equilibrium analysis and corporate social responsibility for supply chain integration this paper evaluates the profit of coordination between manufacturers on corporate social responsibility csr under network equilibrium a three tier supply chain network with multiple manufacturers distributors and retailers is considered and several mathematical models are established to investigate behavior and profits in a decentralized supply chain network a centralized supply chain network and a supply chain network with csr the system optimal solution of a supply chain network problem is usually not achievable or stable since each member always tries to maximize its own profit in order to make such a system optimal solution in a stable state and ensure the maximization of total profits a strategy of coordination between manufacturers on csr is proposed the amount of payment in csr of each manufacturer is clearly defined a hybrid diagonalization method with a super network representation is proposed and tested with numerical examples the results show that by taking csr the total profits of the whole supply chain network can increase with or without coordination

cost effective compensation to avoid carbon emissions from forest loss an approach to consider price quantity effects and risk aversion abstract analyses were carried out on financial compensation to avoid loss of tropical forests and related carbon c emissions when marginal financial yield declined for land use options with extended areas and when a risk averting perspective modeled according to financial theory around the capital asset pricing model is assumed the approach in this study was to consider natural forest forest plantation pasture and cropland simultaneously to investigate how an optimized land use distribution may reduce the amount of compensation necessary to avoid c emissions from forest loss the financial compensations derived were as high as us 176 per hectare per year when comparing natural forests only with the most profitable alternative croplands however compensation decreased to us 124 for risk neutral decision makers who would strive for optimized land use allocation and to only us 47 per hectare per year for risk avoiders who would look to maximize the reward to variability ratio sensitivity analyses indicated that the compensation under risk aversion increased much less than under risk ignoring when increased productivity of agricultural land use or growing demand for agricultural products was simulated it was concluded that considering appropriate diversification strategies and the well documented human behavior to avoid risks is an important step in developing cost effective compensation policies

sustainability in electrical and electronic equipment closed loop supply chains a system dynamics approach abstract in this paper we examine the impact of ecological motivation and technological innovations on the long term behavior of a closed loop supply chain with recycling activities ecological motivation manifests through legislation and green image factor whereas technological innovations manifest through design for environment we adopt system dynamics methodology applied to many environmental systems seeking long term gains the developed model is implemented to a real world supply chain of electrical equipment in greece numerical analysis illustrates the factors concerned like the delay of the legislation enforcement to achieve a sustainable future through non renewable resources and landfill preservation

secondary forests as temporary carbon sinks the economic impact of accounting methods on reforestation projects in the tropics abstract tropical forestry is often not competitive with agricultural land uses such as pasture for cattle ranching additional revenues from carbon sequestration generated by the clean development mechanism cdm of the kyoto protocol can change this situation in three different zones of north western ecuador minimum compensation payments for carbon sequestration were determined which would make reforestation a feasible land use alternative based on our findings that these minimum prices depend on the net benefit of the respective land use alternatives and on the accounting regimes for cdm sink projects we applied the accounting rules for temporary and long term certified emission reductions cer to two reforestation projects forest plantation and natural regrowth of secondary forest a comparison of these alternatives showed that secondary forest is an attractive alternative under both accounting regimes because of its low establishment costs and relative early timber revenues after identifying the zone most suitable for carbon sink projects we calculated net benefits of land use changes in the event that certain prices for emission reductions were actually paid we found that secondary forest becomes economically attractive if the price of permanent credits is above 4 5 tco 2 whereas forest plantations require permanent cer prices of 7 0 tco 2 in both cases the results are within the price margins forecasted by various institutions for the first commitment period of the kyoto protocol the presented methodology is meant to support the decision making process on the supply side of a future cer market opportunity costs of land use changes have to be analyzed carefully before deciding in favor of long binding forestry projects assigning temporary credits to naturally regrown secondary forests could although excluded from cdm during the first commitment period combine the advantages of a flexible accounting regime with the positive economic and ecological effects of this competitive land use

