We study the long-run connection between atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO
2
) concentration and the probability of hydrometeorological disasters using a panel of 193 countries over the period 1970–2016 ...providing annual disaster projections to the year 2040 for each of these countries. Generating accurate predictions on where hydrometeorological disasters have greater chances to occur, may facilitate preparedness and adaption to such disasters, thus helping to reduce their high human and economic costs. We estimate the probabilities of hydrometeorological disasters at country levels using Bayesian sampling techniques. We decompose the probability of country disaster into the effects of country-specific factors, such as climatological and socio-demographic factors, and factors associated with world climate, which we denote global probability of disaster (GPOD). Finally, we subject these GPOD time paths to a cointegration analysis with CO
2
concentration and provide projections to the year 2040 of the GPOD conditional on nine Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios. We detect a stable long-term relation between CO
2
accumulation and the GPOD that allows us to determine projections of the latter process conditional on the former. We conclude that readily available statistical data on global atmospheric concentrations of CO
2
can be used as a conceptually meaningful, statistically valid and policy useful predictor of the probability of occurrence of hydrometeorological disasters.
Tourism is often seen as the ‘golden ticket’ for the development of many islands. The current COVID-19 pandemic, however, has ground global tourism to a halt. In particular, islands that depend ...heavily on tourist inflows—including mass-tourism islands, and small island developing states (SIDS)—have seen their revenues diminish significantly, and poverty rates increasing. Some alternative-tourism islands have fared better, as they have focused on providing personalized, nature-based experiences to mostly domestic tourists. This article focuses on the experiences of mass-tourism islands, SIDS, and alternative-tourism islands during the COVID-19 pandemic, and offers possible post-pandemic scenarios, as well as recommendations for sustainable island tourism development. Although the pandemic has largely had a negative impact on the tourism sector, this is a unique opportunity for many islands to review the paradigm of tourism development. In this newly emerging world, and under a still very uncertain future scenario, the quadriptych of sustainability is more important than ever. Responsible governance and management of islands’ natural resources and their tourism activities, addressing climate change impacts, the diversification of islands’ economies, and the promotion of innovative and personalized tourist experiences are all necessary steps towards increasing islands’ resilience in case of future economic downturn or health- and environment-related crises.
While tourism brings many benefits to islands, it can also cause negative effects, especially when tourism development is a disorganised process, with significant environmental impacts. This has been ...the case of Easter Island: the recent, uncontrolled growth in tourist numbers together with social and political tensions, are signs of a socioeconomic process pursuing development that has neglected the institutional, environmental, social, and economic imperatives of sustainability for tourism management. The study initially presents the environmental impacts of tourism growth, including waste disposal and management issues, problems with sewage system, threats to water quality, and biodiversity loss. Next, using data from in situ fieldwork, interviews and surveys, it focuses on residents' perceptions regarding environmental consequences of the vast tourism growth, as well as on the serious governance issues that Easter Island is currently facing and that complicate even further its sustainable development. Overall, our results indicate that-while acknowledging the negative impacts that uncontrolled tourism development has brought to the island and the need for it to become more sustainable-residents are in favour of tourism since it is the island's main source of income and employment. The paper draws lessons for islands involved in the "development-through-tourism" model regarding the difficulties these islands will face in attaining their goals if they are not able to build and implement cooperative agreements among stakeholders to properly manage the common-pool resources involved. This is a warning sign for islands that enthusiastically promote tourism without implementing sound sustainability criteria to guide the management of their tourism sector.
Chile is the largest copper producing country of the world; and almost 50% of the copper it exports to the rest of the world is exported as copper concentrates to be smelted and refined abroad. ...However, 70% of the weight of these exported copper concentrates is gangue (valueless and undesirable material associated to the copper content in these exported concentrates). In this paper analyze and quantify the contribution Chile could make to the ongoing world efforts to reduce climate change and global warming, if it adopts a trading policy eliminating its exports of copper concentrates and replacing them with the greater value added exports of the refined copper obtained from smelting and refining those concentrates in Chile. This policy would allow a significant reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted every year to the global atmosphere. This reduction would occur through two channels: 1. avoiding the combustion of more than 600,000 tons of diesel oil currently used to transport by sea almost 6,600,000 tons of the gangue incorporated in Chile's copper concentrate exports; and, 2. using Chile's cleaner technology for smelting and refining copper concentrates instead of the dirtier technologies of the countries currently importing, smelting and refining the Chilean copper concentrates. For the first time, using data for 2014, we estimate the total net reduction in GHG emissions to the global atmosphere that the proposed trade policy would imply. We calculate the distance of the nautical routes used for the 919 shipments of concentrates exported by Chile that year; and we perform sensitivity analysis for 4 scenarios, employing two alternative values for two key parameters. Additionally, we compare the GHG emission performances of the copper smelting and refining metallurgic technologies employed in Chile and in every one of the 22 countries that import and smelt and refine Chilean concentrates. Our estimates for the 2 most extreme scenarios indicate that, if instead of exporting copper concentrates in 2014, Chile would had exported only refined copper, it would had contributed with a total net reduction of GHG emissions emitted to the global atmosphere of 2,227,047 and 2,799,279 ton CO2-eq tons that year, which are equivalent to approximately 5.6% of the total amount of GHG emissions that would had made Chile fully carbon neutral that year. This is a significant contribution regarding Chile's commitment to the Paris Agreement as well as in terms of the required world efforts to reducing GHG emissions from sea shipping.
•By replacing all its copper concentrate exports by refined copper exports, Chile would reduce its GHG emissions.•The annual amount reduced of GHG emissions to the global atmosphere is around 2,500,000 tons of CO2-eq.•71% of this reduction comes from the maritime transportation of the gangue content in Chile's copper concentrate exports.•29% is due to Chile’s less polluting refining technologies compared with countries importing Chile’s copper concentrates.•The reduction represents 5.6% of the total GHG emission reduction that would make Chile fully carbon neutral.
