they have less focus on land use and contain different value types.

Much of the relevant literature about value assessment is linked to the assessment of sites of special interest as candidates for legal protection or conservation. In an EIA a much broader range of areas is introduced, including the “every day landscape” with a lower and more general level of value. Together with a focus on mitigation and adjustments of plans, this results in a need for a more detailed value assessment scale than is normally in use today. We have suggested a new scale to ease communication between different disciplines and management systems.

How we understand value is not constant over time, nor is the level of knowledge. This makes it necessary to sustain an ongoing debate on value assessment. The need for a dynamic value assessment system increases with the increasing use of database modelling, digital analysis of map data (GIS) etc. Lack of a ongoing value debate will rapidly lead to misleading and biased results.

Keywords: EIA; Value; Natural environment; Cultural heritage; Social impact

by Lars Erikstad 1, Inge Lindblom 2, Gro Jerpåsen 2, Martin A. Hanssen 3, Trine Bekkby 4, Odd Stabbetorp 1 and Vegar Bakkestuen 1 and 5
1. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Gaustadalléen 21, NO-0349 Oslo, Norway; Tel.: +47 73801708; fax: +47 22 60 04 24
2. The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), Box 736, Sentrum NO-0105 Oslo, Norway
3. Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), Box 44 Blindern, NO-0313 Oslo, Norway
4. Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Gaustadalléen 21, NO-0349 Oslo, Norway
5. Department of Botany, Natural History Museum, University of Oslo P.O. Box 1172 Blindern, NO-0318 Oslo, Norway

Environmental Impact Assessment Review via Elsevier Science Direct www.ScienceDirect.com
Volume 28, Issues 2-3; February-April 2008; Pages 131-143
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2007.03.005

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effects of providing environmental amenities associated with open space in a discrete-space urban model and characterizes optimal provision of open space across a metropolitan area. The discrete-space model assumes distinct neighborhoods in which developable land is homogeneous within a neighborhood but heterogeneous across neighborhoods. Open space provides environmental amenities within the neighborhood it is located and may provide amenities in other neighborhoods (amenity spillover). We solve for equilibrium under various assumptions about amenity spillover effects and transportation costs in both open-city (with in- and out-migration) and closed-city (fixed population) versions of the model. Increasing open space tends to increase equilibrium housing density and price within a neighborhood. In an open-city model, open space provision also increases housing density and price in other neighborhoods if there is an amenity spillover effect. In a closed-city model, housing density and prices in other neighborhoods can decrease if the pull of the local amenity value is stronger than the push from reduced availability of developable land. We use numerical simulation to solve for the optimal pattern of open space in two examples: a simple symmetric case and a simulation based on the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area, Minnesota, USA. With no amenity spillover, it is optimal to provide the same amount of open space in all neighborhoods regardless of transportation cost. With amenity spillover effects and relatively high transportation cost, it is optimal to provide open space in a greenbelt at the edge of the city. With low transportation cost, open space is provided throughout the city with the exception of neighborhoods on the periphery of the city, where the majority of the population lives. A greenbelt still occurs but its location is inside the city.

Keywords: Open space; Environmental amenities; Discrete urban economics model

by Liaila Tajibaeva 1, Robert G. Haight 2 and Stephen Polasky 3
1. Department of Economics, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada; Tel.: +1 416 979 5000x7724; fax: +1 416 598 5916.
2. USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA
3. Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA

Resource and Energy Economics via Elsevier Science Direct www.ScienceDirect.com
Volume 30, Issue 2; May, 2008; Pages 170-196
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2007.09.001

Bioenergy projects must be economically viable for the different actors in the value chain. Forest biomass used for energy purposes must be able to compete with other uses of the biomass, and at the same time the energy produced from biomass must be as cheap as or cheaper than energy produced from competing energy systems. The costs in these calculations are changing all the time; in particular the cost of fossil fuels shows large variations. As the risk is high and the economic margins in many cases are low, there is a tendency that investors are reluctant to invest in bioenergy projects. On the other hand, prices of wood based fuels have been rising modestly compared with e.g. oil and gas, which reduces the economic risk when investing in a bioenergy project (Metla 2006, Kåberger 1997). In addition, there are many socioeconomic benefits to bioenergy projects that in many cases are not accounted for in the market prices, which is a strong argument for economic support of bionenergy projects.

