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The paper focuses on the question of the extent to which individual preference-based values are suitable in guiding environmental policy and damage assessment decisions. Three criteria for “suitableness” are reviewed: conceptual, moral and legal. Their discussion suggests that: (i) the concept of economic value as applied to environmental resources is a meaningful concept based on the notion of trade-off; (ii) the limitations of the moral foundations of cost-benefit analysis do not invalidate its use as a procedure for guiding environmental decision making; (iii) the input of individual preferences into damage assessment is compatible with the basic foundations of tort law; (iv) using individual preference-based methods provides incentives for efficient levels of due care; (v) determining standing is still very contentious for various categories of users as well as for aggregating non-use values. Overall, the discussion suggests that the use of preference-based approaches in both the policy and legal arenas is warranted provided that they are accurately applied, their limitations are openly acknowledged and they assume an information-providing rather than a determinative role.

A balance between environmental protection and sustainable development of the energy industry is fostered in the majority of nations. China’s economic growth has been rapid in the past few decades, with the unfortunate side effect of environmental pollution and ecological deterioration in the country. In this chapter, we provide a study of Chinese legal rules about civil liability for environmental damages in the light of objectives of sustainable development of the energy industry.

The research approach is based on the Regulatory Impact Assessment.

International funds and private investors, especially those working in FDI, have to cope with the legal framework more or less favorable to investment and innovation deriving from experimentation and development of new energy products and processes. In each jurisdiction, the mechanism of civil liability is crucial in determining such a legal framework.

The real functioning of civil liability as applied by the doctrinal and judicial interpretation has to be taken into account for minimizing the mass damages for the environment and individuals.

Different from other assumptions based on administrative rules or policy issues, the balance between environmental protection and sustainable development is considered in this chapter under a view that emphasizes the role of legal rules from a civil law perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a reflection on the importance of individual environmental protection, which recognizes the right of every citizen to take action to obtain compensation for environmental damage, as a damage to his or her existential condition. One of the most discussed environmental issues in Italy today is the lack of personal protection because the European legislator has provided for a public protection of environmental damage.

Design/methodology/approach based on the analysis of a well-known environmental disaster, the case of ex Ilva, the author shows how in Italy there is a dangerous lack of protection in environmental matters that contrasts with the consideration of the environment as a fundamental constitutional value of Italian and European law and the affirmation of the principle of sustainable development.

Findings the reconstruction of the environment as a common good aimed at realizing the fundamental needs of the person according to the theory of common goods and damage to the environment as an existential damage finds in the pronouncement of the European Court relevant confirmations. As a result of an individual legitimation alternative to the choice of the European legislator to confine the protection in the public sector.

This work will examine recent Italian cases concerning environmental disaster, the case of ex Ilva. This paper is the original work of the author and has not been submitted elsewhere for publication.

The purpose of this paper is to provide estimates of damage cost for several areas of the environment. In particular: to estimate the cost of degradation as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) at the national level; to enhance local capacity in environmental economics, in particular in the valuation of environmental degradation; and to provide an input to inter‐sectoral environmental priority setting.

To achieve the above objectives a framework was developed to estimate the cost of environmental degradation in seven countries in the region, for six categories. Estimates reflect order of magnitude and therefore represent an indication of actual damage costs. A range of estimates was provided to reflect the uncertainty of the results. Damage costs are presented in annual values (in local currencies, in US$ dollars) and as a per cent of GDP. Expressing costs as a share of GDP provides a sense of magnitude and will allow cross‐country comparison.

The damage cost of environmental degradation in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in 2000 is estimated at US$ 9 billion per year, or 2.1‐7.4 per cent of GDP, with a mean estimate of 5.7 per cent of GDP. In addition, the damage cost to the global environment is estimated at 0.5‐1.6 of GDP, with a mean estimate of 0.9 per cent of GDP.

