An ecological economic interpretation of the Jevons effect

This article develops an ecological economic interpretation of the Jevons effect. Moreover, it is argued that under the neoclassical paradigm there are no elements with which to foresee the long-term existence of this phenomenon. The objective of these arguments is to demonstrate that the Jevons effect can be used to compare the ability of neoclassical and ecological economics describing the social appropriation of nature. This is elaborated in two steps. First, we show the importance of the thesis that the economy cannot be cut off from the biophysical materiality of what is produced to give consistency to the so-called Khazzoom–Brookes postulate. It is made clear that this supposition is exogenous to the neoclassical paradigm. Second, the supposition of the biophysical materiality of what is produced is utilized to make an ecological economic interpretation of the Jevons effect. Afterwards, a comparison is made between the neoclassical and the ecological economic perspectives. This comparison leads to the following conclusions: (i) the persistent presence of the Jevons effect in the long run is an anomaly in the neoclassical paradigm; (ii) the observation of the non-existence of the Jevons effect is a refutation of the supposition that economic growth and biophysical materiality are not separable, a central thesis defended by ecological economists. This situation makes possible to use the Jevons effect as a ‘laboratory test’ to compare the ability of neoclassical and ecological economic paradigms to describe the social appropriation of nature.     

生物保护的经济学

生物保护研究已经从保护生物学发展到保护生态学,在社会经济因素对自然保护影响日益广泛深刻的今天,我们应该更加主动地从经济学角度进行生物多样性保护。建立自然保护区是生物多样性就地保护的重要措施之一。目前的自然保护区管理研究基本上是以生物学和生态学为主,缺乏系统的经济学考虑,导致一些自然保护区的管理效果不理想,可持续性受到威胁。本文在回顾生物保护的相关经济学研究的同时,提出保护经济学的概念和研究框架,以期为自然保护区的经济管理提供一种新思路,为管理部门的保护投资决策提供支持。     

论害虫种群的生态控制

本文根据保护生物圈与经济持续发展的要求,提出害虫种群的“生态控制’对策,以代替现在国内外采用的“综合防治”。文中根据生态学与经济学理论,不仅提出了“生态控制”应遵循的经济学与生态学的管理原则,并且提出了“生态控制”的指导思想与方法论,以及它的目标函数、约束条件与主要对策。进而根据国内外本领域的科技发展动态分析与生产实际需要,论述了本种对策在生产中的可行性与重要性。     

Economics and Obesity: Costing the Problem or Evaluating Solutions?

There is no doubt that obesity is a major public health problem. However, what is the contribution of economics to solving it? In this report, we make the case that the role of economics is not in measuring the economic burden of obesity, through so‐called cost‐of‐illness studies. Such studies merely confirm that obesity is a serious societal issue; adding a monetary figure to this does not add much. The economic foundations of such estimates can also be questioned, thus lessening their policy relevance. The real value of economics in the arena of obesity care is in evaluating, through formal economic evaluation, the use of our scarce health care resources in different strategies to prevent and treat obesity.     

生态足迹研究——辽宁省生态足迹计算与分析

可持续发展的定量测度研究是当前国际上关于生态经济研究的前沿问题之一。生态足迹分析法是近年来发展的用于定量研究和判断一个国家或地区的可持续发展状况的新方法。应用生态足迹的方法 ,以辽宁省 2 0 0 0年 ,2 0 0 1年 ,2 0 0 2年统计资料为依据 ,对其 1999～ 2 0 0 1年 3a的生态足迹进行了实证计算和研究 ,从纵向比较并分析了辽宁省生态足迹的变化规律及其原因。研究结果表明 :辽宁省生态赤字呈逐年增加的趋势 ,1999年人均生态赤字为 2 .2 90 hm2 ,2 0 0 0年为 2 .36 8hm2 ,2 0 0 1年为 2 .4 74hm2 ,其主要影响因素是由于资源过度消耗 ,人口增长以及耕地减少等。通过生态足迹的研究 ,提出了辽宁省在振兴东北老工业基地 ,进行可持续发展过程中应采取的对策措施     