Bioenergy projects contribute to many important elements of national and regional economic development: economic growth through production and business expansion (earnings), employment, import substitution (direct and indirect on the trade balance), security and diversificaton of energy supply (distributed energy) (see e.g. Hillring 2002). Other benefits include strengthening of traditional industries and rural communities (Borsboom et al. 2002).

by Anders Lunnan 6, Lelde Vilkriste 7, Gunnar Wilhelmsen 6, Diana Mizaraite 8, Antti Asikainen 9 and Dominik Röser 9
6. Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, N-1431 Ås, Norway
7. Latvian State Forestry Research Institute, LV-2169, Salaspils, Latvia
8. Lithuanian Forest Research Institute, 4312 LT, Girionys, Lithuania
9. Finnish Forest Research Institute, FIN-80101, Joensuu, Finland

Book Chapter 8 in Sustainable Use of Forest Biomass for Energy
Edited by Dominik Röser, Antti Asikainen, Karsten Raulund-Rasmussen and Inge Stupak
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-5054-1
ISBN: 978-1-4020-5053-4 (Print) 978-1-4020-5054-1 (Online)
Pages 197-234
SpringerLink Date March 05, 2008; Copyright 2008
Book Series: Managing Forest Ecosystems; Volume 12
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q2k327v68jvvk465/

According to Jeffrey Rosen writing in The New York Times Magazine "... The Supreme Court term that ended last June was, by all measures, exceptionally good for American business. The chamber’s litigation center filed briefs in 15 cases and its side won in 13 of them — the highest percentage of victories in the center’s 30-year history. The current term, which ends this summer, has also been shaping up nicely for business interests."
...
A generation ago, progressive and consumer groups petitioning the court could count on favorable majority opinions written by justices who viewed big business with skepticism — or even outright prejudice....

Today, however, there are no economic populists on the court, even on the liberal wing. And ever since John Roberts was appointed chief justice in 2005, the court has seemed only more receptive to business concerns. Forty percent of the cases the court heard last term involved business interests, up from around 30 percent in recent years. While the Rehnquist Court heard less than one antitrust decision a year, on average, between 1988 and 2003, the Roberts Court has heard seven in its first two terms — and all of them were decided in favor of the corporate defendants.

...In the current Supreme Court term, the justices have already blocked a liability suit against Medtronic, the manufacturer of a heart catheter, and rejected a type of shareholder suit that includes a claim against Enron. In the coming months, the court will decide whether to reduce the largest punitive-damage award in American history, which resulted from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

...With their pro-business jurisprudence, the justices may be capturing an emerging spirit of agreement among liberal and conservative elites about the value of free markets. ...Judges, lawyers and law professors (such as myself) drilled in cost-benefit analysis over the past three decades, are no exception. It should come as little surprise that John Roberts and Stephen Breyer, both of whom studied the economic analysis of law at Harvard, have similar instincts in business cases.
...
This elite consensus, however, is not necessarily shared by the country as a whole....

