Athens Center of Ekistics

International environmental problems — a taxonomy

Author(s): Clifford S. Russell and Hans H. Landsberg
Source: Ekistics, Vol. 33, No. 198, ENERGY RESOURCES, HUMAN COMFORT AND THE
ENVIRONMENT (MAY 1972), pp. 394-399
Published by: Athens Center of Ekistics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/43619265
Accessed: 07-10-2016 07:06 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Athens Center of Ekistics is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ekistics

This content downloaded from 213.55.95.134 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 07:06:34 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 International environmental
problems - a taxonomy

Clifford S. Russell
and Hans H. Landsberg

tions and mechanisms, have played a role. For ex-

The last few years have seen an explosion of interest
in environmental problems among citizens of the ample,
de- the growing pollution of the Baltic Sea involves
veloped countries, both East and West. Most ofeight this countries, three of which are in the Soviet orbit,
interest has focused on domestic situations and on and one of which (East Germany) has a sufficiently
possible changes in domestic policies designed to undefined international status to make any internation-
provide remedies. Increasingly, however, the focus al agreement difficult, at best, to achieve.1
has widened to embrace environmental concerns that To lay the basis for more successful discussion, this
transcend national borders. article suggests a first cut at a taxonomy of internation-
The growth of interest and enthusiasm, however, al environmental problems and solutions. We take the
is not matched by accomplishments. point of view of the social scientist, since that view is
A major reason for the lack of communication mosthaslikely to speak directly to the concerns of those
been the general failure to look beyond the label, who must ultimately do the discussing and deciding,
"international environmental problems," to the dis- but the categories we suggest are based on charac-
parate elements it covers and to limit, in advance, the teristics of the physical world.
number of such elements that can be discussed at any
one time and in any given group. A second reason
may be that environmentalists have sometimes couch-
A taxonomy of problems
ed their arguments in terms that impugn the morality
and intelligence of the parties concerned, thus guaran- International environment problems may profitably be
teeing defensive, hostile reactions. divided into two broad categories, depending on the
A third reason may be that management of inter- nature and scope of the international linkages in-
national environmental problems is most often thought volved: physical-linkage effects and social-linkage
of in terms of "police actions" and regulatory authori- effects. The first may be divided again into global and
ties rather than as a component of growth and develop- regional effects, and the second into pecuniary and
ment. It should be realized that this component of nonpecuniary effects.
growth and development, neglected by the now de- Global problems are those problems that physically
veloped countries (and being paid for dearly by them),involve all or nearly all nations of the world, either as
can still be built into the development of emerging contributing parties (emitters) or damaged parties (re-
countries, probably with long-lasting benefits. Finally, ceptors) or both. Some of the most widely discussed
political problems, in terms of a lack of new institu-environmental issues fall into this category. For ex-

COMMUNITY SCALE i ii iii I II III IV V ļ VI VII j VIII IX X Xi j XII

Ī 2 3 4 5 6 7 iT~ļ" 9 10 II 13 Ū ĪT~
DOO
0 o 2 z ^ z =
EKISTIC SE 2 5 2 O
UN,IS z z Õ|o I S I § S li i
z|~|3||;Iģiz5ižzl I
[

MAN
Mr. Russell is a research associate in the Quality of the En-
S z
SOCIETY ¿ *
vironment Program and Mr. Landsberg is director of the Ap-
^ SH
j

praisals Program at Resources for the Future, Inc., Washing-

NETWORKS * •
ton, D.C. 20036. This article is abstracted from Science, Vol.
SYNTHESIS
172, 25 June 1971, pp. 1307-14.