能值理论在农业生态经济的应用与展望

农业生态经济系统是由农业生态系统和农业经济系统紧密嵌合而成的特殊的人工-自然复合系统, 是人地关系地域系统研究的主要对象之一, 也是关于现代生态经济研究的核心主体之一。文章论述了能值理论内涵与方法, 基于CNKI与Web of knowledge数据库的文献分析表明, 能值理论在中国农业生态经济领域研究具有普遍的认可度;能值研究在基础理论阐释、指标体系开发、案例实证研究等方面取得了进步, 但也存在一些急需解决的关键问题, 主要包括农业能值流程图的绘制, 农业能值强度的区域适用性, 农业能值计算的时空比较研究等三个方面。     

What behaviour in economic games tells us about the evolution of non-human species' economic decision-making behaviour

In the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in using games derived from experimental economics to test decision-making behaviour across species. In most cases, researchers are using the games as a tool, for instance, to understand what factors influence decision-making, how decision-making differs across species or contexts, or to ask broader questions about species’ propensities to cooperate or compete. These games have been quite successful in this regard. To what degree, however, do these games tap into species'' economic decision-making? For the purpose of understanding the evolution of economic systems in humans, this is the key question. To study this, we can break economic decision-making down into smaller components, each of which is a potential step in the evolution of human economic behaviour. We can then use data from economic games, which are simplified, highly structured models of decision-making and therefore ideal for the comparative approach, to directly compare these components across species and contexts, as well as in relation to more naturalistic behaviours, to better understand the evolution of economic behaviour and the social and ecological contexts that influenced it. The comparative approach has successfully informed us about the evolution of other complex traits, such as language and morality, and should help us more deeply understand why and how human economic systems evolved.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Existence and prevalence of economic behaviours among non-human primates’.     

Ethical consideration in invasion ecology: A marine perspective

Biological introductions of species to regions outside their known natural distribution are considered a major threat to native marine biodiversity and a key consideration for ecological management. For most invasive species in marine systems, however, little is known about potential impacts. If we are to increase our knowledge of the processes and mechanisms behind the spread of nonindigenous species or determine economic or ecological impacts, manipulative ecological field experiments are the best way to unambiguously ascribe causal relationships. For studies of invasions, such research may result in species spread and the establishment of new viable populations. Is it ethical then, to take the risk of potentially modifying or endangering other species, populations or ecosystems? Is it possible to mitigate the risks? Or should invasion ecologists work under restrictions that limit their ability to fully assess the impact of invaders? Consideration of the ethics of experimentation is rarely carried out. As a consequence, we propose a decision model that includes possible risk of escape/establishment versus the value of the research to allow researchers and/or managers to critically evaluate what type of experimental approach is appropriate.     

Quantitative Industrial Ecology & Ecological Economics

This article presents a theoretical foundation for integrating three otherwise disparate areas of human thought and understanding: technology, ecology, and economics. The article presents the mathematical foundations for quantifying the biophysical (mass, energy, and informational) aspects of economic production systems and their interaction with natural systems. These mathematical relationships are required for the on-going ecological and economic design of technological production networks by enterprise management, thereby extending the scope and scale of quantitative engineering design from the domain of individual technologies to networks of technologies at enterprise, corporate, and industrial levels of technological organization.
The analytical framework extends the practical utility of ecology, as an applied natural science, from passive environmental monitoring and prediction to active institutional participation in an informational feedback control strategy pursuant to economically abating the ecological risks of industrial growth, development, and modernization at local, regional, and global levels of ecological organization. And it provides the applied natural-science underpinnings and the informational feedback control institutions required to support economics as an applied social science. In this context ecological risk-control pricing is presented as a supplement to conventional economic policies at local, regional, and national levels of economic organization.     

