Polticas pblicas de proteccin

del medio ambiente

Conceptos de partida

Yanna Gutirrez Franco

ygfranco@der.ucm.es
Environmental and Resource
Economics, lecture 1

Fundamentals of economics
The emergence of environmental and
resource economics
Economy-environment interdependence:
Ecological Economics
Fundamentals of Economics

What are the traditional stereotypes

regarding economics and the environment?

Provide a general definition of economics

The study of how scarce resources are

allocated among competing uses.
Fundamentals of Economics

What is scarcity?

Something is said to be scarce if the

following is true: If it were offered
to people at no cost, more would be
wanted than is available.
Fundamentals of Economics
What is scarcity?

Does scarcity only exist in industrialized or capitalist

societies?

If something has a price in a market, does that

generally mean that it is scarce?
Fundamentals of Economics

Economics vs. Environment-

Can we really put economics all on one

side, and environment all on the
other side?
 Fundamentals of Economics
Economics vs.
Environment
-

If scarcity
means that
choices must
be made,
then what
are the
tradeoffs?
Fundamentals of Economics

What is opportunity cost?-

When something scarce is allocated to one

particular use, the opportunity cost of that
choice is the value of the best alternative
given up.
What is an example of an opportunity cost?
Opportunity cost can be easy or very
difficult to measure.
Fundamentals of Economics

What is opportunity cost?-

The concepts of scarcity and opportunity

cost can be illustrated in a production
possibilities frontier (PPF).

The PPF represents all the possible

combinations of food and clothing that can
be produced in a given time period when
available resources are fully and efficiently
employed.
Fundamentals of Economics
Fundamentals of Economics
The Three Economic Questions

What are the three economic questions that

all economies must answer?

1. What to produce with our resources

(land, labor, capital, entrepreneurship).
2. How to produce what we have decided to
produce.
3. For whom are we producing (who gets the
stuff)?
 Three Themes
Efficiency: The allocation of goods and
services by the market to rational agents
is efficient only if there are no
externalities

Optimality: Efficiency is a necessary but

not a sufficient condition for optimality;
optimality includes equity

Sustainability: Taking care of posterity

(future generations)
Fundamentals of Economics

Efficiency

There are two different efficiency

criteria commonly used by
economists for evaluating social
policy

Pareto and Kaldor-Hicks

Fundamentals of Economics
Efficiency

Pareto Efficiency
What is Pareto efficiency?
Compares policy alternatives to the
status quo.
To be Pareto efficient, a new policy
alternative must make some people
better off (increase their utility),
perhaps leave some people unaffected,
and make nobody worse off (decrease
their utility), relative to the status quo.
Fundamentals of Economics
Efficiency

Pareto Efficiency

Did the emancipation of slaves in the U.S. satisfy the

Pareto criterion?
What about the preservation of Amazon Rainforest?

Is it fair to say that the Pareto efficiency criterion

is biased toward maintaining the status quo?
Fundamentals of Economics
Efficiency

Kaldor-Hicks Efficiency
What is the Kaldor-Hicks efficiency
criterion?

Evaluates policy alternatives as well as

the status quo.
The Kaldor-Hicks efficient policy
alternative (which may be the status quo)
generates the largest net social utility
(or net social benefit), even if some are
made worse off.
Fundamentals of Economics
Market Failures

Public Goods
Common property
Externalities
Public goods (1):

market failure, in which the market price does not

capture the social benefits of its provision.

e.g.: protection from the risks of climate change is a

public good since its provision is both non-rival and non-
excludable.

Non-rival means climate protection provided to one

country does not reduce the level of protection to
another country;

Non-excludable means it is too costly to exclude any one

from receiving climate protection. A country's incentive
to invest in carbon abatement is reduced because it can
"free ride" off the efforts of other countries.
Public goods (2):

Over a century ago, Swedish economist Knut

Wicksell (1896) first discussed how public goods can
be under-provided by the market because people
might conceal their preferences for the good, but
still enjoy the benefits without paying for them.
Common property (1):

When it is too costly to exclude people from

access to an environmental resource for which
there is rivalry, market allocation is likely to be
inefficient.

The challenges related with common property and

non-exclusion have long been recognized.