394 Ekistics 198, May 1972

This content downloaded from 213.55.95.134 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 07:06:34 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ample, since World War II, persistent pesticides have The list of global environmental problems, which,
been used all over the world in programs to control prior to the nuclear test ban treaty, also included
disease vectors and agricultural pests. The residues worldwide transport of radionuclides, may become
directly affect animal life and potentially affect human longer as our ability to measure trace elements and
life, not only in the country in which a specific appli- track their. movements increases and we are alerted
cation is made, but also through the actions of wind, to interdependencies as yet unseen. But for the mo-
water, and living carriers, even in regions remote from ment, the issues listed appear to constitute the major,
the point of origin. Notice that it is the combination of truly global phenomena.
persistence and mobility that makes the pesticide
problem a global one. If any significant user remains
outside a control agreement and continues application
Regional problems
of pesticides, the impact on everyone may still be felt. Regional problems result from physical, including bio-
Even if they were applied by virtually every nation, logical, linkages between two or more nations, with
highly toxic pesticides that were used in small quan- little or no spillover to the world at large because of
tities and that broke down quickly to inert residual the particular combinations of relatively low persis-
chemicals might not constitute an international prob- tency of pollutants and relatively limited scope of the
lem. Each nation could manage its own environmentalnatural systems involved in transporting them. Re-
quality problem by enacting its own laws: It would gional problems often resemble the domestic environ-
not be dependent for effectiveness on simultaneous mental quality issues now facing most developed na-
action by all other user nations. tions. That is, because geographic proximity frequent-
Two familiar examples of global problems, trte ba- ly permits identification of "upstream" and "down-
lance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the stream" countries, the assignment of costs of control
particulate content of the stratosphere, are closely and the benefits from damages avoided presents no
related to man's burning of fossil fuels, and both tenddifficulty, even if the estimation of damages avoided
to affect the earth's temperature.2 Here again, the may, in principle, be impossible in many cases. Many
essential elements of the problem are persistence in of the same analytical techniques developed for deal-
the atmosphere (for carbon dioxide, the extended time ing with domestic quality issues are directly applicable
scale of the carbon cycle and its components) and the to regional situations. Examples of such situations are
global span of the physical systems involved. Carbon most common in the highly industrialized parts of the
dioxide is relatively stable, and the molecules are not world: their natural systems are subject to the most
removed from the atmosphere very rapidly. The very stress, both in quantity and variety of pollution dis-
small particulates do not settle out rapidly, but tend charges; agriculture tends to be more intensive, with
to remain in suspension in the stratosphere over long the attendant use of fertilizers and pesticides; "con-
periods. Thus global agreement will eventually be ventional" pollutants associated with lack of sanitary
needed to assure a long-term solution. However, since facilities (toilets, sewers, waste disposal, and so on)
the sources of fossil-fuel emissions are highly con- are at a low level, thus giving greater visability to the
centrated now in the developed countries (North A- pollutants associated with high technology (deter-
merica, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan), gents, scrapped automobiles, carbon monoxide, and
an agreement on limitations among this group would so on); and incomes are high enough to permit people
probably result in a solution good for several decades to concern themselves with damages to esthetic va-
at least.3 lues and recreational opportunities.
Carbon monoxide and larger particulates are also There is no lack of examples of regional problems of
produced in great quantities in some forms of fossil- the upstream-downstream variety. The Rhine serves
fuel combustion and cause specific environmental France and Germany as a sewer, but it serves the
problems. Carbon monoxide, however, is not stable; Netherlands as a part of its water supply. Acid rainfall
it does not survive long in that form in the air and is over not western Sweden and eastern Norway has been
a problem at some distance from the source. Similar- attributed by some scientists to sulfur oxide emissions
ly, larger particulates tend to settle out relatively quick-originating in industrial operations in Germany's Ruhr
ly after emission. Thus, even though these products and England's Midlands.4 As a result, trout fishing in
of combustion are as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide southern Norway is threatened, and there is a sus-
and the very small particulates, they create almost picion that the growth of trees is being slowed down.
entirely international or local difficulties. In other cases, because of the natural system in-
A fourth example of a global environmental problemvolved, all parties become both emitters and receptors.
is the dumping or spillage of oil on the high seas. Here, This is true, for example, of the Baltic Sea and of Lake
a look at the registry of the world tanker fleet makes Erie. Countries around the Baltic are concerned, a-
it clear that relatively few nations are emitters. Through bove all, about oil transportation and mercury pollu-
its effects on marine life, however, the dumping affects tion from pulp mills. The narrow link with the North
the much larger group of nations that engage in ocean Sea makes much of the Baltic practically an inland sea
fishing (or that, by a slightly more remote linkage, de- body, and the results of a major oil spill could bring
pend on another nation's catch). great harm to any or all of the eight countries involved.

