Blok 2: specific principles

Question 1

What is the guiding principle of (steady state economy) in economic thinking

Answer 1

○ An economy in equilibrium with its environment (its natural resource base)
○ An economy that became stationary sooner rather than later would allow a relatively large stock of natural capital (including living nature) to remain available indefinitely.

Aspects of this steady state economy:

• natural capital should not be diminished
• level of persistent environmental pollutants shoul not increase
• level of mutagenic pollutants should be such that the mutation load on the human germ does not increase

Question 2

What is the guiding principle of (sustainability) in economic thinking

Answer 2

Situation that creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations

Question 3

What is the guiding principle of (environmental utilisation space / ecospace) in economic thinking

Answer 3

The capacity of the environment to support human activities by regenerating renewable resources and absorbing waste. The boundaries of environmental utilization space are determined by the patterns and level of economic activity. A distributional element can be added by allocating ecospace at a national or per capita level, and is thus useful in illustrating present inequities.

Question 4

What is the guiding principle of (ecosystem services) in economic thinking

Answer 4

○ Benefits that people obtain from ecosystems.

They are Environmental functions, which may be thought of as the generation resources for human activities, its absorption of wastes from those activities and its provision of other ‘services’ such as climate stability, and opportunities for recreation.

There are provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services

This is related to external costs as human beings may put a monetary value on their existence because of their value to human society.

Question 5

What is the guiding principle of (internalisation of external costs) in economic thinking

Answer 5

Accounting for both the short-term and the long-term environmental costs into decision-making for projects likely to affect the environment.

This is to account for the real value of the environment and reflect the costs of using it

Question 6

What is the guiding principle of (polluter pays principle) in economic thinking

Answer 6

○ The principle holds that those who generate pollution and waste should bear the costs of containment, avoidance or abatement.
This was viewed as a means of internalising external costs in the costs of production and consumption.

Question 7

What is the guiding principle of (evironmental levies) in economic thinking

Answer 7

○ Taxes imposed by a government on sources of pollution.

Question 8

What is the guiding principle of (ecotaxation) in economic thinking

Answer 8

○ The imposition of taxes with the purpose to promote ecological sustainable activities via economic incentives.

Question 9

What is the guiding principle of (nature compensation) in economic thinking

Answer 9

compensation for environmental damage

Question 10

What is the guiding principle of (dematerialisation) in economic thinking

Answer 10

same as eco-efficiency

Question 11

What is the guiding principle of (ecoefficiency) in economic thinking

Answer 11

is a management strategy of doing more with less. It is based on the concept of creating more goods and services while using fewer resources and creating less waste and pollution

Question 12

What is the guiding principle of (ecocapacity) in economic thinking

Answer 12

The overall ability of the environment to maintain its current condition and to produce goods and services.

Question 13

What is the guiding principle of (intergenerational justice) in law and its philosophy?

Answer 13

○ The notion that the current use of nature and the environment should not harm future generations
○ an intuition that all individuals should have an equal right to use the natural environment.
Related to the concepts of sustainability and steady state economy

Question 14

What is the guiding principle of (legal status for other organisms) in law and its philosophy?

Answer 14

○ The notion that there should be respect for other organisms and that it is right to preserve the integrity of the biotic community or members thereof.

Question 15

What is the guiding principle of (environmental liability) in law and its philosophy?

Answer 15

○ Obligation based on the principle that a polluting party should pay for any evironmental damage caused by its activities.
○ In the minimum case, liability refers to the environmental costs as they might reasonably have been foreseen at the time of undertaking the activity in question.
In the industrialised countries of the west, however, it is now more common for liability to relate to the actual environmental costs emerging in practice. The concept of liability has also been extended to cover post-consumer wastes, for example. In this case a producer is also held liable for the costs associated with his product once the consumer decides to discard it.

Question 16

What is the guiding principle of (common property and strategies to prevent overexploitation) in law and its philosophy?

