Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xxiii, 306 p.; also includes graphics (some col.) Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-306). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2011. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-132). Also available on the World Wide Web.

V. I Mission possible: stellar Canadian performance in the global economy -- v. II Mission possible: a Canadian resources strategy for the boom and beyond -- v. III Mission possible: successful Canadian cities -- v. IV Mission possible executive summary: sustainable prosperity for Canada (an executive summary of Volumes I, II and III). / " ... set of four volumes comprising the final report of The Canada Project, Mission Possible: Sustainable Prosperity for Canada."--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online. Access restricted to authorized users and institutions.

Bibliography: leaves 64-66. Argues that the sustainable lifestyle of traditional Aboriginal communities acheived the teleological harmony suggested as a possible conceptual framework for the emerging area of study known as ecological economics.

A Rede Ecovida de Agroecologia se define como parte do “movimento agroecológico” brasileiro e latino-americano. Foi constituída oficialmente em 1998, como tentativa de se contrapor a alguns aspectos da instrução normativa da agricultura orgânica, mas sua origem remonta à ação prática da Igreja Católica através da Teologia da Libertação, a partir dos anos 70; da aproximação com o marxismo – em grande parte através da referida teologia – e do surgimento de um movimento ambientalista que se desenvolveu no âmbito de algumas universidades brasileiras. Diante do avanço da modernização da agricultura brasileira, as ONGs que mais tarde contribuíram com a constituição da Rede Ecovida, colocavam-se, em sua maioria, como assessoria aos movimentos sociais do campo no que se refere ao desenvolvimento de tecnologias que se apresentavam como alternativas ao processo hegemônico, além de contribuir com a organização política dos agricultores através da “educação popular”. As mudanças ocorridas no cenário econômico e político, destacadamente a mundialização do capital e a queda do socialismo, promoveu também profundas mudanças nas concepções e na prática política e educativa dos movimentos sociais do campo, embora de formas distintas. Com a autonomização dos movimentos sociais do campo, através da especialização destes em função de temas mais específicos (sindicalismo, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens etc.), as referidas ONGs desenvolvem também certo grau de autonomia em relação aos movimentos e continuam a se contrapor ao “modelo de desenvolvimento da agricultura”, ao mesmo tempo em que propõem a organização de agricultores ecológicos, bem como de consumidores, através de uma nova forma organizativa (grupos de agricultores, conselhos de ética, núcleos etc.) que mantém a proposta de educação popular desenvolvida no período anterior, mas também incorpora as concepções que passam a ser assumidas pelo ambientalismo neste novo período. Como se propõe que a agroecologia também seja um processo educativo, articulado aos projetos de mudança social, cabe perguntar, no sentido de compreender suas contradições, quais são as bases teóricas e políticas desta proposta adotada pela Rede Ecovida e pelo movimento agroecológico. Ou seja, qual é a concepção de homem, sociedade, natureza, realidade, prática educativa, Estado etc. Amparado em pesquisa de campo e bibliográfica, partiu-se do estudo de sete dos vinte e sete núcleos da Rede atualmente existentes, localizados na região Sul do Brasil, bem como da inserção na Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia e no Movimento Agroecológico Latino-americano. A partir deste trabalho é possível afirmar que a prática educativa da Rede Ecovida corresponde a uma espécie de “educação popular ecológica” que se apoiou historicamente no “método Paulo Freire” de educação popular e a ele passou associar um conjunto de concepções e autores próprios da agroecologia como base técnica de produção ou daqueles que propuseram sua articulação com uma prática política. Mudanças no contexto histórico alteraram o sujeito político da educação da Rede Ecovida, o que a obriga revisar seu projeto histórico. / The “Rede Ecovida de Agroecologia” is defined as part of "agroecological movement" Brazilian and Latin American. It was officially constituted in 1998 as an attempt to counteract some aspects of normative instruction of organic agriculture, but its origin goes back to the practical action of the Catholic Church through the “Teologia da Libertação”, from the 70s, the rapprochement with Marxism - in largely through said theology - and the emergence of an environmental movement that developed in some universities. Faced with the advance of modernization of brazilian agriculture, NGOs that later contributed to the establishment of Ecovida, put up, mostly as a consultant for social movements in relation to the development of technologies that were presented as alternatives the hegemonic process, besides contributing to the political organization of farmers through "popular education". The changes in the economic and political scenario, notably the globalization of capital and the fall of socialism, also promoted profound changes in the concepts and practice of educational policy and social movements, although in different ways. With the autonomy of social movements through the specialization of these due to more specific themes (syndicalism, the Landless Workers Movement, Movement of People Affected by Dams etc..), These NGOs also develop some degree of autonomy in relation to movements and continue to oppose the "development model of agriculture", while proposing the organization of ecological farmers and consumers through a new organizational form (farmer groups, ethics committees, centers etc.). That keeps the proposal for popular education developed in the previous period, but also incorporates the concepts that are being assumed by environmentalism in this new period. How do you propose that agroecology is also an educational process, the articulated projects of social change, one wonders, in order to understand its contradictions, which are the theoretical basis of this proposal and policies adopted by Ecovida and the agroecological movement. That is, what is the conception of man, society, nature, reality, educational practice, etc. Supported in field research and literature, we started with the study of seven of the twenty-seven centers currently existing Network, located in southern Brazil and insertion into the Joint National Agroecology Agroecology Movement and Latin America. From this work we can say that the educational practice of Ecovida corresponds to a kind of "eco popular education" that historically relied on the "Paulo Freire Method" of popular education and he spent associate a set of concepts and authors in the agroecology as the technical basis of production or of those who proposed its relationship with political practice. Changes in historical context altered the political subject of education Ecovida, which requires review the historical project.