Ekistics 198, May 1972 395

This content downloaded from 213.55.95.134 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 07:06:34 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Other cases involve despoliation rather than pollu- has probably prevented it from becoming an inter-
tion in the conventional sense, but still present the national issue.11
upstream-downstream pattern of damage. Thus, Eu- Many countries, particularly the developing nations,
ropean conservationists are concerned about the ef-have been criticized for failing to take effective action
fects that the Italian practice of netting will have onto protect animal species that are valued by conser-
migratory bird populations. Large numbers of birds vationists around the world. Perhaps the most widely
that winter in Africa and summer in the north of Europeknown examples are the African cats, especially the
are trapped each year as they migrate up the Italian leopard, which are endangered by poachers, and the
peninsula.5 Finally, there are the major environmental Ceylonese elephant, threatened by the large-scale
alterations that involve neither pollution nor despoli- clearing of forests for agriculture.
ation. A case in point is the Aswan Dam. By cutting It is worth noting that motives are of the highest
the flow of silt and organic debris in the Nile, it ap- character in both camps; and, as is always the Case
pears to have adversely affected the eastern Mediter- when neither side is villainous, the problem appears
ranean sardine fishery6 (apart from other consequen- in its purest and most difficult to solve form.
ces that are purely domestic at this time). This is equally true of yet another variety of non-
Although regional and global problems have many pecuniary interaction - international altruism, in
similarities, it is useful to distinguish between them in which citizens of one nation endeavor to help citizens
order to emphasize that not every international en- of another nation avoid mistakes in dealing with the
vironmental problem need - or should - be grist for environment. For example, agricultural experts in the
the mill of the United Nations. It may, in fact, be help- West may be anxious to help African nations avoid
ful in seeking a solution to involve only the smallest exhaustion and erosion of laterite soils. This type of
possible group of nations - generally those directly interaction will only lead to problems if the country to
interested7. This is not, however, to suggest that the be assisted does not agree that the proposal is in its
distinction between the two classes will always be best interests, or if the outside altruists become too
clear. Realistically, one must expect that some large- insistent or paternalistic.
scale regional problems will be most conveniently This situation is apt to arise, above all, in large-
dealt with as global issues, while the interests of a veryscale, agriculture-oriented engineering works. As an
few powerful nations may so dominate a global prob- example, consider the controversy over the eventual
lem that its solution rests, at least initially, entirely benefits of the Aswan High Dam. Leaving aside the
with them.8 question - often hard to judge - of whether or not
some of the effects were or could reasonably have
been anticipated, it is useful to distinguish between
adverse effects that diminish the chances of success
Social-linkage effect of the primary project objectives, and those that ad-
Social-linkage effect is the term we use to refer to a versely affect some other environmental facet.
second class of international environmental problems In the first instance, decreased soil fertility or in-
in which no physical linkages exist but in which, none- creased salinity, for example, if indeed resulting from
theless, the policies of one national government im- the changed characteristics of the river, would directly
pinge directly on the well-being of citizens of one ordiminish the project's objective - that is, higher agri-
more other nations. This may occur through establish- cultural production. Provided there was no dispute
ed economic relationships between nations (that is, on the scientific findings, it would be a straightforward
trade and investment, including foreign aid), or in a computation to evaluate the size of the loss in dollars
way that is not, in the first instance, pecuniary. We and cents. There would be no room for dispute over
deal with the second class first and call it, for want of the consequences. By contrast, the spread of schis-
a better term, nonpecuniary linkage. tosomiasis, while also damaging to the country, could
A classic case of nonpecuniary linkage is that of one not, in the same sense, be calculated as a direct offset
country's possessing unique natural or historical giftsto agricultural production. Outsiders might view it as
that citizens of other nations value as part of the hu- part of an ecological horror story and consider it a
man cultural and natural heritage.9 Thus, for example, serious offset to the value of the project as a whole,
Uganda's plan to develop a hydroelectric scheme that but the national government, given the already very
would involve cutting by 90 percent the flow through wide diffusion of the disease in rural Egypt, might view
Murchison Falls (a very narrow gorge on the Upper it less severely. Indeed, it might even consider that
White Nile) has aroused considerable ire among con- increased output and income might, in the long run,
servationists, particularly those in Europe.10 The filling provide a better basis for a successful battle against
of Lake Nasser, behind the Aswan High Dam, stimu- the disease anywhere.
lated an international effort to rescue a number of Weighing of environmental effects is, then, unlikely
tombs, temples, and statues erected along that tostretch
lead to controversy in the first instance (direct re-
of the river by early Egyptian civilizations. Similarly, lation to project objective) but apt to do so in the se-
the Italian government's care of remnants of antiquity cond (adverse side effects related only tenuously, if
has postponed the completion of Rome's subway, at all,
butto project objective).

