In the face of the changes in the planet's natural resources and of their unequal distribution, it is becoming more urgent that contemporary societies oversee environmental assets in a global manner. Although international directives, when they are transposed into national laws, may set specific...

The implementation of activities aimed at mitigating global greenhouse gas emissions is more cost-efficient in developing countries than in most of the industrialised world. Nevertheless, efficient mitigation may have adverse effects on equity. A Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is therefore to...

This paper discusses some of the new challenges that the quest for sustainable development poses to scientific research and the interface between science and policy. One of the issues fundamental to both science and policy is that of integration. Integration of scientific research requires a...

Obstacles to clean technology development, innovation and diffusion are not only related to the lack of internalisation of environmental externalities in production costs, as defended by traditional environmental economics. Empirical studies show that many other obstacles prevent these...

Emerging concerns for environmental flows translate into reforms that aim to preserve minimal flows in rivers. These policy measures have consequences for traditional right-holders: how to share between consumptive users the new scarcity created by the protection of instream flows? This paper...

It is possible today, to construct a house of comparable cost to a conventional one that will gain all of its energy from renewable energy sources. However, there are very few examples of such houses. This paper argues that the slow take up of these ideas has a parallel with the development and...

Forest policy-makers increasingly recognise the importance of public participation in planning and policy-making endeavours. In many countries, public participation has been institutionalised into national forest policy. Despite the stated policy assurances, implementing participatory approaches...

This paper proposes an analysis of environmental services produced in rural areas and their links with the notions of organised proximity and geographical proximity. Among the different concepts of environmental services, we use that suggested by service economics to focus on the forms of...

This paper discusses a key aspect of a sustainable pharmaceutical use of biodiversity: the increased demand of the pharmaceutical industry for biogenetic resources does not result in an increase of the market value of biodiversity. The increasing interest in biogenetic resources by the...