Embodied economics: how bodily information shapes the social coordination dynamics of decision-making

To date, experiments in economics are restricted to situations in which individuals are not influenced by the physical presence of other people. In such contexts, interactions remain at an abstract level, agents guessing what another person is thinking or is about to decide based on money exchange. Physical presence and bodily signals are therefore left out of the picture. However, in real life, social interactions (involving economic decisions or not) are not solely determined by a person''s inference about someone else''s state-of-mind. In this essay, we argue for embodied economics: an approach to neuroeconomics that takes into account how information provided by the entire body and its coordination dynamics influences the way we make economic decisions. Considering the role of embodiment in economics—movements, posture, sensitivity to mimicry and every kind of information the body conveys—makes sense. This is what we claim in this essay which, to some extent, constitutes a plea to consider bodily interactions between agents in social (neuro)economics.     

Data envelopment analysis of cities – Investigation of the ecological and economic efficiency of cities using a benchmarking concept from production management

To better understand the economic performance of cities and the accompanying social and environmental implications, one focus of research has been on ways to quantify performance advantages of growth and size while considering the impact of economies of scale. An important aspect of the current discussion is the introduction of the merely environmental driven concept of resource efficiency, defined as minimizing resource consumption while enhancing the quality of life. However, as yet there is no commonly agreed method on how best to measure efficiency. In order to contribute to this debate, an approach is described here of applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to study the resource efficiency of cities. Originating in the field of economics, DEA is a non-parametric, deterministic method to measure the efficiency of economic production, specifically the relative efficiency of Decision Making Units (DMUs).Here we test the usefulness of DEA to analyze urban efficiency by applying it to an investigation of 116 cities throughout Germany. This entailed the development of two separate economic and ecological models in order to allow more precise identification of the relevance of individual parameters during the evaluation process. The results allow a ranking of cities as well as an estimation of the ratios of economic and ecological efficiencies of the investigated cities, realized with the aid of a nine-field matrix (portfolio).DEA is at the same time a promising heuristic tool to help draw the basic outlines of a resource efficient city and to shed light on the underlying factors that boost or reduce efficiency. We recommend a three-step approach. First, two separate models should be defined (ecological, economic) and used to feed the DEA computation. Second, the results are spread in a portfolio to give an overview of the ecological and economic efficiency scores. This provides a basic overview of the DEA results for the selected cities following a basic and abstract model without determination of causal relationships between these values. Third, the field-dependent commonalities between the cities are considered. Additional indicators that also characterize the selected cities (but which were not selected as inputs to the algorithm) can now be examined. In this way, it is possible to understand the common factors that determine the level of efficiency as well as to learn about the qualitative difference and specific features of cities in the particular matrix quadrants.     

生态系统服务价值评估研究进展——国外学者观点

生态系统服务的价值评估是目前生态学研究热点和存在较多争议的领域之一。争论的焦点主要集中在生态系统服务货币化评估的必要性和有效性。通过对大量文献的检索,较为系统地总结了国外学者的观点,特别是引起诸多争论的主要原因：一是由于生态系统本身的复杂性,各项服务之间存在着相互依赖的关系,使生态系统服务的分类本身就缺乏严格的标准,同时存在着时间和空间上复杂的尺度转换问题,从而使生态系统服务的价值评估容易出现重复计算;二是由于经济学方法本身存在着一定的局限性,对于不同的评估对象和评估目标往往需要选取不同的评估方法,每一种生态系统服务通常可以有几种不同的评估方法,评估结果在很大的程度上依赖于选择的不同方法．从而使得到的结果间缺乏可比性;三是由于生态系统不同于经济系统。有时用经济学方法对生态系统进行评估时往往很难反映出自然系统的价值,特别是当人类对生态系统服务的偏好随着时间和新信息的出现而发生变化时,可能会出现更大的差异。今后的研究应当着力于上述困难的解决,以便使生态系统的评估结果更加客观可信,为生态补偿机制建立和生态系统管理等提供有力支撑。     

Restoration and Economics: A Union Waiting to Happen?

