Chapter 10 Flashcards
(34 cards)
The ability of a country to absorb foreign private or public financial assistance (to use the funds in a productive manner); also, the capacity of an ecosystem to assimilate potential pollutants - for example, the forests of the earth have a limited capacity to absorb additional CO2 produced as a byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels.
Absorptive capacity
The variety of life forms within an ecosystem
Biodiversity
Technologies that by design produce less waste and use resources more efficiently.
Clean technologies
Any combustible organic matter that may be used as fuel, such as firewood, dung, or agricultural residues.
Biomass fuels
Long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Such shifts can be natural, due to changes in the sun’s activity or large volcanic eruptions.
Climate change
Excess utility over price derived by consumers because of negative sloping demand curve; measured as triangular area under demand curve above price line.
Consumer surplus
A resource that is publicly owned and allocated under a system of unrestricted access.
Common property resource
A mechanism used by indebted LDCs to reduce the real value of external debt by exchanging equity in domestic companies (stocks) or fixed-interest obligations of the government (bonds) for private foreign debt at large discounts, for example, replacing $100 million of debt obligations with $50 million of equity claims against domestic real assets.
Debt-for-equity swap
The exchange of foreign debt held by an organization for a larger quantity of domestic debt that is used to finance the preservation of a natural resource or environment in the debtor country.
Debt-for-nature swap
The clearing of forested land. Deforestation is generally divided into two broad categories, tropical
deforestation, which involves the clearing of dense rain forests
in regions with high levels of precipitation, usually for agricultural purposes, and dry forest clearing, which occurs in areas with less precipitation, where most trees are cut for firewood.
Deforestation
The transformation of a region into dry barren land with little or no capacity to sustain life without an artificial source of water. Desertification frequently involves the loss of topsoil, which leads to the permanent loss of cultivability.
Desertification
The incorporation of
environmental benefits and costs into the quantitative analysis of
economic activities.
Environmental Accounting
The assets that directly relate to the environment - forests, soil quality
and rangeland.
Environmental capital
hypothesis that proposes an
inverted U-shaped relationship between pollution levels and per
capita income. It suggests that as a country develops and its
income rises, pollution initially increases, but then declines
beyond a certain income threshold.
Environmental Kuznets Curve
Situation in which people secure benefits that someone else pays for.
Free-rider problem
Any benefit or cost borne by an individual that is a no compensation. Externalities are internalized when adjustments are made such that each individual bears all the costs and benefits of his or her actions.
Externality
Goods (and bads) whose benefits (or costs) reach across national borders, generations, and
population groups. Ozone depletion and greenhouse gas
emissions are examples.
Global public good
Theory that world climate is slowly warming as a result of both MDC and LDC industrial and agricultural
activities.
Global warming
Gases that trap heat within the earth’s atmosphere and can thus contribute to global warming
Greenhouse gases
Process whereby external environmental costs are borne by the producers or consumers who generate them, usually through the imposition of pollution or consumption taxes.
Internalization
The addition to total cost incurred by the producer as a result of varying output by one more unit.
Marginal Cost
The benefit derived from the last unit of a good minus its cost.
Marginal net benefit
Tax levied on quantity of pollutants released into the physical environment.
Pollution tax
The discounted value at the present time of a sum of money to be received in the future.
Present value
