Environmental Economics and Accounting
Imagine a factory located upstream that pollutes a river. It produces steel for the automotive industry. Downstream, local fishermen find they catch less fishes due to the pollution. Both are flourishing businesses that produce wealth and prosperity for the community. But there is a problem environmental economists must deal with:
1. Can you suggest any criteria that could be used to decide on who has the right to use the river? The factory, the fishermen, both?
2. Can you propose any instrument or agreement to solve the problem?
It is obvious that the fishermen do not have any kind of guilt. They are receiving the consequences of the bad environmental management of the steel producer. First of all I would like to say that any kind of criteria used to solve the problem is not the proper solution. From my point of view this fact should have never existed. The steel producer should have done an environmental study before starting the production. In terms of rights both have the same rights to use the river however this does not mean that you could do whatever you want with it.
The company has all the liabilities; they are who has polluted the river. So the solution to the problem should be the following one; make a research to not pollute the river in a way that the ecosystem could not be affected again and do it taking charge all the economics issues related with the environment reconstruction. At the same time the company should negotiate with the fishermen to pay them back the entire looses related with the amount of fishes that they could not fish due to the pollution of the river. This could be manage doing a research of the average amount of fishes that the fishermen were fishing before the river pollution, set an average price and make the steel producer pay the looses.
Comments Off on Environmental Economics and Accounting /
13 Dec 2011
por
Antonio Calixto Moreno Zarco
IMSD /
.png)
].gif)
.png){kind=logo}
].png)
].png)
].png)
].png)
.png){kind=logo}
].png)
.png){kind=logo}