Hardin's (1968) concept of the tragedy of the

commons popularized the challenges involved in
non-exclusion and common property.
Common property (2):

! "commons" refers to the environmental asset itself,

! "common property resource" or "common pool

resource" refers to a property right regime that allows
for some collective body to devise schemes to exclude
others, thereby allowing the capture of future benefit
streams;

! and "open-access" implies no ownership in the sense

that property everyone owns nobody owns. The basic
problem is that if people ignore the scarcity value of
the commons, they can end up expending too much
effort, over harvesting a resource (e.g., a fishery, a
forest).
Common property (3):

Hardin theorizes that in the absence of

restrictions, users of an open-access resource
will use it more than if they had to pay for it
and had exclusive rights, leading to
environmental degradatiom.

See, however, Ostrom's work on how people

using real common property resources have
worked to establish self-governing rules to
reduce the risk of the tragedy of the commons
(Nobel Prize in 2009).
Externalities

The basic idea is that an externality exists when a

person makes a choice that affects other people
that are not accounted for in the market price.

For instance, a firm emitting pollution will typically

not take into account the costs that its pollution
imposes on others.

In economic terminology, externalities are examples

of market failures, in which the unfettered market
does not lead to an efficient outcome.
Fundamentals of Economics
Government Failures
Government interventions also suffer
inefficiencies.
Efficiency-enhancing policies may not be
politically feasible, and those policies that
are politically feasible may lead to
substantial inefficiencies
The rise of the MARKET BASED
INSTRUMENTS (environmental taxes and
emission trading)
 The Emergence of Environmental
and Resource Economics

i. Classical economics
ii. Neo-classical economics
iii. Welfare economics
iv. An alternative approach: Environmental
and resource economics
v. Towards interdisciplinary: Ecological
economics
 i. Classical Economics
Adam Smith: invisible hand of general
equilibrium, social good by individual action
Thomas Malthus (*): growing population,
diminishing returns to scale in agriculture
David Ricardo (*): diminishing returns to scale
(intensive margin), diminishing quality
(extensive margin)
John Stuart Mill (*): innovation, input
substitution; amenity value, it is only in
backward countries of the world that
increased production is still an important
object[ive] (1857)
 i. Classical Economics (2)
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

Preocupado por la existencia de una tierra de cultivo

limitada; es decir por una oferta finita
Rendimientos decrecientes del factor trabajo en la
agricultura. Crecimiento aritmtico de la produccin.
Crecimiento geomtrico de la poblacin
Al final se alcanzar un estado estacionario en el que la
produccin agrcola ser insuficiente para cubrir el
crecimiento de la poblacin.

Predicciones incorrectas?
No tiene en cuenta el desarrollo tecnolgico
 i. Classical Economics (3)
David Ricardo

Secuencia: Aumenta poblacin mayor escasez de

tierras renta a pagar por tierras
estrangulacin de beneficios y de crecimiento
econmico

Tierras de peor calidad rendimiento

alimentos por persona. Situacin lmite: mayora
de la poblacin en nivel de subsistencia.
 i. Classical Economics (4)
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Los avances tecnolgicos pueden contrarrestar

los rendimientos decrecientes de la tierra.

Se podr mantener un determinado nivel de vida

Aunque las limitaciones en las disponibilidades

puedan imponer ciertos lmites al crecimiento.
 i. Classical Economics (5)
John Stuart Mill (1857)
There is room in world, no doubt, for a great
increase in population, supposing the arts of
life to go on improving, and capital to increase.
[...] The density of population necessary to
obtain all of the advantages both of
cooperation and of social intercourse [...] has
been attained. A population may be too
crowded, though all be amply supplied with
food and raiment. [...] Nor is there much
satisfaction in contemplating the world with
nothing left to the spontaneous activity of
nature
 ii. Neo-Classical Economics
Se habla de precios en funcin de la escasez y no
de valor trabajo.
Introducen el anlisis marginal, buscando
maximizar la utilidad.
Los bienes y servicios ambientales carecen de
precios (bienes libres).
Lo deseable es alcanzar el ptimo de Pareto.
Comportamiento racional individuo: ptimo Pareto
Slo se justifica la intervencin del Estado cuando
aparecen fallos de mercado.
 iii. Welfare Economics
Rigorous theory of social good
Utilitarianism: Social good is the weighted
sum of individual good
Pareto optimality: At least as good for all,
better for one (actual and potential)
Marshall and Pigou: Externalities and taxes
if there are unintended and
uncompensated consequences of one agent
to the next, the market transactions need
not be Pareto improving Pigou taxes can
counteract this
 iv. Environmental and
Resource Economics (1)
In the 1960s and 70s, things changed:
Limits to Growth, Silent Spring, oil crisis,
pollution, congestion, space travel
First, natural resources are scarce
Second, environmental services are
valuable
Third, there are significant environmental
externalities
 The Limits to Growth (Meadows, et al. 1972)

