Resources For The Future

About: Resources For The Future is a nonprofit organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Emissions trading & Greenhouse gas. The organization has 247 authors who have published 995 publications receiving 46267 citations.

What are Ecosystem Services? The Need for Standardized Environmental Accounting Units

Abstract: This paper advocates consistently defined units of account to measure the contributions of nature to human welfare. We argue that such units have to date not been defined by environmental accounting advocates and that the term "ecosystem services" is too ad hoc to be of practical use in welfare accounting. We propose a definition, rooted in economic principles, of ecosystem service units. A goal of these units is comparability with the definition of conventional goods and services found in GDP and the other national accounts. We illustrate our definition of ecological units of account with concrete examples. We also argue that these same units of account provide an architecture for environmental performance measurement by governments, conservancies, and environmental markets.

Natural climate solutions

Abstract: Better stewardship of land is needed to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement goal of holding warming to below 2 °C; however, confusion persists about the specific set of land stewardship options available and their mitigation potential. To address this, we identify and quantify "natural climate solutions" (NCS): 20 conservation, restoration, and improved land management actions that increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. We find that the maximum potential of NCS-when constrained by food security, fiber security, and biodiversity conservation-is 23.8 petagrams of CO2 equivalent (PgCO2e) y-1 (95% CI 20.3-37.4). This is ≥30% higher than prior estimates, which did not include the full range of options and safeguards considered here. About half of this maximum (11.3 PgCO2e y-1) represents cost-effective climate mitigation, assuming the social cost of CO2 pollution is ≥100 USD MgCO2e-1 by 2030. Natural climate solutions can provide 37% of cost-effective CO2 mitigation needed through 2030 for a >66% chance of holding warming to below 2 °C. One-third of this cost-effective NCS mitigation can be delivered at or below 10 USD MgCO2-1 Most NCS actions-if effectively implemented-also offer water filtration, flood buffering, soil health, biodiversity habitat, and enhanced climate resilience. Work remains to better constrain uncertainty of NCS mitigation estimates. Nevertheless, existing knowledge reported here provides a robust basis for immediate global action to improve ecosystem stewardship as a major solution to climate change.

Tightening Environmental Standards: The Benefit-Cost or the No-Cost Paradigm?

Abstract: MS ff ichael Porter and Claas van der Linde have written a paper that is interesting and, to us at least, somewhat astonishing. It is a defense of environmental regulation-indeed, an invitation to more stringent regulation-that makes essentially no reference to the social benefits of such regulation. This approach contrasts starkly with the methods that economists and other policy analysts have traditionally used when assessing environmental or other regulatory programs. The traditional approach consists of comparing the beneficial effects of regulation with the costs that must be borne to secure these benefits. For environmental regulation, the social benefits include the reductions in morbidity or premature mortality that can accompany cleaner air, the enhanced recreational opportunities that can result from water-quality improvements, the increased land values that might attend the cleanup of a hazardous waste site, the enhanced vitality of aquatic ecosystems that might follow reductions in agricultural pesticide use or any of the other potentially significant benefits associated with tighter standards. From this benefit-cost approach emerges the standard tradeoff discussed in virtually every economics textbook. Porter and van der Linde deny the validity of this approach to the analysis of environmental regulation, claiming it to be an artifact of what they see as a "static mindset." In their view, economists have failed to appreciate the capacity of

Environmental Regulation and Innovation: A Panel Data Study

Abstract: In a 1991 essay in Scientific American, Michael Porter suggested that environmental regulation may have a positive effect on the performance of domestic firms relative to their foreign competitors by stimulating domestic innovation. We examine the stylized facts regarding environmental expenditures and innovation in a panel of manufacturing industries. We find that lagged environmental compliance expenditures have a significant positive effect on R&D expenditures when we control for unobserved industry-specific effects. We find little evidence, however, that industries' inventive output (as measured by successful patent applications) is related to compliance costs.

Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem services agenda.

Abstract: Cultural ecosystem services (ES) are consistently recognized but not yet adequately defined or integrated within the ES framework. A substantial body of models, methods, and data relevant to cultural services has been developed within the social and behavioral sciences before and outside of the ES approach. A selective review of work in landscape aesthetics, cultural heritage, outdoor recreation, and spiritual significance demonstrates opportunities for operationally defining cultural services in terms of socioecological models, consistent with the larger set of ES. Such models explicitly link ecological structures and functions with cultural values and benefits, facilitating communication between scientists and stakeholders and enabling economic, multicriterion, deliberative evaluation and other methods that can clarify tradeoffs and synergies involving cultural ES. Based on this approach, a common representation is offered that frames cultural services, along with all ES, by the relative contribution of relevant ecological structures and functions and by applicable social evaluation approaches. This perspective provides a foundation for merging ecological and social science epistemologies to define and integrate cultural services better within the broader ES framework.