We show that a variety of seemingly diverse concepts used to theoretically explaining the EKC have a common origin in two key preference and production elasticities. We also prove that they jointly ...correspond to a unique, underlying preference-technology theoretical framework.
► We propose a general framework to analyze the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). ► The most well known models can be seen as special cases of the framework proposed. ► It highlights the role of two elasticities. ► Models based on preferences require weaker restrictions than those based on technology.
Residents' attitudes concerning tourism evolution and impacts in tourism host localities are a crucial determinant of the ability of the tourism sector to develop. Easter Island has recently ...experienced a tremendous tourism growth, which has nurtured expectations that the tourist sector could become the economic driver of the island. Using fieldwork, interviews and surveys, we investigate residents' perceptions towards tourism and analyse their implications for the sector's future development. The survey results show that 96% of residents believe that tourism is important or very important for the island's economy. We conclude that while residents of Easter Island are aware of tourism's negative impacts, they support the tourism sector, because they recognize it as the main future driver of the island's economy. However, due to the current environmental threats and the serious governance problems of the island, it is not clear if further expansion of the tourism sector will be sustainable.
In the past, Cd regulations have imposed trade restrictions on foodstuffs from some developing countries seeking to access markets in the developed world and in recent years, there has been a trend ...towards imposing more rigorous standards. This trend seems to respond more to public and private sectors strategies in some developed countries to create disguised barriers to trade and to improve market competitiveness for their industries, than to scientifically justified health precautions (sanitary and phytosanitary measures) and/or technical barriers to trade acceptable under the Uruguay Round Agreement of the WTO. Applying more rigorous Cd standards in some developed countries will not only increase production costs in developing countries but it will also have a large impact on their economies highly dependent on international agricultural markets. In the current literature there are large uncertainties in the cause–effect relationship between current levels of Cd intakes and eventual health effects in human beings; even the risk of Cd to kidney function is under considerable debate. Recent works on the importance of zinc:Cd ratio rather than Cd levels alone to determine Cd risk factors, on the one hand, and on the declining trends of Cd level in foods and soils, on the other, also indicate a lack of scientific evidence justifying more restrictive cadmium standards. This shows that developing countries should fight for changing and making more transparent the current international structures and procedures for setting sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade.
Most previous studies of income inequality have either ignored capital gains or have used taxable realized capital gains to estimate top incomes. Neither of these approaches is fully satisfactory. We ...apply for the first time a new methodology that allows us to account for
fundamental
accrued
capital gains as part of the top incomes in a theoretically consistent manner. We estimate the shares of the super-rich in Chile showing that accrued capital gains have a large impact on these estimates. Also, the top income shares estimated using fundamental capital gains appear to exhibit a more stable and presumably more plausible time profile than estimates based on capital gains derived from asset market variations.
Several authors have argued that forest ecosystems serve as a hedge against extreme climatic events at a local scale. Consequently, the local climate regulation ecosystem services provided by forests ...can be economically valued by evaluating the reduction (increase) in the insurance premium that risk‐averse individuals are willing to pay when forest cover is marginally increased (reduced). This type of insurance value associated to forest ecosystems services is estimated to be USD 0.0733 per hectare of forest for Chilean farmers. The empirical framework proposed in this paper is useful and relevant for the cost‐benefit analysis of natural resource conservation investments.
Las Áreas Naturales Protegidas han sido tradicionalmente empleadas para preservar los ecosistemas naturales, aunque en las últimas décadas se han añadido esquemas de Pago por Servicios Ambientales ...para complementar estas iniciativas. Sin embargo, los Bosques Templados endémicos están expuestos a fuertes presiones por actividades antrópicas como el crecimiento urbano y la fuerte demanda hídrica para abastecer una de las ciudades más grandes del centro de México. La evidencia de México muestra que los PSA han tenido un impacto limitado en la conservación, ya que en sus primeros años los pagos fueron asignados en áreas con bajo riesgo de degradación ambiental, principalmente en las ANP. Esta asociación ha generado debates sobre su efectividad en la conservación y la provisión de servicios ecosistémicos. Fue cuantificada la efectividad espacial de las Áreas Naturales Protegidas y el sistema de Pago por Servicios Ambientales para la conservación de Servicios Ecosistémicos de la zona central de México específicamente en la zona denominada Bosque de Agua. Los servicios de provisión de agua y regulación climática fueron modelizados con el software InVEST, mientras que los servicios de provisión de alimentos agrícolas y de madera fueron estimados a partir de la cobertura de stock de biomasa elaborado por el programa para la reducción de las emisiones derivadas de la deforestación, y la degradación de los bosques. A partir de estas estimaciones por unidades mínimas de análisis (1 ha) se generaron modelos de puntos calientes para cada SE. Luego, se cruzaron áreas con altos valores de estos servicios ("puntos calientes") con Áreas Naturales Protegidas y zonas con Pago por Servicios Ambientales. Los resultados destacan que el Bosque de Agua no solo es proveedor de agua, sino que otros servicios también son significativos y necesitan una protección más eficaz. El 62% del área total del Bosque de Agua (160,356 ha.) presenta puntos calientes para al menos uno de los cuatro servicios medidos. Sin embargo, el 19% (28,864 ha.) de los puntos calientes de servicios no está protegido por ningún instrumento de conservación. Esto pone de relieve la importancia de revisar y ajustar los enfoques de conservación existentes para garantizar la sostenibilidad de estos valiosos servicios que nos da la naturaleza.
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