This report describes the areas in which environmental policies deliver Europe’s current economic priorities, often more successfully than other forms of economic policy intervention. It provides evidence of the role of environmental policy both in providing a short term economic stimulus and in building a sustainable, efficient and resilient economy in the long term. It highlights many areas where environmental policy is essential for sustainable economic progress.

Economic Outcomes of Environmental Policy

The report explains and illustrates how environmental policy may benefit the economy by delivering eight key economic outcomes. These are that environmental policy:

1. Enhances Productivity

2. Stimulates Innovation

3. Increases Employment (and/or the quality of Employment)

4. Improves our Balance of Trade

5. Strengthens our Capital Base

6. Supports Public Finances

7. Promotes Economic Cohesion

8. Encourages the Transition to a Resilient and Sustainable Economy.

Delivery of these key economic outcomes is important both in stimulating economic recovery and in delivering the EU’s longer term economic goal.

The Need for Policy Action

The report demonstrates that there are numerous “win-win” opportunities for the EU simultaneously to strengthen its economy and enhance its environment. However, because of market failures these opportunities are not being fully realised by the free market. There is therefore a need for government intervention if the EU is to take full advantage of the opportunities identified.

A Package of Environmental Policies to Achieve Economic Goals

The report presents a proposed package of environmental policy measures that will strengthen the EU’s economy, and contribute to the Lisbon priorities of enhancing growth and employment. The chosen package is designed both to:

• Provide a short term stimulus to the EU economy, creating jobs and boosting demand during the current economic crisis; and
• Support the development of a stronger, more resilient and sustainable economy in the long run, by promoting a more innovative and resource efficient economy that is less dependent on fossil fuels and imported raw materials and less prone to climate change and other environmental damage.

link zu projektwebsite:

http://seri.at/projects/completed-projects/the-economic-benefits-of-environmental-policy/

Download Publication:

http://seri.at/energy-and-climate/2010/03/08/the-economic-benefits-of-environmental-policy-final-report/

This entry is available in German here.

The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity and invited the world to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth. Thus, we provide a collection of information worth knowing about biodiversity. Other than that we introduce some SERI projects and publications which deal with biodiversity and list links related to current debates on this topic.

Human life strongly depends on biodiversity and related ecosystem functions, because ecosystems provide food, timber, fibres, because they contribute to air quality or nutrient cycling or because it is of enormous cultural value. Therefore, a rich biodiversity influences human well-being to a crucial extent. However, biodiversity is very much threatened, mainly due to human interactions with natural systems, which cause a pressure on those systems and thus on biodiversity and its ability to maintain or increase human well-being.

Biodiversity is defined as the “variability among all living organisms from all sources […]; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems” (United Nations, 1993). For various reasons, biodiversity is currently decreasing on both local and global scales. The high rate of species extinction is alarming. Current extinction rates are estimated to be about 400 times faster than the natural rates (Pimm, 2002), and the Millennium Assessment takes them to be 1000 times faster than the background rates typical in Earth’s history (MA, 2005). Nearly half (47%) of the terrestrial ecoregions are considered critical or endangered; another quarter (29%) are vulnerable; and only a quarter (24%) are relatively stable or intact (WWF, 2010).

Why should we maintain the biodiversity of our planet?

Simply said: Because human life depends on biodiversity. Biodiversity maintains ecosystems and ecosystems provide various services to maintain life on earth. Biodiversity is essential for the functioning of an ecosystem and human well-being is directly linked to ecosystem services, such as the provision of clean water, fresh air and nutrition (see below). The Millennium Assessment shows in its chapter on the conceptual framework, how biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being relate to each other (MA, 2005, p25).

Besides these utilitarian arguments (biodiversity should be maintained because people derive utility from their use, either directly or indirectly), there are also intrinsic values attributed to biodiversity: from the perspective of many ethical, religious, and cultural points of view ecosystems are of value in and for itself – irrespective of its utility for humans.

Functions of Ecosystems

Biodiversity provides functions via ecosystem services. In order to assess the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, the concept of “ecosystem services (ESS)” has been used, for example, by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2005). It is a concept that essentially examines the link between biodiversity/ecosystems and human well-being. These services include the following:

• provisioning services: products obtained from ecosystems, for example food, fresh water, fuel, genetic resources;

• regulating services: benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes, for example climate and disease regulation, water purification;

• cultural services: non-material benefits, for example spiritual and religious, aesthetic, inspirational; and

• supporting services: services necessary for the production of all of the above, for example soil formation, nutrient cycling.