The origins of the business community’s campaign to transform the Supreme Court can be traced back precisely to Aug. 23, 1971. That was the day when Lewis F. Powell Jr., a corporate lawyer in Richmond, Va., wrote a memo to his friend Eugene B. Snydor, then the head of the education committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In the memo, Powell expressed his concern that the American economic system was “under broad attack.”
...
This term, the Supreme Court has continued to cut back on consumer suits. In a ruling in January, the court refused to allow a shareholder suit against the suppliers to Charter Communications, one of the country’s largest cable companies. The suppliers were alleged to have “aided and abetted” Charter’s efforts to inflate its earnings, but the court held that Charter’s investors had to show that they had relied on the deceptive acts committed by the suppliers before the suit could proceed. A week later, the court invoked the same principle when it refused to hear an appeal in a case related to Enron, in which investors are trying to recover $40 billion from Wall Street banks that they claim aided and abetted Enron’s fraud. As a result, the shareholder suit against the banks may be dead.
...
The Breyer and Ginsburg nominations ... came at a time when liberal as well as conservative judges and academics were gravitating in increasing numbers to an economic approach to the law, originally developed at the University of Chicago. The law-and-economics movement sought to evaluate the efficiency of legal rules based on their costs and benefits for society as a whole. Although originally conservative in its orientation, the movement also attracted prominent moderate and liberal scholars and judges like Breyer, who before his nomination wrote two books on regulation, arguing that government health-and-safety spending is distorted by sensational media reports of disasters that affect relatively few citizens.
...
Although the court is currently accepting less than 2 percent of the 10,000 petitions it receives each year, the Chamber of Commerce’s petitions between 2004 and 2007 were granted at a rate of 26 percent.... Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Georgetown who also represents environmental clients before the court, recently ran the numbers and found that the court reverses the lower court in 65 percent of the cases it agrees to hear; and when the petitioner is represented by the elite Supreme Court advocates routinely hired by the chamber, the success rate rises to 75 percent.
...
Punitive damages — money awarded by civil juries on top of any awarded for actual harm that victims have suffered — are designed to penalize especially egregious acts of corporate misconduct resulting from malice or greed, and to deter similar wrongdoing in the future. In the 19th century, courts generally demanded a clear assignment of fault in cases where victims sued for injuries caused by malfunctioning products. It was hard for plaintiffs to recover in personal-injury cases unless the corporation was obviously at fault. But in the 20th century, in liability cases involving a rapidly expanding class of potentially dangerous products like cars, drugs and medical devices, courts increasingly applied a standard of “strict liability,” which held that manufacturers should pay whether or not they were directly at fault.
...
A series of well-publicized awards in the 1980s and ’90s culminated in the largest punitive damage award in American history the $5 billion levied against Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. This was hardly typical: the median punitive award actually fell to $50,000 in 2001 from $63,000 in 1992.
...
The business community made other inroads against punitive damages. Corporations financed campaigns against pro-punitive-damage state judges who had been elected with the assistance of large contributions from plaintiffs’ lawyers. The business community also helped persuade more than 30 states to either impose caps on punitive-damage awards or direct substantial portions of the awards to be paid into special state funds. In 1996, it helped persuade the Republican Congress, led by Newt Gingrich, to pass legislation that would cap punitive-damage awards in product-liability cases in every state court in the country. But in 1996, President Clinton, with what must have been perverse pleasure, vetoed the bill on the grounds that it violated principles of federalism and states rights to which conservatives claimed to be devoted.

Thwarted by Clinton, and unable to persuade Congress to override the veto, opponents of punitive damages turned their attention back to the Supreme Court, looking for a victory they were unable to win in the political arena. Here, they were remarkably successful. As late as 1991, the court had refused to impose limits on a large punitive-damage award. But in a case in 1996, the court held for the first time that punitive-damage awards had to be proportional to the actual damage incurred by the plaintiff. The case involved a man who said he was deceived by BMW when it sold him a supposedly “new” car that was, in fact, used and had received a $300 touch-up job. The court, in a 5-4 opinion, overturned a $2 million punitive-damage award as “grossly excessive.” In 2003, the court clarified what it meant: a single-digit ratio between punitive damages and compensatory damages was likely to be acceptable.

[One case] last year ... involved the estate of a heavy smoker who sued Philip Morris for deceitfully distributing a “poisonous and addictive substance.” A jury had awarded the estate $821,000 in compensatory damages and $79.5 million in punitive damages — a ratio of about 100 to 1. In a 5-4 opinion written by Breyer, the court held that it was unconstitutional for a jury to use punitive damages to punish a company for its conduct toward similarly affected individuals who are not party to the lawsuit.

This spring, the court will decide the Exxon Valdez punitive-damage case, which many consider the culmination of the business community’s decades-long campaign against punitive damages. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez tanker, whose captain had a history of alcoholism, ran into a reef and punctured the hull; 11 million gallons of oil leaked onto the coastline of Prince William Sound. A jury handed down a $5 billion punitive-damage award.
...
On Feb. 21, the Supreme Court handed llison Zieve of Public Citizen a crushing defeat: an 8-1 opinion immunizing the makers of defective medical devices from product-liability suits. The lone dissent was written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who objected that Congress could not have intended such a “radical curtailment” of state personal-injury suits when it regulated medical devices in 1976.

by Jeffrey Rosen, law professor at George Washington University, and author, most recently, of “The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America.”

FOR FULL ARTICLE GO TO
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16supreme-t.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
The New York Times Magazine www.NYTimes.com
March 16, 2008