396 Ekistics 198, May 1972

This content downloaded from 213.55.95.134 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 07:06:34 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Divergences of judgment, as described above, some- The emergence of so-called "pollution havens" is
times leading to the attempt to impose some kind of not a theoretical consideration. For example, air pol-
sanctions on another country, are not new. Boycotts, lution standards have led to reductions in copper
embargoes, and other measures have been used in the smelting operations in Arizona, Texas, Montana, and
past to express disapproval of a country's behavior Washington, and to an increase in shipments of ore to
and force it to comply with more acceptable standards. smelters in West Germany, Canada, and Japan. Japan
What is new here is the issue that gives rise to suchis reported to be shipping ore to Indonesia for smel-
conflict and pressures; and as that issue gains in- ting, though on a very small scale.
creased status among the aspirations of mankind, the These investment effects also appear in the field of
opportunities for intervention, as well as the felt justifi- foreign aid, whether bilateral or multilateral, except
cation, are bound to rise. that here the reverse situation obtains. By U.S. law,
development projects financed by the U.S. government
must now be evaluated for their impact on the environ-
ment. In a parallel development, the World Bank has
Pecuniary effects recently established a program designed to look into
The issue becomes at once more pedestrian and more adverse effects of foreign aid on the environment. From
pointed when we turn to another class of social linkage such evaluations are likely to come actions to prevent
- namely, the pecuniary effects upon country B of or remedy adverse environmental consequences.
specific environmental policies followed in country A. Hence, the cost of a given project is likely to be higher
Here the cases shade into well-known phenomena in than it would otherwise have been, and the host coun-
foreign trade, even though the impetus lies in a newly try will be concerned over the competitive status of
prominent field, the environment. the goods and services that will result from the invest-
Thus, when the United States adopts strict auto- ment. Recipients of aid do not look kindly on the need
mobile emission standards, it raises the costs of Eu- for additional foreign exchange, perhaps foreign tech-
ropean and Japanese auto manufacturers who wish nicians, and further delay in achieving economic in-
to export to this country. Even if the sales price of dependence - all for benefits often little understood
U.S. automobiles should rise in proportion, foreign or valued.
manufacturers will need to make special provisions
for cars sold in the U.S. market. This fact, together
with the likelihood of a proportionately greater finan-
Shared experiences
cial burden on smaller cars, will directly affect the in-
come of the owners and employees of foreign firms, Before abandoning the taxonomy of problems and pro-
and will indirectly affect the income of other citizens ceeding to that of solutions, a comment is needed on a
of those nations. Similarly, limits on the permissible range of matters that are not in any real sense inter-
sulfur content of fuels burned in U.S. and European national environmental problems but that do relate to
cities imply gains for those nations that own low-sulfur them. These are the domestic environmental experi-
fuel reserves, and lost markets or decreased profits ences common to most countries at specific stages in
(because of the costs of desulfurization) for others.their growth.
There are generally two kinds of trade effects: (i) Problems of human settlement, especially those of
loss of export markets as a consequence of the in- large urban areas, come to mind at once. These are
creased costs of maintaining high environmental quali- not new problems. Most of them have merely been
ty in the exporting country, or (ii) the erection of bar- given a new label. Thus Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, Lima,
riers to imports in line with the importing country's Tokyo, and New York all suffer from problems related
policies on environmental quality.12 In the first case, to large concentrations of population. Similar prob-
by forcing domestic manufacturers to absorb the costs lems were noted in London 150 years ago. The inter-
of disposing of production residuals, environmental national aspect lies in the commonality of such prob-
quality legislation will tend to diminish the competitive- lems, not in any interaction. And so it is with matters
ness of domestic products in the world market. This, like soil erosion, poor drainage and resulting salinity
in turn, will lead to a decline in domestic income and (encountered many thousands of years ago in the
employment and to losses in the value of invested plains of the Tigris and Euphrates), deforestation to
capital. The second effect is exemplified by the stan- meet the needs of shipbuilders (Rome), or settlers
dards on auto emissions and sulfur content of fuels. (United States), and a host of other environmental
Here the major losses will arise through action inproblems. the Here the opportunities for international co-
importer's country, which raises the additional specter operation are greatest: in the exchange of information,
of retaliation. technology, and so forth. In short, here is the pos-
In the long run, and in the absence of similar environ- sibility of progress without conflict. But, by the same
mental policies by other governments, the nation token, will it is not here that truly perplexing international
tend to import those goods that involve the greatest issues are found.
environmental costs and to export those involving the A final comment is in order on the above taxonomy.
least. It will, in effect, be exporting pollution.13 A problem in any of the three categories may be - and