These different services show how people rely on biodiversity in their daily lives, often without realizing it. Nevertheless, many services are often ignored or undervalued by politics and decision makers (MA, 2005; UNEP, 2007). Due to complex interrelationships between biodiversity and ecosystems, changes in biodiversity can influence many services of an ecosystem. If the current losses of biodiversity continue at the same or even faster rate as nowadays, future development options will become restricted for rich and poor alike. However, poor people are affected more directly.

TEEB

TEEB is the ‘Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ study (some call it the “Stern report for Biodiversity”). It is a major international initiative aiming to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to bring together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward. Amongst others, the study wants to integrate ecological and economic knowledge in order to structure the evaluation of ecosystem services under different scenarios. TEEB seeks to show that economics can be a powerful instrument in biodiversity policy, both by supporting decision processes and by forging discourses between science, economics and governing structures. (TEEB, 2010)

The TEEB report is on its way. Parts of it have already been published: TEEB Ecological and Economics Foundation papers and TEEB for National and International Policymakers report.

The following Parts will be published in summer and autumn 2010: TEEB for Regional and Local Administrators report and TEEB for Business report and Final TEEB synthesis report.

All papers can be downloaded from www.teebweb.org

Sources:

UNEP, 2007: Global Environmental Outlook 4 (GEO-4). Environment for development. Progress Press, Malta. http://www.unep.org/geo/geo4/media/

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MA): Ecosystems and Human Well- being. A framework for Assessment. Island Press, 2005.

Pimm, S.L., 2002. Hat die Vielfalt des Lebens auf der Erde eine Zukunft? Natur und Kultur 3 (2), 3–33.

TEEB, 2010: http://www.teebweb.org/Home/tabid/924/language/en-US/Default.aspx and http://www.teebweb.org/AboutTEEB/Background/AimsObjectives/tabid/1040/language/en-US/Default.aspx 04.03.2010

United Nations, 1993: United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity: http://www.cbd.int/convention/ 04.03.2010

WWF, 2010: http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/ecoregions/maps/ 04.03.2010

SERI-Projects dealing with Biodiversity

At SERI we focus our research on socio-economic aspects of sustainability, although our background is interdisciplinary. We usually work together with natural scientists in most of our projects, in particular in the field of biodiversity. This approach allows us to cover a broad range of the parameters that influence and are influenced by biodiversity changes. SERI is currently working within three projects on the issue of biodiversity. Our main aim in this respect is to improve the knowledge on the relationships between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being. In collaboration with our partners we investigate how ecosystem services are perceived by people and how they are affected by global change. Our results are communicated to a wide range of stakeholders and politicians in order to form a better basis for decision making.

EcoChange Challenges in assessing and forecasting biodiversity and ecosystem changes in Europe (2007-2011)

The aim of EcoChange is to assess and forecast changes in terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystems. Building on these results, the ability of biodiversity and ecosystems to supply services and to buffer against climate and land use change will be analysed. SERI leads the integrated sustainability assessment (ISA, siehe MATISSE) of impacts of environmental change on ecosystem services. The ISA will be developed on the scale of three regional case studies, located in Belgium, Switzerland and Romania and combine the results from the modelling and socio-economic research within EcoChange. The ISA framework is strongly connected to the ABM-modelling and builds on the DPSIR-approach. For further information please refer to www.ecochange-project.eu or seri.at/ecochange

GoverNat – Multi-level Governance of Natural Resources: Tools and Processes for Water and Biodiversity Governance in Europe

The overall objective of this Marie Curie Research Training Network is to develop new solutions for multi-level environmental governance of natural resources (biodiversity and water) and to facilitate their use by decision makers in an enlarged EU. The central research objective is to test the hypothesis that certain participatory processes and analytical decision tools are particularly useful for improving multi-level environmental governance. Specific research objectives therefore address the enhanced understanding of multi-level governance of water and biodiversity, the development of methods of public and stakeholder participation to be used in such contexts, the effective utilisation of specific analytical decision tools in multi-level governance, and the reflective evaluation of such use. SERI acts as a praxis affiliate and will host 1-2 fellows in internships, where the fellows can experience from the “insider perspective” the challenges of making decisions on environmental governance at different spatial scales. For further information please refer to www.governat.eu or seri.at/governat