A book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing

world population and finite resource supplies,
commissioned by the Club of Rome (*)

The book used the World3 model to simulate the

consequence of interactions between the Earth's and
human systems

The book echoes some of the concerns and predictions of

Malthus in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798):
founded on the assumptions that exponential growth
accurately described their patterns of increase, and that
the ability of technology to increase the availability of
resources grows only linearly.
 The Limits to Growth (Meadows, et al.
1972)

El Club de Roma es una organizacin no gubernamental sin

nimo de lucro formada por prominentes personalidades,
que busca la promocin de un crecimiento econmico
estable y sostenible de la humanidad.

El Club de Roma tiene, entre sus miembros a importantes

cientficos (algunos premios Nobel), economistas, polticos,
jefes de estado, e incluso asociaciones internacionales.

http://www.clubofrome.org/eng/home/
iv. Environmental and Resource
Economics (2)
Economic activity depends upon and
affects the natural environment
Services that the environment
provides
Resource base
Waste sink
Life-support system
 Environmental and
Resource Economics (3)
Environmental and resource economics has now
become a respectable field
All US & UK universities offer an education
programme
There are specialised journals (ERE, IRERE, ERERE,
JEEM, REEP, Environment and Development
Economics, Resource and Energy Economics, Review of
Agricultural Economics Applied Economic
Perspectives and Policy, Resources Policy, Strategic
Behavior and the Environment)
General journals and conferences have regular
sessions on env. & res. econ.
Leading economists like Arrow, Bradford, Jorgenson,
Nordhaus, Sachs, Solow (Nobel en 1987)...
v. Ecological economics (1)

An Alternative Approach
Legitimate concerns
Lot of critique, little alternatives
Half-baked ideas, but influential
The Standard Economic Model
Consumption & Investment

Goods & Services

Households Firms

Labor & Capital

Wages & Profit

What is Wrong With This Picture?

Humans cannot create or destroy matter or energy

The economy cannot be a perpetual motion machine

 Interdisciplinary Economic Model

Ecological & Physical Systems

Energy Economic System Waste Heat

Solar Households Firms Heat

Nat. Res. Pollutants

 Interdisciplinary Economic Model

Ecological & Physical Systems

Energy Economic System Waste Heat

Solar Households Firms Heat

Nat. Res. Pollutants

Recycling
 v. Ecological economics (2)

Towards Interdisciplinarity
Environmental problems violate disciplinary
boundaries
Some economics models violate basic facts
of physics, chemistry or ecology
Increasing emphasis on multi-disciplinary
work
Towards new disciplines, interdisciplines
and transdisciplines
 La Economa ecolgica (3)
La economa ecolgica se plantea como un concepto
integrador o ecointegrador: evitar la disociacin
entre los planteamientos econmicos y ecolgicos

Reconciliar:

las prcticas de valoracin econmica propias de

los economistas en trminos de precios, costes y
beneficios monetarios, y

el aparato analtico de la ecologa o la

termodinmica, preocupadas por registrar las
irreversibilidades inherentes a todo proceso fsico.
 La Economa ecolgica (3)

Son compatibles la actividad econmica humana y la

conservacin del medio ambiente?

La economa sustentable o sostenible

INFORME BRUNDTLAND
(Informe de 1987 de la Comisin Mundial para el Medio
Ambiente y el Desarrollo)
 La Economa ecolgica (3)
Est en manos de la humanidad hacer que el desarrollo
sea sostenible, es decir, asegurar que satisfaga las
necesidades del presente sin comprometer la
capacidad de las futuras generaciones para
satisfacer las propias.

El concepto de desarrollo sostenible implica lmites no

lmites absolutos sino limitaciones que imponen a los
recursos del medio ambiente el estado actual de la
tecnologa y de la organizacin social, y la capacidad
de la biosfera para absorber los efectos de las
actividades humanas.

