markets

In this Special Section on the Green Economy in the South, Brett Sylvester Matulis considers Costa Rica’s national “payments for ecosystems services” (PES) programme. He explores World Bank / Costa Rica relations and market-oriented interventions to the financing of ecosystem service payments and explains that (despite inherent contradictions inhibiting market formation) neoliberal actors within the state can still implement mechanisms designed to approximate markets.

Across eleven chapters, the contributors to this edited volume survey the histories of state forestry policy in Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, and Great Britain from the early modern period to the present.

This article aims to disclose the nature and underlying causes of the recent food crises focusing on both conjunctural and structural factors; to analyze the socio-economic and geopolitical impacts of food price increases; to identify the possible strategies to minimize the trade-off between the increase of agricultural production and the sustainable use of natural resources.

Using the Central Coast of California as a case study, this article argues that a nexus of ambitious growers and a growing state agricultural bureaucracy worked to create a “brand name” and teach cultivation approaches with increased production and expanded markets. But these same actors also made efforts to keep the long-term health of the industry and the community in mind.

The Ecology of Commerce outlines the environmentally destructive aspects of many current business practices, and offers the vision of businesses adopting new practices to promote environmental restoration.

In State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?, scientists, policy experts, and thought leaders attempt to restore the meaning to sustainability as more than just a marketing tool.

The paper argues that ecological services are either too “lumpy” to price in incremental units (for example, climatic systems), priced competitively, or too cheap to meter. The paper considers counter-examples and objections.

This essay explores three case studies that illustrate the exemplary use of economic analysis in environmental decision-making.

This paper addresses problems related to transferring market concepts to non-market domains.

This paper reports a Contingent Valuation application to estimate the non-market costs and benefits of hydro scheme developments in an Icelandic wilderness area.