abstract: ABSTRACT Water resources in many parts of the world are subject to increasing stress because of (a) the growth in demand caused by population increase and economic development, (b) threats to supply caused by climate and land cover change, and (c) a heightened awareness of the importance of maintaining water supplies to other parts of the ecosystem. An additional factor is the quality of water management. The United States-Mexican border provides an example of poor water management combined with increasing demand for water resources that are both scarce and uncertain. This dissertation focuses on the problem of water management in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. The city has attracted foreign investment during the last few decades, largely due to relatively low environmental and labor costs, and to a range of tax incentives and concessions. This has led to economic and population growth, but also to higher demand for public services such as water which leads to congestion and scarcity. In particular, as water resources have become scarce, the cost of water supply has increased. The dissertation analyzes the conditions that allow for the efficient use of water resources at sustainable levels of economic activity--i.e., employment and investment. In particular, it analyzes the water management strategies that lead to an efficient and sustainable use of water when the source of water is either an aquifer, or there is conjunctive use of ground and imported water. The first part of the dissertation constructs a model of the interactive effects of water supply, wage rates, inward migration of labor and inward investment of capital. It shows how growing water scarcity affects population growth through the impact it has on real wage rates, and how this erodes the comparative advantage of Ciudad Juarez--low wages--to the point where foreign investment stops. This reveals the very close connection between water management and the level of economic activity in Ciudad Juarez. The second part of the dissertation examines the effect of sustainable and efficient water management strategies on population and economic activity levels under two different settings. In the first Ciudad Juarez relies exclusively on ground water to meet demand--this reflects the current situation of Ciudad Juarez. In the second Ciudad Juarez is able both to import water and to draw on aquifers to meet demand. This situation is motivated by the fact that Ciudad Juarez is considering importing water from elsewhere to maintain its economic growth and mitigate the overdraft of the Bolson del Hueco aquifer. Both models were calibrated on data for Ciudad Juarez, and then used to run experiments with respect to different environmental and economic conditions, and different water management options. It is shown that for a given set of technological, institutional and environmental conditions, the way water is managed in a desert environment determines the long run equilibrium levels of employment, investment and output. It is also shown that the efficiency of water management is consistent with the sustainability of water use and economic activity. Importing water could allow the economy to operate at higher levels of activity than where it relies solely on local aquifers. However, at some scale, water availability will limit the level of economic activity, and the disposable income of the residents of Ciudad Juarez. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Sustainability 2011