Owing to data constraints, no cost estimates are provided for some impact such as: degradation associated with industrial, hazardous and hospital waste, biodiversity loss, and impact of inadequately treated wastewater, thus calculations often represent lower bound estimates.

This paper is a contribution in a process towards the use of environmental damage cost assessments for priority setting and as an instrument for integrating environmental consideration into economic and social development.

This paper is based on empirical data of the IIUG project “Environment and the National Accounts”. A more extensive and detailed report on this project was recently published by Andreas Ryll and Sabine Wadewitz: “Zur Volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnung des monetären Umweltschutzes 1975–1985”, IIUG rep 87–8, 178 pp.

The authors consider systems that generate damage to environment as they get older and degrade. The purpose of this paper is to develop an optimal condition-based maintenance strategy for such systems in situations where they have a finite operational time requirement. The authors determine simultaneously the optimal number of inspections and the threshold level of environmental damage which minimize the total expected cost over the considered finite time horizon.

The environmental degradation level is monitored through periodic inspections. The authors model the environmental degradation process due to the equipment’s degradation by the Wiener process. A mathematical model and a numerical procedure are developed. Numerical calculations are performed and the influence of the variation of key parameters on the optimal solution is investigated.

Numerical tests indicate that as the cost of the penalty related to the generation of an excess damage to environment increases, inspections should become more frequent and the threshold level should be lowered in order to favor preventive actions reducing the probability to pay the penalty.

Given the complexity of the cost function to be minimized, it is difficult to derive analytically the optimal solution. A numerical procedure is designed to obtain the optimal condition-based maintenance policy. Also, the developed model is based on the assumption that the degradation follows a process with stationary independent increments. This may not be appropriate for all types of degradation processes.

The proposed optimal maintenance policy may be relevant and very useful in the perspective of green operations. In fact, this paper offers to decision-makers a comprehensive approach to implement a green maintenance policy and to rapidly understand the net effect of the maintenance policy with respect to environmental regulation requirements.

The main contribution consists in the modeling and optimization of the condition-based maintenance policy over a finite time horizon. Indeed, existing condition-based maintenance models over an infinite time horizon are not applicable for systems with a finite operational time requirement.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of the industrial sector, renewable energy consumption and nonrenewable energy consumption in Indonesia on the ecological footprint from 1990 to 2020 in the short and long term.

This paper uses vector error correction model (VECM) analysis to examine the relationship in the short and long term. In addition, the impulse response function is used to enable future forecasts up to 2060 of the ecological footprint as a measure of environmental degradation caused by changes or shocks in industrial value-added, renewable energy consumption and nonrenewable energy consumption. Furthermore, forecast error decomposition of variance (FEVD) analysis is carried out to predict the percentage contribution of each variable’s variance to changes in a specific variable. Granger causality testing is used to enhance the analysis outcomes within the framework of VECM.

Using VECM analysis, the speed of adjustment for environmental damage is quite high in the short term, at 246%. This finding suggests that when there is a short-term imbalance in industrial value-added, renewable energy consumption and nonrenewable energy consumption, the ecological footprint experiences a very rapid adjustment, at 246%, to move towards long-term balance. Then, in the long term, the ecological footprint in Indonesia is most influenced by nonrenewable energy consumption. This is also confirmed by the Granger causality test and the results of FEVD, which show that the contribution of nonrenewable energy consumption will be 10.207% in 2060 and will be the main contributor to the ecological footprint in the coming years to achieve net-zero emissions in 2060. In the long run, renewable energy consumption has a negative effect on the ecological footprint, whereas industrial value-added and nonrenewable energy consumption have a positive effect.

For the first time, value added from the industrial sector is being used alongside renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption to measure Indonesia’s ecological footprint. The primary cause of Indonesia’s alarming environmental degradation is the industrial sector, which acts as the driving force behind this issue. Consequently, this contribution is expected to inform the policy implications required to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2060, aligned with the G20 countries’ Bali agreement of 2022.