Answer 16

Common property is A type of good consisting of a natural or human-made resource system (e.g. an irrigation system or fishing grounds), whose size or characteristics makes it costly, but not impossible, to exclude others from using it.. Unlike pure public goods, common pool resources face problems of congestion or overuse, because they are subtractable.

Question 17

What is the guiding principle of (tradable permits or emission rights) in law and its philosophy?

Answer 17

○ Government-issued permit to emit a certain amount of a pollutant. The holder of the permit may use it to pollute legally, may trade permits, or may sell the permit for a profit.
The importance of property in current environmental thinking can also be gleaned from the emergence of tradable permits or emission rights. While ‘permits’ originally defined the physical limits that companies were not to exceed in view of permissible damage to third parties, today, especially in the industrialized countries of the west, such permits are perceived increasingly as tradable property or emission rights. A system based on such tradable emission rights is argued to be more efficient in limiting pollution than more traditional ways of using the law

Question 18

What is the guiding principle of (environmental security) in law and its philosophy?

Answer 18

The relative public safety from environmental dangers caused by natural or human processes due to ignorance, accident, mismanagement or design and originating within or across national borders.

Question 19

What is the guiding principle of (industrial ecology) in the life sciences?

Answer 19

○ Concept that uses the metaphor of metabolism to analyze production and consumption by industry, government, organizations and consumers, and the interactions between them. It involves tracking energy and material flows through industrial systems, e.g. a plant, region, or national or global economy.
It does so with a normative slant. It ‘prescribes’ that current nonproduct outputs of production and consumption should be used as inputs to other economic activities. The key aim is not to minimize the waste but to minimize the sum total of waste in the industrial equivalent of the ecological food web.

Aspects:

• the waste of one company should be the resource of another
• resources should be used in cascades, from higher to lower potential (don’t use fresh drinking water for hotmmetal, use water that has already been sued in other procecesses)
• these industries should be present: repair, decomposer, remanufacturing, scavenger

Question 20

What is the guiding principle of (industrial metabolism) in the life sciences?

Answer 20

The total use of materials and energy throughout an entire industrial process.

This includes the source, transportation, use, reuse, recycling, and disposal of all industrial nutrients (materials) as well as the energy needed at each step.

Related to industrial ecology, in large part equivalent to it. It differs in that it can be applied to an indiviual manufacturers. In this case, the eco-efficient internal workings are stressed.

Question 21

What is the guiding principle of (ecosystem health) in the life sciences?

Answer 21

○ The extent to which an ecosystem is in natural equilibrium.

Question 22

What is the guiding principle of (carrying capacity) in the life sciences?

Answer 22

Concept of biology used in environmontal discoure

In biology: Number of people the can be sustained indefinitely on a particular area of land at specified levels of production, consumption and technology.

	○ In more general environmental discourse: it has become akin to the previously mentioned concepts of ecospace and environmental utilization space, denoting a use of the environment that is compatible with a steady state economy.

Question 23

What is the guiding principle of (critical load) in the life sciences?

Answer 23

Quantitative value regarding exposure to pollutants below which significant harmful effects on specified elements of the environment do not occur according to current knowledge.

Question 24

What is the guiding principle of (social constructivism) in the social sciences?

Answer 24

A social theory according to which groups collectively construct knowledge, such as environmental problems.

social-constructivist view of environmental problems: problems are regarded as social constructs that are subject to changing meaning and social (re)negotiation

Solutions to environmental problems should essentially be measured on
the basis of stakeholder satisfaction.

A social constructivist view of a sustainable company:

By stressing that the content of sustainability is subject to negotiation, social constructivists allow for a variety of views of what a sustainable company may be. A possible example of one such view is the following:
• Companies should maintain transparency and dialogue vis-à-vis workers and outside stakeholders, including environmental non-governmental
organisations.

• In determining sustainability, a ‘triple bottom line’ approach should be followed (giving due consideration to ‘people, profit and planet’).
• Sustainability in the social and environmental sense should be determined on the basis of stakeholder satisfaction.

Question 25

What is the guiding principle of (social dilemma) in the social sciences?