timber harvesting versus forest reserves producer prices for open use areas in german beech forests fagus sylvatica l abstract a strong demand for nature conservation can be ascertained in germany several nature conservation groups argue that in order to provide nature conservation in considerable parts of the forest area forestry should sacrifice timber harvesting for example the abandoning of harvesting altogether is supposed to enhance and protect the species richness this fact and the very low profitability of forestry in germany motivated the writing of this paper the paper explains a methodology for deriving producer prices involved in forest reserves where harvest benefits are sacrificed totally such methodology can be useful to form a basis for private contracts between forest owners and nature conservationists who demand forest reserves the results of this methodology can also be integrated in financial programs for species and habitat conservation in a basic theoretical consideration it is demonstrated that a stand by stand evaluation approach may only serve as an initial step in deriving compensation prices for forest reserves due to the stochastic character of forest management a nonlinear programming approach nlp was adopted to find an optimal operational plan for a hypothetical beech fagus sylvatica l forest in both the constraints and the objective function the nonlinearity is considered by integrating stochastic components additionally only virtual homogenous forest reserves are considered firstly a basic nlp solution for the hypothetical forest with the objective maximise the net present value npv of timber harvests adjusted to risk was obtained when considering several constraints subject to stochastic variation of net revenues and timber harvests without considering forest reserves secondly other solutions allowing for forest reserves were computed the decrease of the objective function when forest reserves were increased in periodic increments seemed well suited to mirror the opportunity costs of forest reserves the results showed that a stand by stand approach gave much greater compensation prices than the nlp approach the reason for this lay in the consideration of a nonlinear objective function as well as the nonlinear constraints in the case of nlp the first 42 ha forest reserve was priced at 11 494 euro ha or 483 euro ha year expressed in infinite yearly compensation the yearly compensation price for the last forest reserve had an increase up to 607 euro ha year a stand by stand approach however resulted with compensation prices from minimally 609 up to maximally 709 euro ha year various interest rates 3 2 and 5 2 caused different compensation price curves the slope of the curves increased when the interest rate decreased the limits of the approach the problem of deriving a demand for forest reserves and the opportunities for applying the presented approach to state forests are discussed

global potential for carbon sequestration geographical distribution country risk and policy implications abstract we have provided a framework for identifying least cost sites for afforestation and reforestation and deriving carbon sequestration cost curves at a global level in a scenario of limited information special attention is given to country risk in developing countries and the sensitivity to spatial datasets our model results suggest that within 20 years and considering a carbon price of us 50 tc tree planting activities could offset 1 year of global carbon emissions in the energy sector however if we account for country risk considerations associated with political economic and financial risks carbon sequestration is reduced by approximately 60 with respect to the geography of supply illustrated by grid scale maps we find that most least cost sites are located in regions of developing countries such as the sub sahara southeast brazil and southeast asia

reprint efficient flexible long term capacity planning for optimal sustainability dimensions performance of reverse logistics social responsibility a system dynamics approach abstract product lifecycle uncertainties in closed loop supply chains clscs are costly and frequently unavoidable so the aim of this paper is to develop efficient flexible long term capacity planning policy for clscs that considers social responsibility or a supply chain with reverse logistics social responsibility rlsr this aim is to answer an important research question on how to tackle the lifecycle with its inherited uncertainty to achieve optimal sustainability dimensions performance here a single product system dynamics sd model of the supply chain with rlsr is used this sd model considers interrelated sustainability dimensions and adopts the product lifecycle with its inherited uncertainties such as the length of the product lifecycle pattern of the product lifecycle and residence index finally a mathematical model of the developed policy is constructed and a simplified non linear multi objective algorithm is proposed to solve this mathematical model in addition taguchi design is used to minimize the number of simulations needed in the numerical experiment the findings of this study show that the developed policy could be used to tackle the lifecycle with its inherited uncertainty to optimize the sustainability dimensions performance these findings have some limitations however the findings underscore this paper s contribution to the relatively limited but important academic knowledge on capacity planning development for research on social responsibility issues in clscs in practice the results will give managers a better understanding of how to tackle product lifecycle uncertainties in rlsr and will therefore lead to better capacity planning to achieve optimal sustainability dimensions performance

the future of u s natural gas production use and trade two computable general equilibrium models one global and the other providing u s regional detail are applied to analysis of the future of u s natural gas the focus is on uncertainties including the scale and cost of gas resources the costs of competing technologies the pattern of greenhouse gas mitigation and the evolution of global natural gas markets results show that the outlook for gas over the next several decades is very favorable in electric generation given the unproven and relatively high cost of other low carbon generation alternatives gas is likely the preferred alternative to coal a broad ghg pricing policy would increase gas use in generation but reduce use in other sectors on balance increasing its role from present levels the shale gas resource is a major contributor to this optimistic view of the future of gas gas can be an effective bridge to a lower emissions future but investment in the development of still lower co2 technologies remains an important priority international gas resources may well prove to be less costly than those in the u s except for the lowest cost domestic shale resources and the emergence of an integrated global gas market could result in significant u s gas imports