In this article, our objective is to introduce economics as a tool for the planning, prioritization, and evaluation of restoration projects. Studies that develop economic estimates of public values for ecological restoration employ methods that may be unfamiliar to practitioners. We hope to address this knowledge gap by describing economic concepts in the context of ecological restoration. We have summarized the most common methods for estimating the costs and benefits of restoration projects as well as frameworks for decision analysis and prioritization. These methods are illustrated in a review of the literature as it applies to terrestrial restoration in the United States, with examples of applications of methods to projects. Our hope is that practitioners will consider collaborating with economists to help ensure that restoration costs and benefits are identified and understood.     

Poverty,Disease, and the Ecology of Complex Systems

Understanding why some human populations remain persistently poor remains a significant challenge for both the social and natural sciences. The extremely poor are generally reliant on their immediate natural resource base for subsistence and suffer high rates of mortality due to parasitic and infectious diseases. Economists have developed a range of models to explain persistent poverty, often characterized as poverty traps, but these rarely account for complex biophysical processes. In this Essay, we argue that by coupling insights from ecology and economics, we can begin to model and understand the complex dynamics that underlie the generation and maintenance of poverty traps, which can then be used to inform analyses and possible intervention policies. To illustrate the utility of this approach, we present a simple coupled model of infectious diseases and economic growth, where poverty traps emerge from nonlinear relationships determined by the number of pathogens in the system. These nonlinearities are comparable to those often incorporated into poverty trap models in the economics literature, but, importantly, here the mechanism is anchored in core ecological principles. Coupled models of this sort could be usefully developed in many economically important biophysical systems—such as agriculture, fisheries, nutrition, and land use change—to serve as foundations for deeper explorations of how fundamental ecological processes influence structural poverty and economic development.     

What animals do not do or fail to find: A novel observational approach for studying cognition in the wild

To understand how our brain evolved and what it is for, we are in urgent need of knowledge about the cognitive skills of a large variety of animal species and individuals, and their relationships to rapidly disappearing social and ecological conditions. But how do we obtain this knowledge? Studying cognition in the wild is a challenge. Field researchers (and their study subjects) face many factors that can easily interfere with their variables of interest. Although field studies of cognition present unique challenges, they are still invaluable for understanding the evolutionary drivers of cognition. In this review, I discuss the advantages and urgency of field‐based studies on animal cognition and introduce a novel observational approach for field research that is guided by three questions: (a) what do animals fail to find?, (b) what do they not do?, and (c) what do they only do when certain conditions are met? My goal is to provide guidance to future field researchers examining primate cognition.     

Ecological Risk Assessment and Ecological Epidemiology for Contaminated Sites

After 20 years of development, ecological risk assessment is widely accepted. However, it is evolving in response to a variety of technical and societal pressures. First, pressure for greater simplicity and standardization arise from the expectation that risk assessments should require little time and resources but be defensible. Second, the advance of the environmental sciences and increasing awareness of the complexity of ecological responses generate pressure for greater realism. Third, the dominance of human health risk assessment generates a pressure to integrate ecological risk assessment with that dominant field. Fourth, the demand for cost-benefit analysis creates pressure for integration with environmental economics. Finally, the need to connect the practice of ecological epidemiology with risk-based decision-making creates a pressure of the formation of a single integrated ecological assessment practice.     

自然生态价值、生态资产管理及价值实现的生态经济学基础研究——科学概念、基础理论及实现途径

自然界的生态系统为人类繁衍发展提供各式各样的生活、生产和生计的环境条件与自然资源。基于自然规律的生态系统管理是人类社会不断认知自然生态价值、保护利用自然环境和资源、创造积累生态资产、维持社会经济系统永续发展的基本途径。以此为核心认知的区域生态经济学或经济生态学,正在成为探讨人类世地球系统演变及社会经济可持续发展问题的科学研究前沿。本文以大尺度区域宏观生态系统科学为学术视角,以生态系统的多功能性与多元价值观为基础,综合论述了自然生态价值、生态资产、生态产品等基本概念;从生态学、社会学和经济学融合角度,分析讨论了生态资产形成与变化、生态产品生产与消费、生态投资与生态资产损益等过程原理;提出了区域生态资产的系统经营与生态价值实现途径,期望为我国及区域生态系统价值及生态资产的评估,生态产业及生态价值实现体系的发展提供理论和方法学参考。     

