Three Decades of Environmental Values: Some Personal Reflections

The journal Environmental Values is thirty years old. In this retrospective, as the retiring Editor-in-Chief, I provide a set of personal reflections on the changing landscape of scholarship in the field. This historical overview traces developments from the journal's origins in debates between philosophers, sociologists, and economists in the UK to the conflicts over policy on climate change, biodiversity/non-humans and sustainability. Along the way various negative influences are mentioned, relating to how the values of Nature are considered in policy, including mainstream environmental economics, naïve environmental pragmatism, the strategic role of corporations, neoliberalism and eco-modernism/techno-optimism. At the same time core value debates around intrinsic value in Nature and instrumentalism remain relevant, along with how plural environmental values can be articulated and acted upon. Naturalness, human relations to non-humans, and Nature as other, remain central considerations. The broadening of issues covered by the journal (e.g. covering social psychology, sociology and political science), reflect the need to address both human behaviour and the structure of social and economic systems to confront ongoing social-ecological crises.

Theoretical aspects of the formation and development of the ecological economy in Russia

The monograph is devoted to the place and role of ecology and environmental safety in ensuring sustainable socio-economic development of society. In the conditions of the forced transition of the economies of the leading countries of the world from an industrial type to a new formation of a green economy aimed at ensuring the preservation of ecological systems and the maximum reduction of damage to the biodiversity of ecological systems, the Russian Federation faces the task of forming a new course of socio-economic development of society focused on the preservation of natural potential and ecology at a level normal for the maintenance of the vital activity of society, flora and fauna in the foreseeable future and in the long term. The role and importance of environmental safety in the system of ensuring the economic security of the state are outlined, the concept of the ideology of "Global Commons" in ensuring sustainable socio-economic development of society is considered, the problems and prospects of the implementation of the program "Green Course of Russia" are analyzed, special aspects of environmental audit, accounting and control, damage assessment in the field of ecology are investigated. Special attention is paid to the forecast of the dynamics of key environmental indicators for the medium term. The main directions of increasing the effectiveness of the mechanism for ensuring environmental safety in a market economy are proposed. For a wide range of readers interested in environmental economics. It will be useful for students, postgraduates and teachers of economic universities.

Identifying the research advances on COVID-19, the economy and the environment: network- bibliometric analysis and statistical validation

The COVID-19 outbreak dictates urgent research responses. The corpus of scientific publications on COVID- 19 is rapidly growing. Differently from health and technical sciences, social and environmental sciences risk to be neglected in this process. Similarly, Environmental Economics falls behind in terms of COVID-19 scholarship. The research note in hand examines and maps up-to-date research progress on the occurring Coronavirus disease, the economy and the environment. To this end, a bibliometric analysis of these three intertwined areas is performed. We constructed a database of the key publications and extracted the keywords co-occurrence network characterising each work. Thus, we studied the structural characteristics – i.e. the density and the centre – sorting from the co-occurrence network. This exercise identifies four communities of relevant keywords, including environmental health, economic impact and lifestyle, which present the maximal mutual interconnection. It is discovered that relevant possibilities and urgency to examine the relationship between the Coronavirus, the economy and the environment exist on the issues and, broadly, in the field of Environmental Economics. The study of environmental facets and environment-economy interplay within the current Coronavirus pandemic claims a larger academic production, resulting not yet relevant and scarcely explored and signals the need to boost public and environmental health scholarship response.JEL codes: C02, I15, I18, O13, Q56

The Value of Ecological Assets Based on Land Cover/Use Pattern in Kunming, Yunnan Province

Nowadays, the quantitative assessment of the ecological assets assessment was a hot topic and focus in the field of ecology and environmental economics. Quantitative evaluation of ecological assets can monetize the value of ecological assets, strengthen local ecological environment protection, and promote the service functions of regional ecosystems. Taking urban area as research area can clarify the value of local ecological protection and provide a scientific basis for the positioning of the functions and the construction of ecological civilization. The results showed that the value of ecological assets in Kunming was 249.858 billion yuan and 305.180 billion yuan in 2010 and 2020, respectively. Grassland made the largest contribution to ecological assets and was an important part of the composition of ecological assets, and the value of soil and water conservation occupied a large proportion in Kunming's ecological assets. The value of ecological assets in Kunming was growing in general, but a few ecological services have declined in value, so it was necessary to increase the ecological construction and strengthen the supervision and management of ecological assets.