ALARM – Assessing large scale environmental risks for biodiversity with tested methods (2004-2009)

Alarm Assessing large scale environmental risks for biodiversity with tested methods (2004-2009) ALARM was essentially a project to improve the instruments for assessing the threat to and the loss of biodiversity in Europe, and on this basis to derive suggestions about how to stop the negative trends. The socio-economic research team used DPSIR to show the links between the socio-economic systems and biodiversity via four different pressures (climate change, loss of pollinators, use of chemicals, invasive species), on the one hand in theoretical papers (special issue in Ecological Economics, forthcoming) and in a series of case studies. For further information refer to www.alarmproject.net

SERI-Publications dealing with Biodiversity

“Public Perceptions of Nature”: Within the scope of the EU-Excellence network ALTER-Net, people’s attitudes towards biodiversity and biodiversity conservation in eight European countries were analyzed. SERI and the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change of the University of Graz conducted the Austrian case study which took place in the Eisenwurzen region. The brand-new report is available here (in German language). The survey aimed at identifying people’s perceptions of biodiversity and of measures related to nature conservation. Thus, the study scrutinized personal attitudes of respondents related to nature and environmental protection and to biodiversity loss. Apart from that, the study examined people’s perceptions of how various actors should protect nature and biodiversity and of who is responsible for nature- and biodiversity conservation.

“Perceiving biodiversity changes in daily life – insights from an exploratory survey across Europe”: Environmental problems are often constructed globally and through sophisticated instruments and methods. However, the extent to which these globally constructed problems correspond to ordinary citizens’ perceptions of the environment is often unclear.

The report “Perceiving biodiversity changes in daily life – insights from an exploratory survey across Europe”, published in “ecomont – Journal on Protected Mountain Areas Research”, focuses on results from an exploratory survey in eight sites across Europe, targeted at ordinary citizens, to determine whether biodiversity changes are perceived in daily life, and, if so, whether the views derived from these perceptions coincide with the discourse about global loss of biodiversity.

For this report Sigrid Grünberger, SERI scientist, worked on the case study site “Eisenwurzen”, an Austrian Limestone Alps National Park. The report was created in the course of the project “ALTER-Net – A Long-Term Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Awareness Research Network”.

Find out more about ALTER-Net and biodiversity research on www.alter-net.info

“Climate change as a threat to biodiversity”: Ines Omann, Andrea Stocker and Jill Jäger published an article in the Special Section: The DPSIR framework for Biodiversity Assessment of the Ecological Economics Journal. The new publication “Climate change as a threat to biodiversity: An application of the DPSIR approach” is a result of the Alarm project (Assessing large scale environmental risks for biodiversity with tested methods).

Links

2010 International year of biodiversity: www.cbd.int/2010/welcome

Convention on Biological Diversity: www.cbd.int

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB): www.teebweb.org

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment: www.millenniumassessment.org

European Environmental Agency on DPSIR: www.eea.europa.eu/documents/brochure/brochure_reason.html

International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources: www.iucn.org

Millennium Development Goals: www.un.org/millenniumgoals

Summer School 2010 on “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” (ALTER-Net): The ALTER-Net Summer School will be held from 5 – 14 September 2010, in Peyresq, Alpes de Haute-Provence, France and is now open for applications (deadline 15 April)!
The Summer School shall contribute to durable integration and the spread of excellence within and beyond the network, with a view to promoting interdisciplinary approaches.
The 2010 Summer School will focus on:

• Biodiversity and ecosystems in Europe;

• Ecosystem processes, function, services and benefits;

• Resilience of social and natural systems;

• Valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services;

• Linking biodiversity research with policy and the public.

Approximately 20 experts will give lectures on the themes mentioned above. Guided by tutors in the afternoon, working groups will discuss implications of findings for an actual European ecosystems and its services and compile these results. A field trip will illustrate land-use change in the Provence.

ALTER-Net Summer School Flyer

ALTER-Net Summer School Poster

Rayment, M., Pirgmaier, E., De Ceuster, G., Hinterberger, F., Kuik, O., Leveson Gower, H., Polzin, C. & A. Varma (2009)

Executive summary:

The European Union aspires to become the most dynamic and competitive economy in the world. The Lisbon Strategy, launched by EU leaders in 2000 and subsequently revised and simplified in 2005, emphasises the need to modernise Europe’s economy and focus attention on growth and employment, in order to address the challenges of globalisation and demographic change and to support our wider economic, social and environmental goals. To achieve this, the updated strategy emphasises the need for Europe to become a more attractive place to live and work, to develop knowledge and innovation for growth, and to create more and better jobs.