Answer 25

A collective action situation in which there is a conflict between individual and collective interest

read: the social dilemma aspect of environmental problems emerges from the game theory component of decision theory and has become important in strategic thinking about solving environmental problems (Tellegen and Wolsink 1998). Many environmental problems can be viewed as social dilemmas.
This point was brought home forcefully in one of the classics in environmental thinking: ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, in which G. Hardin argued that people acting on their own and in their own interest will exploit common resources to such an extent that everyone will eventually lose out.

Question 26

What is the guiding principle of (acceptable risk) in the social sciences?

Answer 26

○ Level of risk that is considered tolerable in a given situation.
○ Hard to quantify, (though sometimes simply put as : “chance x effect”) there are other factors that complicate things, as future generation could both be included and excluded, voluntariness of the risk, the perceived catastrophality, inclusion or exclusion of other species…)
○ And what is acceptable?
§ Some see it as the outcome of risk-benefit considerations
§ Others as the outcome of social negotiations
§ Others stress the rights of those at risk

Question 27

What is the guiding principle of (precautionary principle) in the social sciences?

Answer 27

○ Principle to be used in decision making that under conditions of uncertainty, abatement and similar measures should not necessarily wait until there is certainty about a given risk if there are indications of grave and, especially irreversible effects.
Can be used to hold on using a new product untill all consequences are known, or not holding off with important precautionary measures untill full scientific knowledge is achieved.

Question 28

How have humans dealt with environmental problems in the past?

Answer 28

• imposing limits on the offending activity, physical planning, technological change
• This was and often still is done on a case-by-case basis: often leading to short-sighted interventions, dissomilar treatment for similar problems and suboptimal sollutions.

Question 29

Which of the guiding principles are closely connected to the notion of sustainability?

Answer 29

economics: the principles of the stationary or steady-state economy, environmental utilisation space and ecocapacity
Law: intergenerational justice
life: carrying capacity

Question 30

discuss the role of world views as the root cause of environmental problems.

Answer 30

○ The Christian system of belief was argued to be the root cause of environmental problems, as in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, it is sometimes argued, man is put above nature and can do with it as it pleases.
§ This view is not held by all Christians at all times however and several well known Christian authors have emphasized the importance of nature and its animals from within their own religious worldview.
○ Some see science as the root cause of environmental destruction
§ It is true that science delivers the technologies that allow mankind the tools to destroy nature on a never before seen scale
§ It is however also science that can provide the technologies to reduce teh harm we do to nature and reverse it, while maintaining the means to reach the developmental goals
○ There is also a “mastering of nature” attitude amongst protagonists of natural science. Where more nature based-spiritually would seek to live with nature
Some nature based worldviews didn’t always manage to protect their local nature and species however.

Question 31

Chlorinated micropollutants are a family of persistent, bio-accumulating and toxic pollutants. Many of them are suspected of being carcinogenic and causing endocrine disruption (i.e. they may cause cancer and affect hormone systems in animals).

In debates on the regulation of chlorinated micropollutant emissions, the industry emphasises the notion of ‘acceptable risk’, whilst the environmental NGOs refer to the
precautionary principle. Explain what measures would be proposed on the basis of each of these two specific principles to control chlorinated pollution.

Answer 31

According to the precautionary principle, the emissions of all chlorinated micropollutants should be stopped as soon as possible, because there are serious indications that they cause irreversible damage to humans and animals.

According to the acceptable risk principle, authorities would take measures based on the risks posed by the pollutants, i.e. the actual exposure times and the effects on organisms. These risks will have to be compared with other risks that are accepted (or not). Hence, according to advocates of this principle, there are likely to be acceptable emission levels.

Question 32

The definition of sustainable development by the Brundtland
Commission includes an intergenerational component and an
intragenerational component.

A: Indicate both components in the definition.
B: In a strict interpretation of sustainable development, it would
become synonymous to ‘stationary or steady state economy’. Why?

