Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the state-owned forestry industry (SOFI) has contributed greatly to national construction and social development. However, since the end of the 1970s the SOFI has been affected by the “two crises” [poor economic performance and ecological degradation], and these to date have yet to be resolved.

The choice of domestic fuel is a matter of great concern for households and policy makers in India. This paper investigates the demand for domestic fuels when households face four choices: Fuelwood, Coal, Kerosene and LPG.

Many argue that it is socially inefficient to use distributional weights in cost-benefit analysis, and that doing so implies large inefficiency losses, when distributional matters can be dealt with through income taxation, instead.

This paper, examine why markets are being widely proposed to address environmental problems and manage natural resources, give some background on their history, and speculate on their future.

This chapter discusses the use of PES schemes as a suitable market-based instrument to achieve sustainable use and management of ecosystems regarded as important, due to their contribution to human welfare in its many expressions.

This paper analyzes the marginal willingness to pay for changes in noise levels related to changes in the volume of flight movements at a city airport in Stockholm, Sweden, by using a choice experiment.

The Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is intended to improve the situation of the poorest developing countries by reducing their debt burden and by permitting increased spending on education and health services. However, at the same time the developed countries funding the HIPC initiative retain agricultural policies that hinder exports form the developing countries in those sectors where they have comparative advantages.

Groundwater can augment total agricultural water supply in areas where rainfall is persistently low, but can also function as a buffer source of water in areas where rainfall is high but variable. In arid countries it is important to examine which of these functions dominates, as this has implications for water policy.

This paper provides an overview and a discussion of environmental taxes in Europe. On the whole, most European countries have fairly high levels of environmental taxation – at least compared to the US.

This thesis consists of five papers dealing with fairly heterogeneous issues, based on the problems or topics analyzed, but also based on the methodologies used to approach them. The overriding motives are the design of environmental policies in the context of a typical developing country (where Costa Rica is used as a representative of such countries), and the study and application of techniques that can provide the necessary information for policy-making.