The current global economic crisis represents a significant setback in implementing Europe’s economic agenda, with problems of loss of demand, unemployment and deteriorating public fi-nances. In order to address these economic problems, restore growth and tackle unemployment, a European Economic Recovery Plan (European Commission, 2008) was launched, which sets out the actions the EU will implement to deal with the crisis.

The European Commission (DG Environment) commissioned GHK, IVM, SERI and TML to as-sess the role of environmental policy measures in the EU’s economic development.

This report describes the areas in which environmental policies deliver Europe’s current eco-nomic priorities, often more successfully than other forms of economic policy intervention. It provides evidence of the role of environmental policy both in providing a short term economic stimulus and in building a sustainable, efficient and resilient economy in the long term. It high-lights many areas where environmental policy is essential for sustainable economic progress.

Download PDF.

To find out what is happening on the SERI- facebook side please click here.

SERI is happy about new fans and interested people on a sustainable development.

Because it matters!

Humanity at present uses three times the natural resources that our planet offers. Our present ecological footprint requires three planets not one. In addition, non-renewable resources are being used up at an increasing rate and are becoming scarcer from day to day (peak oil and soon peak everything). Totally unsustainable!

A reorientation of the goals of development towards achieving a better quality of life is mandatory, which implies  a lowering of production and consumption of material goods in the future at the global scale.

BUT……developing countries have a right to increase their standard of living, the danger being that they follow the development model of the industrialized countries which is becoming clearly unsustainable. What could development for these countries look like? Which strategies have to be designed and implemented in the industrial North to make for an equitable and sustainable global future?

The seminar aims to contribute to this discussion via a presentation of principles and an analysis of the challenges developing countries are facing .

Introduction: Doz.Dr. Thomas Nowotny, President, SID Vienna Chapter .

Moderated by: Mag. Ruth Picker, Managing Director  AG Globale Verantwortung .

Participants include: Dr. Friedrich Hinterberger (SERI), Rico de Faria (GOAL, SID) and Teresa Buckle (SID)

Time and place of event:

22 March 2010, at 5:30 p.m.

Austrian Institute for International Politics

Berggasse 7, 1090 Vienna

Registration: office@globaleverantwortung.at / sidvienna@aon.at /Telephone: 522 44 22 0

More info: please contact SID Vienna Chapter:  E-mail: sid.vienna@aon.at ,  http://sidvienna.org

This entry is available in German here.

This entry is available in German here.

The Arctic is often referred to as the bellwether of global climate change. Many species are already critically endangered. Moreover, people and animals of the Arctic are exposed to particularly high doses of globally emitted toxic pollutants due to special air and sea currents. And now the melt down of the Arctic ice masses facilitates the next threatening danger: resource-hungry industrialized countries press northwards in quest of oil and other natural resources.
In the course of the project “Arctic Footprint and Policy Assessment”, which started in February with a kick-off meeting at the European Commission, SERI analyses the ecological and socio-economic impacts of the EU on the Arctic. Furthermore, the work of the international team of researches participating in the study aims to improve the effectiveness of EU environmental policies with respect to the Arctic region (more information: www.seri.at/arctic_footprint).

This entry is available in German here.

Stefan Giljum is participating in an international workshop on “Material Use Indicators for Measuring Resource Productivity and Environmental Impacts”, which takes place in Berlin, 25th and 26th of February.

The German government intends to assess the applicability of indicators measuring the use of resources by the German economy. At the workshop, new studies further developing resource use indicators are represented and participants will elaborate suggestions for further use and development of these indicators. The results of the workshop will improve the existing monitoring of progress towards sustainability in pursuit of the German national strategy for sustainable development, in particular regarding the objective to increase the raw material productivity of the German economy.

This entry is available in German here.

Yesterday and today (23.-24.2.2010), Friedrich Hinterberger attended the 8th Austrian Armutskonferenz (poverty conference) in Salzburg. His 2-page input to a discussion forum on “a good life for all” (in German language) can be downloaded here.