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

conservation payments under risk a stochastic dominance approach conservation payments can be used to preserve forest and agroforest systems to explain landowners land use decisions and determine appropriate conservation payments it is necessary to focus on revenue risk marginal conditional stochastic dominance rules are used to derive conditions for determining the conservation payments required to guarantee that the environmentally preferred land use dominates an empirical application to shaded coffee protection in the biologically important choco region of west ecuador shows that conservation payments required for preserving shaded coffee areas are much higher than those calculated under risk neutral assumptions further the extant distribution of land has strong impacts on the required payments

saving tropical forests as a global warming countermeasure an issue that divides the environmental movement abstract saving tropical forests as a global warming countermeasure has become one of the environmental movement s most divisive issues divisions are just as sharp as the better known ones between government positions while the debate is often couched in scientific terms and with appeals to high universal principles the positions of the different partisans to the debate are better understood in terms of hidden agendas conscious or not in the case of european governments which oppose inclusion of forests in the kyoto protocol s clean development mechanism the exclusion of forests would lead to improvement of industrial competitiveness as compared to the us in the case of brazil opposition to including avoided deforestation fits with conspiracy theories regarding internationalization of the amazon for european and european dominated non governmental organizations ngos opposition to forests is best explained as an opportunistic blow at us consumption culture which is reviled for reasons largely unrelated to climate change from the point of view of brazilian ngos concerned with maintaining amazonian forest these alternative agendas are side issues that attractive as they might be do not merit throwing away a major opportunity for obtaining monetary flows for forest maintenance more carbon can be maintained in the forests than the amount of carbon credit granted in this way even if the carbon in the forests is temporary at some point a net benefit exists for the climate from having the forest project instead of a smaller reduction in fossil fuel emissions proposals for ton year accounting and for temporary credits effectively deal with issues such as carbon permanence to make the climatic benefits of avoided deforestation real allowing both a gain for climate and the maintenance of biodiversity and other values through carbon mitigation activities the importance of tropical deforestation in global greenhouse gas emissions means that agreement will eventually have to be reached on how to account for the benefits of avoided deforestation and incorporate them into mitigation activities this will continue to be the case regardless of the course of negotiations in the coming months in the wake of the march 2001 announcement by us president george w bush of his desire to renege on us commitments under the protocol

valuing nature lessons learned and future research directions this paper critically reviews the literature on environmental valuation of ecosystem services across the range of global biomes the main objective of this review is to assess the policy relevance of the information encompassed by the wide range of valuation studies that have been undertaken so far published and other studies now cover most ecosystems with aquatic and marine contexts attracting the least attention there is also a predominance of single function valuation studies studies valuing multiple functions and uses and studies which seek to capture the before and after states as environmental changes take place are rare by and large it is the latter types of analyses that are most important as aids to more rational decision taking in ecosystem conservation versus development situations involving different stakeholders local national and global aggregate global scale estimates of ecosystems value are problematic given the fact that only marginal values are consistent with conventional decision aiding tools such as economic cost benefit analysis in general valuation data provide prima facie support for the hypothesis that net ecosystem service value diminishes with biodiversity and ecosystem loss balmford et al 2002 science 297 p 950 future research effort should include complementary research on multiple ecosystem services that seeks to capture the temporal disturbance profile and its causal factors the explicit recognition of multiple interdependent ecosystem services and values poses both conceptual and empirical research challenges it would serve to transform the practice of research in this sub field via the a priori assumption of multiple and inter dependent use instead of independent single use this line of reasoning can then be extended to the institutional arrangements that determine which values are captured new institutional processes and arrangements are probably required in order to best realise benefit streams from multiple ecosystem use and non use provision across a range of different stakeholders

the total economic value of amazonian deforestation 1978 1993 national income accounting has been criticized because of its failure to encompass the notion of sustainability several studies address this problem through green income accounting i e by adjusting conventionally measured gdp for reduction in a given country s stock of natural resources these studies generally base value on the unit net price of the resource other studies go beyond net price emphasizing a natural resource s total economic value tev that is its non marketable as well as its marketable values this paper combines the green income accounting and tev approaches and applies the new framework to brazil in order to assess the foregone economic benefits resulting from amazonian deforestation the results lend support to calls for greater policy emphasis on conservation of unique and irreplaceable ecosystems 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

crop biodiversity risk management and the implications of agricultural assistance this paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of financial assistance to farms on crop biodiversity in an uncertain setting the findings reveal that risk aversion is an important driving force for crop biodiversity conservation risk averse farmers can hedge against the uncertainty they face by allocating land to different crop species however policies intended to stabilize revenues by supporting particular species may alter this link by delinking crop biodiversity from the management of revenues risk

