The paper combines an economic-geography model of agglomeration and periphery with a model of species diversity and looks at optimal policies of biodiversity conservation. The subject of the paper is natural biodiversity, which is inevitably impaired by anthropogenic impact. Thus, the economic...

Studying the sustainable use of ecosystem services under uncertainty requires the consideration of the stochastic dynamics of the system under study, risk and time preferences, risk management strategies and normative views pertaining to sustainability. To gather this information for an...

Rain-index insurance is strongly advocated in many parts of the developing world to help farmers to cope with climatic risk that prevail in (semi-)arid rangelands due to low and highly uncertain rainfall. We present a modeling analysis of how the availability of rain-index insurance affects the...

Resilience as a descriptive concept gives insight into the dynamic properties of a system. Sustainability as a normative concept captures basic ideas of inter- and intragenerational justice. In this paper we specify the relationship between resilience and sustainable development. Based on an...

This paper analyses the role of palm oil and its sustainability from different perspectives. We consider the role of palm oil within the GHG context. We discuss the impact of palm oil on biodiversity and analyse how palm oil can contribute to economic growth and development in tropical...

Ecosystem resilience, i.e. an ecosystem's ability to maintain its basic functions and controls under disturbances, is often interpreted as insurance: by decreasing the probability of future drops in the provision of ecosystem services, resilience insures risk-averse ecosystem users against...

In den Diskussionen über die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitik nach 2013 nimmt die Honorierung nicht marktgängiger gesellschaftlicher Leistungen der Landwirtschaft eine zentrale Rolle ein. Unterschiedliche Ansichten bestehen darüber, was unter diesen Leistungen genau zu verstehen ist und wie sie...

The environmental problems which the society is facing, ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, the spread of persistent organic pollutants, are a result of human activity with a worldwide impact, requiring immediate resolution. In this context, negotiation, signing and implementation of several...

The overall aim of this paper lies on presenting a short pragmatic image of the main aspects concerning the impact of international trade on the environment, on the one hand, and the impact of environmental policies and regulations on the international trade, on the other hand. Also, this...

We analyse the state of the environment for 24 EU member states, using the concept of ecological footprint. Findings suggest that 20 of the 24 analysed states are pushing their environment past its yearly regenerative limits. Of these, 10 have surpassed this value by at least two-fold. A few...