The ALTER-Net Summer School will be held from 5 – 14 September 2010, in Peyresq, Alpes de Haute-Provence, France and is now open for applications (deadline 15 April)!

The Summer School shall contribute to durable integration and the spread of excellence within and beyond the network, with a view to promoting interdisciplinary approaches.

The 2010 Summer School will focus on:

* Biodiversity and ecosystems in Europe;
* Ecosystem processes, function, services and benefits;
* Resilience of social and natural systems;
* Valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services;
* Linking biodiversity research with policy and the public.

Approximately 20 experts will give lectures on the themes mentioned above. Guided by tutors in the afternoon, working groups will discuss implications of findings for an actual European ecosystems and its services and compile these results. A field trip will illustrate land-use change in the Provence.

ALTER-Net Summer School Flyer

ALTER-Net Summer School Poster

Giljum, S., Lutz, C. & Polzin, C. (2010)

European production and consumption activities are increasingly dependent on material and energy resources from abroad and imply significant economic and environmental consequences in other regions around the world. While the overall level of resource use in Europe has stabilised over the past 20 years, the source of these resources has shifted abroad. Altogether, around one third of material and energy resources used by Europe are imported. This substitution of domestic material extraction through international trade of physical imports has also shifted part of Europe’s environmental burden abroad and extends the responsibility for environmental as well as social impacts from the local to the global level. The reserves of the most important resources, especially fossil fuels and metal ores, are located outside of Europe, causing a critical dependence of Europe on other countries and regions. For example, the EU-27 countries only possess 3% of global iron ore reserves, 1% of global oil reserves, and 1% of global uranium reserves. Consequently, for many rare metal ores a very high dependency on imports can be observed. For platinum and tantalum the import rate is 100%, for iron ores 83%, and for bauxite 74%.

In light of Europe’s high and growing dependence on resource imports, the European Union has taken a number of policy measures to address resource security and productivity as well as related environmental concerns. They all highlight access to resources and resource security as key issues for the future success of the European economy. Recognising the impacts that the production and consumption activities within the EU have on other world regions, the European Commission has called for a more sustainable management of natural resources along with a de-coupling of resource consumption and related negative environmental impacts from economic growth in Europe. This strategy should diminish the environmental impact the Union has on the rest of the world and thus contribute to global sustainable development.

With resource security, efficiency and related environmental concerns high on the EU’s agenda, environmental tax reform (ETR) and other market-based instruments to stimulate sustainable and responsible production and consumption have gained widespread interest because they can help address social (mainly employment) and environmental goals.

This paper builds on the results of the project “Resource Productivity, Environmental Tax Reform and Sustainable Growth in Europe” (PETRE), funded by the Anglo-German Foundation. The project aimed at investigating the major economic and environmental implications of improved resource productivity and environmental tax reform (ETR) at different levels, both within the EU and in the global economy. The paper discusses some of the main results of the investigation on the global dimensions of sustainable growth in Europe. The main research questions which guided this analysis included:

• What are the global consequences of the implementation of an ETR (and thus resource productivity increases) in Europe in terms of world-wide patterns of natural resource extraction, production, trade and consumption?
• What are the differences between a business-as-usual scenario, a unilateral EU ETR scenario, and a European ETR in combination with wider commitments to emission reductions in other developed countries and economically more advanced developing countries?
• Which European industries would be most negatively affected in their international competitiveness by the implementation of an ETR in Europe?
• What are the policy implications of the global effects of an ETR?

The relevance of these questions is underlined by the current discussions at international climate conferences about the impacts of unilateral vs. multilateral policy strategies and on the precise interpretation of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’, a principle agreed to in the Kyoto Protocol. This paper contributes to the discussion on the roles of the industrialised, emerging and developing countries in dealing with climate change and, more precisely, on the policy impacts of EU vs. international environmental tax reforms.

The main policy conclusion from this paper is that strong concerted action from the EU and emerging countries is needed in order to slow the current growth rate of global CO2 emissions and resource use in order to achieve more environmentally sustainable economic growth.

The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a description of the Global Inter-industry Forecasting System (GINFORS), the integrated simulation model which was used to simulate the scenarios and analyse current and future economic and environmental indicators. Section 3 describes the scenarios. Detailed results are presented and discussed in Section 4. Policy conclusions are derived in Section 5. Section 6 concludes.

Download PDF