Ekistics 198 , May 1972 397

This content downloaded from 213.55.95.134 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 07:06:34 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
usually is - complicated by considerations of the in- fits.14 Solutions may be implemented through the set-
come distribution among the nations (and their citi- ting of standards or through levying charges on con-
zens) involved. These will be particularly obvious andtributing nations, although there are tremendous dif-
important when one or more of the interested parties ficulties in achieving either on an international scale.
are developing nations, but they will also be present Standards, in turn, may be "ambient" (that is, ap-
when only developed nations are concerned. Any plying to the quality of the environment of the receptor
particular solution to an international environmental nations) or "discharge" (applying only to the contri-
problem will involve transfers to real income from na- buting nations). If the mechanisms of the natural
tion to nation. These can generally be identified and world are sufficiently understood, a set of ambient
at least partially quantified at a technical level. But standards, if attainable at all, can be translated into
the desirable direction and size of such income trans- a set of discharge standards.
fers become two variables for consideration in the po- Because demands for "minimum standards" crop
litical process of choosing between alternative out- up so frequently in proposals for safeguarding the en-
comes. vironment, it is well to stress that such minimums are
unlikely to be either unambiguously defined or easily
agreed upon. For example, is the minimum standard
for oil tanker design simply to require hull thickness
A taxonomy of solutions and tank sizes such that at least tankers won't break
up in storms
Solutions to international environmental for their
problems may first 10 years? Or is it to require
be either negotiated or imposed. Ifsome minimum ofthe
negotiated, oil spillage
ap- resulting from a design
propriate group of interested parties will, as we have collision or grounding incident? Who chooses the
suggested, be defined by the scale of the natural sys- design incident and the minimum acceptable spillage?
tem involved, although considerable improvement The point is that minimum standards are not more
may be obtained over a fairly long period through objectively determined than would be optimum stan-
agreements among the smaller group of nations re- dards, and attempting to find and agree on a set of
sponsible for most of the problem. global minimum standards will not make the negotiat-
Solutions may be imposed by a single nation or bying a problems appreciably easier. Any standards that
group of nations that has the required economic - finds immediate and nearly unanimous international
or, in extreme cases, military - power. The impo- support is likely to be quite meaningless.
sition may be directly by force: for example, if one The term "monitoring" also tends to give rise to much
nation invades another to destroy a dam that has confusion, even though it is a prominent activity apt
changed the flow of a river. More likely are impositionsto draw nations together rather than push them apart.
based on the terms of foreign aid (as in the Murchison One kind of monitoring is directed toward exploring
Falls example mentioned above), trade restrictions basic processes and flows in natural systems, setting
(as in auto emission standards for imported vehicles baselines, discovering what needs to be measured,
and the prohibition against importing certain furs), or and assuring compatibility of measurements carried
by internal law operating as a trade restriction (re- on by different nations. Some of this activity is under-
way. A second sense of the term refers to compliance
strictions on the sulfur content of fuels or prohibitions
against the landing of SST's at domestic airports). with set standards and is used in the context of regula-
An imposed solution generally implies that the costs tion. In terms of sequence, the second sense follows
and benefits have been assessed by the imposing the first. A clear distinction between the two meanings
nation from its own point of view. But if negotiation isis helpful for avoiding unnecessary conflict and sus-
to be attempted, the problem of evaluating alternative picion.
solutions becomes extremely difficult. There are the
usual problems of making cost comparisons among
nations with different internal factor-cost structures
Other dimensions of variation
and correcting the nominal rate of exchange to reflect
at least the most serious distortions. In addition, the International environmental problems differ in a num-
ber of dimensions other than the one we have chosen
task of getting any real notion of the benefits will be
all but impossible. Nations' preferences for the for our basic taxonomy. Thus, problems may involve
changes in environmental quality being sought different
will time scales between cause and effect and,
vary in accordance with their stage of economichence, de- a different level of immediacy for the present
velopment, cultural matrix, political structure, and so
population of the world. For example, the buildup of
on. Moreover, these changes are associated not with carbon dioxide is a long-term problem, with the pos-
private goods, where the market provides a test ofsibility
pre- of any detrimental global effects many decades
ferences, but with public goods, which are consumed in the future, if they occur at all. This is apart from the
willy-nilly in equal amounts by all. Therefore, there fact that the environmental effects of fuel combustion
exists an opportunity, if not an incentive, to concealand energy conversion and use generally are as yet
true preferences (for a nation as much as for an in- poorly understood. Thus, any attempts at timing are
dividual) and report falsely on the evaluation of bene-highly speculative.