Answer 32

a The Brundtland Commission’s definition is: ‘sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ The first part is about thepresent and refers to intragenerational justice, specifically to closing the gap between the rich and the poor. The second part is about solidarity between current and future generations, that is, about intergenerational justice.

b In a stationary economy, the natural capital (including living nature) would remain available indefinitely. Hence it would be available to meet the needs of future generations.

Question 33

The notion of sustainability is a key principle in environmental sciences.
Which guiding principles originating from economics, law, and the life
sciences are closely connected to the notion of sustainability?

Answer 33

Economics: the principles of stationary or steady-state economy,
environmental utilisation space, ecospace and ecocapacity.
Law: intergenerational justice.
Life sciences: carrying capacity.

Question 34

The Ecological Footprint is an environmental index: it translates the environmental impacts of an activity or an actor (i.e. a household, a country) into an imaginary area on the Earth that would be required to sustain this activity or actor. In this chapter, Lucas Reijnders discusses many specific principles, including sustainable development, industrial metabolism, the polluter pays principle, carrying capacity and tragedy of the commons.
Which of the abovementioned principles is the specific
principle behind the ecological footprint? Explain your answer.

Answer 34

The principle is that of carrying capacity (or the related principles of environmental utility space and ecospace). The ecological footprint index presupposes that the Earth as a whole can withstand only a limited amount of environmental impact.

Question 35

Two approaches towards curbing the emission of greenhouse gases in Europe are

(1) energy taxes
(2) emission rights trading.

How do these approaches relate to the notion of the atmosphere as a common property?

Answer 35

Energy taxes are an example of the ‘polluter pays principle’, which internalises the external costs (to health, ecosystem services etc.) associated with damage to the atmosphere. This would be in line with the notion of the atmosphere as a common property, with the obligation to compensate for any damage inflicted on it. Tradable permission rights can be seen as buying up a part of the common property of ‘atmosphere’, i.e. privatising it.

Question 36

In 2008, the Commission of the European Communities presented a
Proposal for the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources.
The ‘Grounds for and objectives of the proposal’ stated the following:
The Community has long recognised the need to further promote renewable energy
given that its exploitation contributes to climate change mitigation through the
reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable development, security of supply
and the development of a knowledge based industry creating jobs, economic
growth, competitiveness and regional and rural development.
This Proposal for a Directive aims to establish an overall binding target of a 20%
share of renewable energy sources in energy consumption and a 10% binding
minimum target for biofuels in transport to be achieved by each Member State, as
well as binding national targets by 2020 in line with the overall EU target of 20%.
Question
Which approach(es) to environmental problems do you recognise in this
proposal?

Answer 36

The proposal has several elements that are connected to economic
aspects of a sustainable development (SD) approach: while economic
growth itself conflicts with the notion of a steady-state or stationary
economy that is often associated with sustainability, creating jobs
and regional/rural development can be seen as improving the social
dimensions of sustainability. The focus on security of energy supply
is also linked to these economic aspects of SD, but also involves
elements of environmental security. The reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions is connected to the concept of ‘critical load’, i.e. the notion
that concentrations of CO2 beyond a certain threshold will change the
climate, inducing harmful effects for nature and mankind.

Question 37

The Pennsylvania Biodiversity Partnership website mentions some
examples of the way biodiversity affects everyday life on Earth:
– Approximately 30 percent of medicines are developed from plants or
animals.
– Soils are enriched through the decomposition of dead animals and
plants and the breakdown of waste products by organisms such as
insects and worms.
– Photosynthesis by green plants provides food and oxygen.
– Approximately 80 plant species are credited with being the source of
over 90 per cent of the world’s food sources.
Question
Which guiding principle(s) to environmental problems do you recognise
in this text?

Answer 37

vThe text is predominantly based on the concept of ‘ecosystem services’.
Additional information (not presented in the textbook): providing food
and medicines is an example of ‘provisioning ecosystem services’. Soil
enrichment and biomass production (photosynthesis) are generally
categorised as ‘supporting ecosystem services’. Not mentioned in the
text are ‘regulating ecosystem services’, such as the regulation of
climate and water, and ‘cultural services’, such as spiritual enrichment
and recreation.