This work exploits the general equilibrium modeling framework to simulate complex systems, an economy and an ecosystem. In an economic application, this work leverages a novel data revision scheme to integrate technological detail on electricity generation and pollution abatement into national accounts data in a traditional economic computed general equilibrium (CGE) model. This integration provides a rich characterization of generation and abatement for multiple fuel sources and pollutants across 72 different generation-abatement technology configurations. Results reveal that the benefits of reductions in oxides of nitrogen and sulfur from a carbon policy in the US electric sector are on the order of $10 bn., which rival the policy's welfare costs and make 12-13% carbon abatement economically justifiable without considering any climate benefits. For ecosystem applications, this work demonstrates how the structure of economic CGE modeling can be adapted to construct a Biological General Equilibrium (BGE) model grounded in the theoretical biology literature. The BGE model contributes a novel synthesis of micro-behavioral, bioenergetic features with macroscopic ecosystem outcomes and empirical food web data. Species respond to prevailing ecosystem scarcity conditions that impinge on their energy budgets driving population outcomes within and across model periods. This adaptive capacity is a critical advance over the commonly-taken phenomenological or first-order parametric approaches. The distinctive design of the BGE model enables numerical examination of how changes in scarcity drives biomass production and consumption in a complex food web. Moreover, the BGE model design can exploit empirical datasets used by extant ecosystem models to offer this level of insight for a wide cast of ecosystems. Monte carlo simulations demonstrate that the BGE framework can produce stable results for the ecosystem robust to a variety of shocks and parameterizations. The BGE model's validity is supported in tests against real-world phenomena within the Aleutian ecosystem - both an invasive species and a harvesting-induced trophic cascade - by mimicking key features of these phenomena. The BGE model's micro-founded dynamics, the stability and robustness of its results, and its validity against real-world phenomena offer a unique and valuable contribution to ecosystem modeling and a way forward for the integrated assessment of human-ecosystem interactions.

I consider the influence of foreign environmental policy on domestic manufacturing activity using theory and empirics. A tractable three-country spatial model yields a theory of locational com- parative advantage in the production of pollution-intensive manufactured goods: greater market access to countries with stringent environmental policy encourages output in the polluting sector. Operationalizing the model empirically, I find robust evidence that high market access to countries with stringent environmental policy increases manufacturing value added. Both the theoretical and empirical analyses suggest that estimates of the Pollution Haven Effect that ignore third country environmental policy - yet make the stable unit treatment value assumption - can be misleading. Chapter Two We investigate the impact of short-term weather and long-term climate on self-reported life satisfaction using panel data. We find robust evidence that day-to-day weather variation impacts life satisfaction by a similar magnitude to acquiring a mild disability. Utilizing two sources of variation in the cognitive complexity of satisfaction questions, we present evidence that weather bias arises because of the cognitive challenge of reporting life satisfaction. Consistent with past studies, we detect a relationship between long-term climate and life satisfaction without individual fixed effects. This relationship is not robust to individual fixed effects, suggesting climate does not directly influence life satisfaction. Chapter Three This chapter considers the related policy challenges of deindustrialisation and 'leakage' which can arise when environmental regulation is differentiated across regions. A dynamic two-region 'New Economic Geography' (NEG) model is adopted in which agglomeration forces may make firms tolerant of regulatory disadvantage. Each region ratifies an international environmental agreement (IEA) requiring it to tax transboundary pollution created by local firms. In contrast to previous NEG studies, the model adopted is considerably more tractable, enabling comparative static analysis to be conducted analytically rather than through computer simulation. The model is extended to consider the relationship between the prescribed tax rates and deindustrialisation caused by the relocation of firms. Firm relocation in response to a given tax differential depends crucially on trade costs and the initial location (configuration) of industry. For some industry configurations, agglomeration forces are strong and a set of tax differentials exist which cause no international relocation of polluting firms. For other initial industry configurations in which agglomeration forces are weaker, the same set of tax differentials may cause complete inter-national relocation to the less stringently regulated region. Trade liberalization can actually make industry less likely to relocate in response to a regulatory disadvantage. The model is further extended to consider the issue of carbon leakage, which arises in the regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For relatively low tax differentials, agglomeration forces create rents which tend to anchor industry in the higher taxing region, avoiding carbon leakage. If the tax differential is too great, however, agglomeration forces cause all firms to relocate to the lower taxing region where they optimally emit more GHGs. Environmental outcomes may therefore be improved by reducing the tax rate in the higher taxing region in order to discourage industry relocation. When industry is diversified between regions, firms respond to higher (lower) relative domestic taxes by increasing (decreasing) output and polluting more (less).

