Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2000c). In fact, the environmental indicators used in the latter appraisal are non-
monetary (DETR, 2000c, pp20-24): there is no attempt to reduce the various con-
sequences of capacity expansion at different sites to the single measurement term.
There are good reasons for the government to be cautious about relying heavily
on monetarization of environmental impacts for aviation and other policy domains.
The main disadvantage of monetarizing non-marketed phenomena for cost-benefit
analysis (CBA) is that such monetarization is not only highly contentious, but is par-
ticularly inappropriate in the case of irreplaceable environmental systems (Daly and
Cobb, 1989). Use of surrogate market values (such as the damage cost approach,
which uses the market cost of repairing environmental damage as an indicator of the
full cost of that damage) may legitimately inform policy. However, neither this nor
monetarized measures of the willingness to pay to avoid or accept damage are appro-
priate for valuation of systems that people cannot live well without. Relative climate
stability is such a system, and the same principle applies to particular levels of local
environmental quality, such as a healthy level of air quality and a quiet environment.
Although the attraction of extended CBA as a decision-making method is under-
stood, it is not a reliable means of policy-making and the method should, at best,
inform not determine policy. A healthy environment should arguably be sought for
its own sake and for the benefits this brings, not on the condition that its monetar-
ized benefits exceed monetarized costs. Environmental policy objectives should argu-
ably continue to be informed by the values of the electorate, environmental science,
technological capability and regulator judgement. While this is imprecise and is sub-
ject to political lobbying, as a variant on the traditional approach to policy-making
it remains preferable to risking further damage by underestimating the value of crit-
ical environmental systems in valuation surveys.
Critical thresholds and environmental targets
Although environmental regulation of individual businesses is not informed simply
by environmental science, knowledge of the environmental and human effects of
different exposure levels typically plays an important role. However, relating climate
change to individual businesses requires that targets are set in a way that avoids
exceeding the critical threshold of the total climate system, not of administratively
determined sections of water, land or air (Upham, 2001). As a result, there is a need
for intra-national political negotiation on meeting national climate change targets
that will facilitate stabilization of global atmospheric CO
2
concentrations at a maxi-
mum of 550 parts per million by volume (ppmv) (RCEP, 2000).
Instead of relying on CBA, governments need to consider the policy instru-
ments referred to in subsequent chapters, particularly those in Chapter 11 for con-
trolling greenhouse gases. The objective should be to meet national environmental
quality standards and international treaty obligations, particularly those made at in
Kyoto in 1997. Thereafter, concerted effort needs to be made to meet the minimum
60 per cent greenhouse gas reduction target of the UK's Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution (RCEP) (2000), relative to the global emissions level of
1990.
This is advocated with awareness of the magnitude of the political task. In the
view of the RCEP, a standing advisory body to the UK government, 'an effective,