Shareholders and the environment: a review of four decades of academic research

We provide a synthesis of four decades of empirical research regarding the reaction of shareholders to environmental events. This literature is at the crossroads of finance, environmental economics, management and corporate social responsibility (CSR). To set the stage, we first provide an account of the Brumadinho ecological disaster that occurred in Brazil on January 25th, 2019. Second, we provide a critical review of more than 100 event studies. These papers cover a diverse set of events, such as industrial accidents, public disclosure programs, legal actions following environmental violations, changes in environmental regulation, environmental news, and corporate initiatives. This review makes four contributions. First is the synthesis of a large strand of literature in a structured setting, so as to be readily handled by both experts and non-experts. Second is the observation that stock market penalties in the event of environmental concerns are likely to be quite low: on average there is a (temporary) drop in the excess stock market return to events that are harmful to the environment of about 2% and the median is −0.6%. Third is to highlight the limits of CSR as a business strategy towards a sustainable society. Fourth is to provide an open access bibliographic database.

ІННОВАЦІЙНА ПЛАТФОРМА ПАРАДИГМИ ЕНЕРГООЩАДНОГО ДЕВЕЛОПМЕНТУ: СУЧАСНІ ТРЕНДИ ТА ІМПЕРАТИВИ РЕАЛІЗАЦІЇ В УКРАЇНІ

Значний рівень енергозалежності та енергомісткості будівельного комплексу України потребує розробки ефективної інтердисциплінарної концепції енергоощадного девелопменту, що надасть змогу реалізувати інвестиційно-будівельні проекти на платформі енергозбереження. Концепцію розроблено на основі синкретизму: «Environmental Economics», «Green Lease», «Urban economy», «Surveying», «Passive House». Одним з новітніх інструментів енергоощадного девелопменту запропоновано використання Buildings Industry Transportation Electricity Scenarios (BITES), що базується на сценаріях аналізу зміни попиту та пропозиції енергоресурсів реального сектору економіки, а також оцінюванні обсягів викидів діоксиду вуглецю виробництвами. Враховуючі сучасні тренди енергозбереження в будівельному комплексі, запропоновано імплементувати в практику управління інвестиційно-будівельних проектів поняття «енергоощадний девелопмент» та визначити його як систему реалізації комплексу заходів економічного, організаційного, технічного, технологічного, правового, екологічного та соціального характеру, спрямованих на зниження рівня витрат енергоресурсів будівлею на основі впровадження енергоефективних технологій та управлінських практик, а також поліпшення організаційно-управлінської сфери, оптимізації бізнес-процесів та взаємодії ланок всередині виробничого ланцюжка. Запропоновано теоретичні засади інтердисциплінарної концепції енергоощадного девелопменту будівельного комплексу, де визначено параметричні характеристики та функціональні ознаки, що є основою для розробки стратегічного механізму її реалізації на всіх рівнях економічної системи з метою зниження енергозалежності нашої держави. Результати дослідження можуть бути впроваджені на всіх рівнях економічної системи, оскільки проблематика підвищення рівня енергоефективності є актуальною. Розроблена інтердисциплінарна концепція енергоощадного девелопменту будівельного комплексу враховує специфіку розвитку ринку будівельного сектору та світові тенденції, що відображені в новітніх концепціях: «Environmental Economics», «Green Lease», «Urban economy», «Surveying», «Passive House».