Smart Prosperity (SP) brings together multi-sectoral business leaders, policy experts, unions and progressive NGO change makers to align Canada’s civil society messaging on climate change action and policy. SP has recently found national relevance thanks to considerable policy uptake by Justin Trudeau’s ruling federal Liberal party. Rooted in a neoclassical economic model of demand-management, SP positions themselves as the architects of an energy transition regime of consumer price signals. This study examines 118 of SP’s academic and policy reports from 2008 to 2018 using an institutional ethnographic approach to textual analysis to consider the ideological and ontological consequences of SP’s policy program for the tender geographies of communities in Canada. SP is found to contrive a terrain of energy possibilities that rests on administrative abstraction, economism and market fetishism, and which places the economic administrator at the heart of Canada’s social and natural relations. / Graduate

xv, 173 p. : ill. (some col.) A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Economists typically assume that individuals behave in accordance with rational choice theory. In practice, however, individual behavior can deviate from the predictions of models founded upon basic economic theory. The extent to which these deviations are important to individual decision-making in environmental economics, and thus to the development of sound environmental policies, is not fully understood. The objective in this dissertation research is to investigate potential deviations from rational choice behavior in some environmental economics contexts and to identify their relevance to environmental policy. Chapter I uses a stated-preference survey for the valuation of environmental health-risk reductions in which respondents rate the subjective difficulty of each key choice they are asked to consider. Existing literature identifies many potential categories of biases in the empirically estimated valuation of non-market goods in stated-preference research. One potential source of bias stems from the "objective complexity" of the choice scenario. I find that existing objective measures of choice set complexity do not fully explain subjective choice difficulty ratings in this valuation survey. Instead, subjective difficulty appears to result from the interplay among objective complexity, preferences, and cognitive resource constraints. In Chapter II, I consider the possible consequences of choice difficulty from the standpoint of neuroeconomics. Within the scope of neuroeconomics, one can identify some neurobiological correlates of economic decision-making activity. I study the apparent effects of choice difficulty on the neurobiological encoding of individuals' value assessments. Information from this study provides a neurological basis for deviations from simple economic theory based on conventional models of rational choice. Chapter III examines risk perceptions that may influence individuals' decisions to migrate within the U.S. to reduce potential health and economic risks related to climate change. My analysis treats historical patterns of migration among counties as a function of varying spatial and temporal patterns in tornado activity, along with other spatially and temporally delineated variables intended to capture the evolution of subjective perceptions of these tornado risks. Results suggest that the perception of risk from extreme weather events can have a small but statistically discernible effect on migration behavior across sociodemographic groups for both out-migrants and in-migrants. / Committee in charge: Trudy Cameron, Chairperson, Economics; William Harbaugh, Member, Economics; Jason Lindo, Member, Economics; Ulrich Mayr, Outside Member, Psychology