Valuing the Environment

This is the second in a pair of economic texts commissioned by the OECD in the field of environmental economics; The Pearce Report: Blueprint for a Green Economy puts the role which monetary evaluation of environmental costs and benefits can play firmly into the public eye. This book goes further and looks at six countries where such evaluation techniques are applied and at the obstacles to their further use. The case studies, written by leading experts in each nation, show how these methods are being taken up in the UK, Norway and Italy and the ways in which they are already extensively in use in the USA, Germany and the Netherlands. The authors also describe the obstacles to their use - the lack of knowledge of environmental economics at government level; the competition from other government priorities; and, the failure of environmental groups to grasp the importance of financial evaluation to their cause. But, as this book makes clear, significant advances are being made, both in the implementation of these economic techniques and, above all, in striking and yet further developments in economic thinking.