use and misuse of the net present value in environmental studies abstract environmental studies regularly use the net present value npv to value benefits and costs of projects however the npv disregards whether the stream of net benefits is steady or volatile and ignores the distribution of net benefits among different groups of people here we test alternatives to npv building on two example cases 1 we use discounted utility du to evaluate land use projects and calculate opportunity costs for avoided deforestation 2 we simulate decision making on tropical deforestation whereby we use multiple decision criteria to consider the distribution of net benefits between two groups farmers and conservationists results show considerable differences in the ranking of projects between du and npv when projects are not marginal compared to du npv regularly overestimates the value of forest plantations moreover npv tends to overstate the opportunity costs of avoiding deforestation in terms of saved carbon emissions not accounting for the distribution of net benefits when optimizing land use allocation leads to sub optimal simulated deforestation scenarios we therefore suggest that future studies should either also use du to value economic consequences of projects or that they use the npv as only one among several socio economic and ecological decision criteria

managing increasing environmental risks through agrobiodiversity and agrienvironmental policies abstract agro biodiversity can provide natural insurance to risk averse farmers by reducing the variance of crop yield and to society at large by reducing the uncertainty in the provision of public good ecosystem services such as e g co2 storage we analyze the choice of agro biodiversity by risk averse farmers who have access to financial insurance and study the implications for agri environmental policy design when on farm agro biodiversity generates a positive risk externality while increasing environmental risk leads private farmers to increase their level of on farm agro biodiversity the level of agro biodiversity in the laissez faire equilibrium remains inefficiently low we show how either one of two agri environmental policy instruments can cure this risk related market failure an ex ante pigouvian subsidy on on farm agro biodiversity and an ex post compensation payment for the actual provision of public environmental benefits in the absence of regulation welfare may increase rather than decrease with increasing environmental risk if the agroecosystems is characterized by a high natural insurance function low costs and large external benefits of agro biodiversity

reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in cameroon assessing costs and benefits a new momentum is underway to account for emissions from avoided deforestation and degradation at the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc this paper assesses the feasibility of one of the reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation redd mechanisms currently discussed namely that of compensated reduction in the case of cameroon here we assess the differential revenues that a farmer could get from 1 ha of land out of two alternative land uses shifting cultivation the traditional land use pattern in southern cameroon or carbon credits as compensation for the conservation of primary forest it is found that a break even price of 2 85 t of carbon dioxide equivalent would level shifting cultivation with compensated reduction this result suggests that at current carbon prices and independently form variations in the discount rate it could already be more profitable to preserve the primary forest rather than to log it in order to grow crops 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the impact of capacity planning on product lifecycle for performance on sustainability dimensions in reverse logistics social responsibility abstract reverse logistics social responsibility rlsr is preferred as a social responsibility activity in the supply chain since it involves most of the supply chain actors who have an impact on social responsibility so here a single product system dynamics sd model of the supply chain with rlsr is developed the product lifecycle with its inherited uncertainties such as the length of the product lifecycle pattern of the product lifecycle and residence index is adopted by considering interrelated sustainability dimensions efficient flexible capacity planning is established as a policy option by considering a social responsibility fund from the premium price that is contributed by consumers the taguchi design of experiment is used for analysis of the numerical simulation finally the significance with its power is measured to show the power of the relationship between policy and uncertainty for the sustainability dimensions performance these features will be used to analyze the impact of capacity planning on product lifecycle for performance on sustainability dimensions in rlsr by using an sd approach the findings show that the policy parameters have an effect on any measured performances and uncertainties with some conditional exceptions these findings reveal three interesting facts regarding rlsr due to the considered model features first the economic performance is a result of a direct influence of policy second the environmental performance results from the indirect effect of the policy third the social performance is the performance that is hardest to influence by policy therefore the findings underscore this paper s contributions to the relatively limited academic knowledge on the examination of the impact of behavior in reverse logistics as a social responsibility due to capacity planning and the product lifecycle with its inherited uncertainties these contributions offer managers a better understanding of the relationship between capacity planning product lifecycle with its inherited uncertainties and sustainability performance this better understanding will lead to better capacity planning to tackle product lifecycle with its inherited uncertainties for sustainable rlsr