398 Ekistics 198, May 1972

This content downloaded from 213.55.95.134 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 07:06:34 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 The persistent pesticide problem, on the other hand, Reversibility refers to the possibility of returning the
is much more immediate, with consequences of past world, or one of its subsystems, to the state it was in
appi ications observable today and with every indication before some effect occurred. Thus, sulfur d.ioxide pol-
that the situation will worsen unless action is taken lution in the atmosphere, because of the speed with
now. Related to this dimension of timing is the degree which it i§ scrubbed out, is highly reversible. The con-
of certainty with which an event will or will notstruction occur. of a dam, on the other hand, is generally con-
Generally, the further in advance effects are predicted, sidered to be irreversible. As a matter of fact, many
the more uncertain the outcome; on the other hand, effects are reversible at some cost; irreversibility, in
the continuation of presently observable effects is far everyday parlance, generally means that the cost of
more certain. returning to an earlier state is very high. True irrever-
sibility can be seen in species extinction, destruction
Two other important dimensions of environmental
of scenic areas, and changes in global climate and
problems are magnitude and degree of irreversibility
of effects.
weather (except sub specie aeternitatis).
The dimensions of timing, certainty, magnitude, and
The scope of effects, however, can roughly be com- reversibility of effects all contribute to the broader
pared: For example, a global warming trend is a dimension of urgency. A situation that produces im-
"greater" effect than is the extinction of a species. mediate (thus certain), serious, and irreversible effects
However, this approach is too intuitive, and it becomesis perceived as more urgent than a situation that pro-
progressively less useful as one moves away from ex- duces long-deferred (hence uncertain), minor, or re-
tremes. versible effects.

References
1 . New York Times , 4 October 1970, p. 15. 8. This is true of nuclear disarmament, the extreme case of
2. For a recent comprehensive survey of the subject, see a threat to life on earth. On a less extreme level, G.F.
H.E. Landsberg [Science 170, 1265 (1970)1. Kennan has suggested that global problems are best
3. See W.O. Spofford, "Decision-making under uncertainty; handled by the developed nations in any event - not
The case of carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere," only because they are the principal polluters but because
paper prepared for the Study of Critical Environmental it will be too much to expect the rest of the world to take
Problems. Williams Collecte. J u I v 1970. an interest in a problem that does not loom large at that
4. New York Times, 27 November 1970, p. 64. stage of economic development [Foreign Aff. 48, 401
5. New York Times, 1.9 April 1970, p. 17; ibid, 27 December (April 1970)].
1970, p. 16. This is not a new phenomenon, but a new 9. J.V. Krutilla, C.J. Cicchetti, A.M. Freeman, C.S. Russell,
attitude, arising in the context of general concern for the in Environmental Quality Analysis; Theory and Method in
environment. the Social Sciences, V. Kneese and B.T. Bower, Eds.
6. C.J. George, "The role of the Sadd El Aali [Aswan High(Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, in press).
Dam] in the fisheries of the southeastern Mediterranean," 10. P. Géroudet, Biol. Conserv. 2, 309 (1970).
paper presented at the conference on Ecological Aspects 11. New York Times, 23 January 1971, p. 2. The economics
of International Development, Airlie House, Warrenton, of the preservation of unique historical and geological
Virginia, 9-11 December 1968. See also C. Sterling, sites is discussed in Ref. 9.
Washington Post, 15, 17, 20, and 24 February 1971; Life, 12. Both manifestations are mentioned in Bus. Week, 23
12 February 1971, p. 46. January 1971, p. 72.
7. Recent work in political theory on legislatures, individual 13. R.C. d'Arge, Appendix F, in A.V. Kneese. "The economics
preferences, and social decisions suggests that it is pre- of environmental pollution in the United States," paper
ferable not to have a decision made on an issue by a prepared for a meeting of the Atlantic Council, Washing-
legislature in which few individual legislators have a ton, D.C., 1970.
direct interest in that issue [see E. Haefele, Amer. Econ. 14. P. Böhm, Swed. J. Econ., in press. The fundamental
Rev. 61, 217 (1971)]. An analogy between legislators and papers in the theory of public goods are P.A. Samuelson,
national government representatives in international or- Rev. Econ. Stat. 36, 387 (1954); ibid. 37, 350 (1955); ibid.
ganizations does not seem far-fetched. 40, 332 (1958).

Ekistics 198, May 1972 399

This content downloaded from 213.55.95.134 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 07:06:34 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms