We have experienced an increasing use of both economic and political instruments in attempts to induce households to contribute to sustainable development. However, there is a lack of understanding of how these tools interplay with the motives held by households and the daily constraints they face. The purpose of this paper is to give some anecdotal evidence on how moral motives may affect different policies in force, and to give some insights on how to proceed in designing policy instruments compatible with sustainable household behaviour. I conclude that some households have learned to appreciate the reward of economic incentives, but that we also need to acknowledge that environmental morale may affect the support of such economic instruments.

Bauxite mining is considered to be one of the most significant reasons behind deforestation in Jamaica. During the last decades, large areas of forest have been cleared on the island due to open pit mining for bauxite. Because private landowners own the bauxite land, the operating mining companies are in many cases forced to bargain with the private landowners to obtain access to the desired land. Several economic theories present solutions to the problem of sustainable resource use. The purpose of this paper is to examine if the Coase theorem can be applied to analyze if the deforestation caused by bauxite mining in Jamaica can be amended towards optimal resource management. The paper concludes that there exist no practical obstacles for bargaining to take place. However, since the market for bauxite mining is not characterized by perfect competition, an efficient allocation of the Jamaican forests according to the Coase theorem is not achieved. Yet we find that the antiquated Coase theorem can help us gain knowledge into some fundamental aspects of the prevailing market conditions surrounding Jamaican bauxite mining.

Review of Barkin, J Samuel and George E. Shamaugh (eds.) (1999) Anarchy and the environment. Albany, New York, State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-4183-0

The potential to damage the environment is the major motive to treat solid wastes. One main group of pollutants comprises metals such as cadmium, chromium, copper, mercury, nickel, lead, and zinc. This paper is a synthesis of five elsewhere published investigations focusing on the possibilities and limits to control the flux of metals from solid wastes using anaerobic processes. In particular, the treatment of sulfide forming elements and hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) were studied at both bench-, pilot-, and full-scale. It was found that two-step processes have the potential to significantly improve the quality of solid wastes. In a first step, metals were leached and transferred to the process water. In a second step, the metal-enriched process water was treated under methanogenic conditions facilitating metal trapping through precipitation as sulfides or hydroxides. Anaerobic hydrometallurgy is judged to be a promising technique that has the potential to gain wide acceptance in the treatment of metal-containing solid wastes from a wide variety of sources.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the European market for bentonite, a clay mineral with a wide range of industrial applications. The paper outlines some of the main uses of bentonite to gain a context in which the values of bentonite as an economic mineral can be understood. In addition, the paper examines the global geography of bentonite production and briefly addresses the world market and directions of trade. We focus on the recent years and attempt to shed light on where bentonite is produced, the direction of major trade flows and the main drivers of the European market.

The main question put forward in the paper is: Will Russia become a major competitor in the European iron ore market? The main purpose is to put the former world's largest producer of iron ore, Russia, back on the "iron ore map." Using production and trade figures for 1990 and 1995 and mine-specific data on capacity, production, products, geographic position and foreign trade for every mine in Russia, it is generally concluded that while some facts favor Russia, others do not. The long distances between the mines and foreign customers, with the accompanying freight costs, certainly do not favor Russia. Among those that do is the fact that ore at the seven exporting mines is of high quality magnetite with an iron content generally well above 60%. As magnetite ore is cheaper to pelletize than hematite ore, Russia might possess a still unexplored competitive advantage.

This article examines the economic possibilities for the Swedish pulp and paper industry in general and the kraft pulp industry in particular of increasing the share of internally generated energy by using readily available production residues such as black liquor. It is suggested that the industry's reliance on fossil fuels and purchased electricity has decreased over time, thereby reducing the impact of external energy prices on energy investments. The results suggest that the use of biomass will only increase to the point where the existing capacity to do so is met unless heavy investment subsidies are made available.

In June 2002, the European Court of First Instance (CFI) released its judgment on the Airtours vs. the Commission case. The decision lowered the antitrust hurdles to merger and acquisition activity in Europe. Interest in the case is twofold. It makes the difference between EU and US antitrust law more distinct, and this difference is basically the capability (or lack thereof in the EU case) to handle the negative effects that occur in an oligopoly situation without any coordinated effects. This may have a profound effect on the way markets in antitrust cases are defined in the future. Cases in raw materials and energy markets are explored in some detail. The short-term effect could be an increasing focus on market definition to establish single dominance in more merger cases. The long-term effect of the Airtours decision will probably be that the EU abandons the current merger legislation and instead adopts an "Anglo-Saxon"; view of mergers emphasizing the possible welfare effects.

The paper elaborates on the possible correlations between the electricity prices in two neighbouring regions.The question is of interest since a large part of the public and some politicians feel that the European CO2 emission trading system ought not to affect the hydro- and nuclear-based Swedish electricity market. The analysis builds upon empirical observations and simple econometric testing. Our results highlight some of connections between the Swedish and German electricity prices and we qualitatively discuss these results. Furthermore, we restate the obvious fact that the investment climate in Sweden must improve if the wish is to avoid having coalbased electricity production on the margin.