Pero tanto la tecnologa como la organizacin social y la

capacidad de la biosfera pueden ser ordenadas y
mejoradas de manera que abran el camino a una
nueva era de crecimiento econmico.
 Principales Desequilibrios
Informe Brundtland Conferencia de Ro (1992)

1. Presin Demogrfica = Crecimiento exponencial de la

poblacin mundial.
2. Prdida de los recursos del suelo y su contaminacin.
3. Deforestacin.
4. La biodiversidad en peligro.
5. Deterioro de las condiciones atmosfricas:
5.1. Efecto invernadero.
5.2. Agujero de la capa de ozono.
5.3. Lluvia cida.
6. Contaminacin de las aguas.
7. Cuestin energtica.
8. Desequilibrios urbanos.
 La economa sostenible: Definicin y reglas a seguir

1) El ritmo de extraccin de los 2) El flujo de residuos debe

recursos renovables tiene mantenerse por debajo o al
que ser siempre menor que el mismo nivel que la capacidad
ritmo de regeneracin de asimilacin del medio
natural. ambiente.

1 + 2 = Las dotaciones de Recursos naturales

renovables deben mantenerse constantes a lo largo
del tiempo

Importante: el ritmo de regeneracin y la capacidad

de asimilacin NO son estticos, pueden empeorar o
mejorar
 La economa sostenible: Definicin y reglas a seguir

1) El ritmo de extraccin de los

2) El flujo de residuos debe
recursos renovables tiene
mantenerse por debajo o al
que ser siempre menor que el
mismo nivel que la capacidad
ritmo de regeneracin
de asimilacin del medio
natural.
ambiente.

REGLAS

3) La reduccin de existencias de
4) La reduccin de existencias de
recursos no renovables (RNR)
RNR debe conllevar una
debe compensarse con un
eficiencia creciente en su uso.
aumento de recursos renovables.
 Desarrollo sostenible
A favor: su gran aceptacin y extensin
Principio de precaucin
Irreversibilidad

En contra: imprecisin:
Qu es necesidad?
Cmo sabemos las necesidades futuras?
Cmo las valoramos?
Qu necesidades debemos satisfacer primero,
las de los pases pobres, las de los no nacidos?
 TEMAS PARA EL DEBATE

1. Los pobres son, a un tiempo, vctimas y

agentes del cambio climtico

de qu forma influye la pobreza de un pas

negativamente en el cambio climtico? son los
pobres los que sufren sus consecuencias en
mayor medida? por qu?
 TEMAS PARA EL DEBATE
2. Es imposible fsicamente extender el consumo
per capita de los pases ricos a todo el Planeta?

La emulacin de las metrpolis industriales en la

carrera de la produccin y del consumo es una
quimera que llevara en plazos relativamente
breves al agotamiento de los recursos y a la
destrucin de la biosfera y de la especie humana.
(NAREDO, J.M. (1987): La economa en evolucin)
 TEMAS PARA EL DEBATE

3. Si aceptamos los lmites fsicos al crecimiento

cul es la solucin?

4. Consecuencias de lograr un rpido desarrollo en

el corto plazo de espaldas al medio ambiente: en
qu medida el deterioro del medio ambiente en
los pases en vas de desarrollo afecta
negativamente a la productividad futura?
 TEMAS PARA EL DEBATE

5. En qu medida existe un trade-off entre

desarrollo y medio ambiente? (distinguir entre el
corto y el largo plazo)

Puede haber medidas que induzcan

simultneamente a una mejora en la eficiencia y a
una mitigacin de los efectos del cambio
climtico? Ejemplos.
 TEMAS PARA EL DEBATE
6. Teniendo en cuenta la influencia de la legislacin
ambiental en los costes de produccin de las
empresas, una normativa de lucha contra el
cambio climtico que sea avanzada y rigurosa:

retarda el desarrollo econmico de los pases ms

atrasados?

Y en el mbito domstico: tiene efectos

redistribuidores a favor de la poblacin con
menor nivel de renta?
 TEMAS PARA EL DEBATE
7. En qu sentido los problemas ambientales de los
pases en desarrollo son distintos de los de los
pases avanzados?

8. Qu papel pueden jugar los pases

industrializados en la mejora de la calidad
atmosfrica de los pases en desarrollo?

9. La legislacin ambiental como barrera al

comercio: neoproteccionismo. Discutir en
referencia al impacto en los pases en desarrollo
 TEMAS PARA EL DEBATE

10. El rgimen de propiedad comunal en los pases en

desarrollo Es una forma de propiedad adecuada?
Posibles problemas y posibles alternativas
(privatizacin vs. nacionalizacin)

11. Democratizacin en los pases en desarrollo y

medio ambiente. Discutir la posible vinculacin.

12. Medio ambiente y globalizacin. Es Kioto un

paradigma de la globalizacin amable?