Environment and Economic Development

Flashcards covering core concepts, national environmental accounting formulas, and socio-economic dynamics of climate change from Lecture 10.1.

Sustainable Development

Development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the wellbeing of future generations.

Environmental Capital

Natural resources treated as a stock of capital where current investments yield future payoffs; while substitutable for other capital forms in the short run, it ultimately serves as a complement.

Net National Income ($NNI$)

A standard national accounting measure defined as Gross National Income minus the depreciation of manufactured capital assets: $NNI = GNI - D_m$.

Sustainable Net National Income ($NNI^*$)

An environmental accounting metric that accounts for natural resource degradation: $NNI^* = GNI - D_m - D_n$, where $D_n$ represents the depreciation of environmental or natural capital.

Expansive Sustainable Net National Income ($NNI^{**}$)

A comprehensive measure of sustainable national income calculated as $NNI^{**} = GNI - D_m - D_n - R - A$, which deducts restoration expenditures ($R$) and averting expenditures ($A$).

Restoration Expenditure ($R$)

The expenditure required to restore degraded environmental capital back to an acceptable state; included within $GNI$, $NNI$, and $NNI^*$, but subtracted to determine $NNI^{**}$.

Averting Expenditure ($A$)

The expenditure required to prevent or avert the destruction of environmental capital; included within $GNI$, $NNI$, and $NNI^*$, but deducted from $NNI^{**}$.

The Poor as Victims of Environmental Degradation

The circumstance where impoverished individuals are forced to live on cheaper, degraded, and low-productivity land, endure higher exposure to pollution, and lack the political clout to demand environmental protection.

The Poor as Agents of Environmental Degradation

The dynamic wherein impoverished populations degrade their environment due to immediate survival pressures, shorter time horizons, insecure land tenure, and high fertility rates.

Pro-Poor Governance

The genuine empowerment and inclusion of impoverished communities in managing local natural resource commons to prevent corruption, unauthorized exploitation, and spontaneous privatization.

Biomass Fuels

Abundant, renewable organic fuel sources that, when burned indoors for cooking, produce toxic indoor air pollutants such as particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, harming respiratory health and prenatal development.

Sixth IPCC Report (2023)

The climate assessment finding that between $3.3\text{ to }3.6\text{ billion}$ people live in contexts highly vulnerable to climate change, with severe adverse impacts concentrated among low-income households and developing nations.

Desertification Vulnerability Map

A global geographic assessment produced by the US Department of Agriculture in 1998 classifying dryland areas into Low, Moderate, High, and Very High risk of severe land degradation.

Climate Change Mitigation Strategies

Policy measures designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as instituting carbon taxes, establishing emissions caps, and subsidizing clean technologies.

Autonomous Adaptation

Self-directed actions taken independently by individuals, families, and communities to cope with climate shocks, including changing crop varieties, diversifying livelihoods, or migrating.

Adaptation-Induced Conflict

Resource conflicts that arise when communities coping with environmental stress encroach on neighbors' grazing lands, over-extract shared groundwater, or migrate into previously settled territories.