The overall purpose of this paper is to analyse how power generation technology choices will be affected by climate policy. Special attention is paid to the dissemination of renewable power technologies following climate policy initiatives in Sweden and Eastern Europe. An overall conclusion is that carbon policy will affect new investments in renewable power technologies in both Sweden and Eastern Europe, but it is difficult to provide a comprehensive assessment of the future power generation technology mix. In the Swedish case, it is suggested that in general it is not certain that compliance with the Kyoto commitments implies substantial increases in renewable power sources. If, therefore, renewable power sources are favoured for reasons beyond climate policy, additional policy instruments will be needed. In the Eastern European case it is indicated that although it is clear that the Eastern European countries are not homogeneous in terms of CO2 abatement potential and costs, no single country emerges as particularly low-cost. This may have important implications for future JI/CDM activities. For instance, risk factors such as policy uncertainty and institutional obstacles may become crucial in determining the future allocation of JI/CDM projects across the region.

The energy sector has since long been a popular playground for political interventions. In market oriented economies like the OECD countries, such policy actions are warranted only to rectify existing market failures. The present paper analyzes the goals and instruments of energy policy and finds that actual policy action has had a much wider reach than can be motivated by the rational pursuit of social utility. The politicians have assumed that they possess better foresight, and behave more rationally than market actors. In many cases the policies have had a hidden agenda to promote small interest groups rather than to contribute to the utility of society at large. The OECD economies would have been better off with much less ambitious energy policy efforts.

During the 1980s and 1990s a number of studies have addressed the problem of valuing the externalities arising from electricity production. The main objective of these studies has been to guide decision-making with respect to future fuel choices. However, the results have been ambiguous, especially with respect to the size of externality estimates. These sometimes differ by several orders of magnitude, and in this sense previous studies seem to provide poor guidance for policy-makers. The purpose of this article is to assess the usefulness of the externality studies carried out in the context of regulatory decision-making. The analysis carried out shows that likely reasons for the discrepancy between externality estimates include differences in methodological approach, scope, assumptions, and thoroughness among studies. However, the analysis cannot systematically explain all the variability in results. Hence, it must be concluded that the electricity externality studies carried out so far may only be of limited relevance for policy-makers

This paper provides an introduction and an overview to this special issue of Minerals and Energy which focuses on the use of environmental valuation methods in the mining industry. It does this by, first of all, presenting some of the most important environmental impacts resulting from mining and minerals processing activities. Basic insights from the environmental economics literature, which provides the theoretical foundation for the most commonly used valuation techniques, are discussed. Against this background, we end the paper by briefly reviewing the remaining contributions to this special issue. We conclude by emphasizing that the views on the usefulness of most valuation methods are very diverse. This suggests that major research efforts that attempt to improve existing methods as well as develop new, perhaps multi-disciplinary, ones should be expected and indeed encouraged.

This comment provides some reflections on the oil depletion controversy in the recent issue of Minerals & Energy. Scientific controversies are generally a good thing as they fuel fruitful deliberations within the scientific community, but in this particular case the controversy has been far from fruitful. This is partly due to a lack of interest among some of the participants to attempt to understand and even discuss the approach and the standpoints of the opponents, not the least among the Natural Scientists represented by Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell. Economic analysis, which clearly is under attack in the latter's article, can clearly not replace natural science but it is essential for understanding resource depletion. This comment provides a number of examples illustrating: (a) why this is the case; and (b) that Aleklett and Campbell often misinterpret the essence of economic analysis. Finally, the comment briefly addresses an important moral and ethical issue that was not touched upon in the above depletion controversy, namely that of discounting. It is concluded that given the importance of natural resource extraction in the world economy, research in the field has to find a bridge between the natural and social sciences and intergenerational problems have to be analyzed in more detail than has been the case so far. If this cannot be achieved resource depletion research will be of very little value for policy makers.

The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the market for steel scrap (or ferrous scrap) for steelmaking. A simple theoretical discussion of scrap markets is outlined, and constitutes the basis for a discussion of consumption and supply behaviour, international trade patterns and the development of scrap prices over time and across world regions. The geographical scope is essentially worldwide, but we pay particular attention to market behaviour and outcomes in Europe and the USA. In pursuing the above the paper also reviews past research efforts on steel scrap markets, and identifies topics for future economic research in the field. We emphasize that improved knowledge about scrap markets ought to provide important lessons for public policy measures aimed at further increasing steel recycling rates as well as for environmental impact assessment studies.

Municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) residues display a potential for reuse in construction. A risk of harmful emissions to the environment and negative effects on the performance of residues during utilization exist because of their composition. Extraction and stabilization pre-treatment methods are available to decrease harmful leaching from utilized MSWI residues. Extraction procedures remove pollutants in a liquid phase that has to be handled as waste water.