免耕稻-鸭生态种养技术的环境经济学分析

采用田间试验及环境经济学方法研究免耕稻-鸭生态种养技术的生态、经济效益。试验结果表明:农户采用免耕稻-鸭生态种养技术对稻田杂草的控制效果显著;在晚稻分蘖盛期和孕穗期,采用免耕稻-鸭生态种养技术对稻二化螟防效达100%,稻纵卷叶螟发生率分别比免耕抛秧不养鸭的稻田低48.05%、93.55%,免耕抛秧养鸭稻田中水稻纹枯病的病株率比免耕抛秧不养鸭的稻田分别低48.15%、38.21%;在稻田甲烷排放高峰期(晚稻分蘖始期-分蘖盛期),免耕抛秧养鸭对甲烷排放的控制效果明显,分别比翻耕抛秧不养鸭稻田、免耕抛秧不养鸭稻田的甲烷排放量减少4.723g/m2、2.333g/m2,晚稻整个生育期间,免耕抛秧养鸭稻田甲烷排放量比免耕抛秧不养鸭稻田减少3.37g/m2,比翻耕抛秧不养鸭稻田减少5.59g/m2;免耕可节约灌溉用水1300m3/hm2。环境经济学分析结果表明:采用免耕稻-鸭生态种养技术的农户比采用免耕抛秧不养鸭技术或采用翻耕抛秧不养鸭技术的农户分别增加财务净收益2166yuan/hm2、4207yuan/hm2;免耕抛秧养鸭获得的经济净效益为4062yuan/hm2,而免耕抛秧不养鸭、翻耕抛秧不养鸭的经济净效益分别为1592yuan/hm2、-997yuan/hm2。免耕稻-鸭生态种养技术既能充分发挥稻-鸭复合生态系统的生态和经济效益,又能较好地克服免耕给生态环境带来的不利影响,是一种很有发展潜力的可持续农业生产模式,具有良好的推广和发展前景。     

An ecological-economic approach to the valuation of ecosystem services to support biodiversity policy. A case study for nitrogen retention by Mediterranean rivers and lakes

Several international initiatives have highlighted the need to prove the relevance of ecosystem services in monetary terms in order to make a comprehensive and compelling case for conservation of biodiversity. The different approaches and frameworks used so far have shown that there is no economic or monetary estimate of ecosystems or ecosystem services with absolute validity: any valuation exercise is always context-related and the theoretical rationale behind the applied valuation technique does matter. This study presents an approach for assessing ecosystem services in monetary terms to support conservation policies at the regional and continental scale. First we briefly review the foundation of environmental and ecological economics, second we explore the differences between economic models and the application of valuation techniques, third we try to pick the difference between the mainstream economic valuation approach and the translation of biophysical models’ outcomes in monetary terms. Then we present and discuss a methodology suitable for associating a monetary cost to ecosystem services when the purpose addresses conservation policies. In order to provide a contribution, we show a practical case study on water purification in the northern Mediterranean region.     

海洋生态修复:概念、类型与实施路径选择

生态修复是我国生态文明建设的重要内容。在对生态修复相关概念梳理的基础上,从公共物品治理视角对海洋生态修复主体、修复标准、修复路径及修复措施保障等关键环节进行论述,研究表明：污染和破坏者作为赔偿型海洋生态修复的主体,可通过自行修复和委托修复等方式,将受损海洋生态修复到破坏前的基线水平;国家作为补偿型海洋生态修复的主体,依据边际成本收益分析法确定最优修复规模,通过政府市场采购和创建市场等经济激励型路径实施生态修复以增加公众福利。未来我国海洋生态修复应重点关注修复的资金保障、监督制度以及生态修复的技术研发和修复完成后的成本收益评估等。