sensitivity of natural gas deployment in the us power sector to future carbon policy expectations abstract one option for reducing carbon emissions in the power sector is replacement of coal fired generation with less carbon intensive natural gas combined cycle ngcc generation in the united states where there is abundant low cost natural gas supply increased ngcc deployment could be a cost effective emissions abatement opportunity at relatively modest carbon prices however under scenarios in which carbon prices rise and deeper emissions reductions are achieved other technologies may be more cost effective than ngcc in the future in this analysis using a us energy system model with foresight a version of the national energy modeling system or nems model we find that varying expectations about carbon prices after 2030 does not materially affect ngcc deployment prior to 2030 all else equal an important implication of this result is that under the set of natural gas and carbon price trajectories explored here myopic behavior or other imperfect expectations about potential future carbon policy do not change the natural gas deployment path or lead to stranded natural gas generation infrastructure we explain these results in terms of the underlying economic competition between available generation technologies and discuss the broader relevance to us climate change mitigation policy

do we really care about biodiversity this paper addresses from an economic perspective the issue of global biodiversity conservation it challenges the perception that the world really cares a great deal about biodiversity and is prepared to pay the full cost of maintaining this stock of natural capital despite the existence of a plethora of international agreements there still seems to be a global deficit of care surrounding efforts to combat challenges such as those posed by global warming and biodiversity conservation more light can be thrown on the degree of care by measuring both the actual expenditures and the stated willingness to pay for biodiversity conservation however actual expenditures are much lower than willingness to pay estimates recorded in the published literature using the criteria that the right amount of conservation effort is one where the marginal economic benefits from conservation just equal the marginal costs of conservation the paper explores the biodiversity conservation conundrum and concluded that on the available evidence the world does not care too much about this natural capital stock and bequests to future generations

income diversification poverty traps and policy shocks in cote d ivoire and kenya abstract this paper presents evidence on the effects of two different sorts of policy shocks on observed income diversification patterns in rural africa in cote d ivoire households with poor endowments were less able to respond to attractive emerging on farm and non farm opportunities due to entry barriers to superior livelihood strategies the benefits of exchange rate reform accrued disproportionately to households that were richer prior to devaluation by contrast food for work transfers to households in kenya significantly reduced liquidity constraints enabling project participants to pursue more lucrative livelihood strategies in non farm activities and higher return agricultural production patterns jointly these two shocks underscore the importance of liquidity market access and skill constraints to skilled non farm income sources to dynamic poverty traps in rural africa

a review of theories of the firm and their contributions to corporate sustainability corporate sustainability has arisen as an alternative to traditional short term profit oriented ap proaches to managing the firm by holistically balancing economic environmental and social issues in the present generation and for future ones although a number of theories of the firm have been pro posed within recent decades their application to corporate sustainability has been limited this paper presents an overview of the most widely used theories of the firm such as the stockholder theory the aggregate theory the contractual theory the resource based view and the stakeholder theory and analyses their contributions to corporate sustainability from an interpretative perspective the discus sion highlights the point that each of the theories on its own is limited in addressing sustainability s four dimensions i e the economic environmental social and time nonetheless each theory or group of theories has a particular perspective or principles that can contribute to one or more of the four dimensions the authors of this paper propose a sustainability oriented theory of the firm which is built upon elements of those theories as they relate to corporate sustainability this new theory can be useful in providing the firm s leaders and all of its stakeholders with a more complete vision of its ob ligations opportunities relations and processes that the firm should address as it engages in helping to make societies become more equitable and sustainable in the short and long terms

stochastic economic assessment of afforestation on marginal land in irrigated farming system we analysed the economic viability of afforestation on marginal irrigated croplands in irrigated drylands of uzbekistan the revenues derived from a combination of diversified agricultural production carbon sequestration nitrogen fixation and avoided irrigation water use were analysed considering uncertainty associated with on farm activities such as crop production and short rotation forestry at the per hectare scale variability in land use revenues would necessitate substantial increases in carbon prices for afforestation to be as profitable as crop cultivation on marginal lands assuming an abundant irrigation water supply in contrast at the farm scale the analysis results revealed that afforestation can be attractive financially even without carbon payments due to farm production constraints variable land use returns and the benefits of land use diversification increased carbon prices would promote carbon sequestration by motivating farmers to plant high biomass producing tree species but would have an ecosystem service trade off by reducing the appeal of nitrogen fixing species that are essential for nitrogen self sufficiency of afforestation efforts given the modest irrigation needs of afforestation efforts compared to the cultivation of annual crops tree plantations could become a primary income source for farms during periods of drought irrigation water saved from replacing crops with trees on marginal farmland would enhance the cultivation of commercial crops on productive lands thus increasing farm income