NEW RFF BOOK ADDRESSES ISSUES FUNDAMENTAL TO ENVIRONMENTAL AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Wednesday, February 17, 1999
Contact: Catherine Howard; phone: (202) 328-5115; email: [email protected]
WASHINGTON, DC -- A new book published by Resources for the Future (RFF) provides teachers and students, the public policy community, and interested citizens with short and readable articles on a wide variety of environmental research and policy topics.
The 390-page book, The RFF Reader in Environmental and Resource Management, brings together the best and most-requested essays from the last dozen years of RFF's quarterly publication, Resources. Since its debut in May 1959, Resources has communicated environmental economics research through short, easy-to-understand, well-focused articles written for a lay audience.
Edited by economist Wallace E. Oates of the University of Maryland, the book's purpose, according to Oates, is, "to show how basic economic analysis can help us to understand the causes of environmental degradation and to design policies to protect and improve the environment."
The collection of writings is divided into ten sections: science and environmental policy; benefit-cost analysis; environmental regulation; environmental federalism; resource management; biodiversity; environmental justice; global climate change; sustainable development; and environmental problems in developing and transitional countries.
Forty-three articles comprise the volume, all in their original form from Resources. In some instances, however, readers will find an "update box" where important events, analytical advances, or new empirical findings are noted. Contributing authors also had the opportunity to append suggested further readings to their articles.
Oates writes in the book's introduction, "The central concern of economics is the allocation of scarce resources--in an efficient and equitable manner. It doesn't require much reflection to realize that our environmental resources are scarce. Clean air and water, the diversity of species, and perhaps even a stable global climate are clearly not available in unlimited supply, irrespective of human activities. Perhaps economics has something useful to say about the management of our environment."
Oates further explains that economics offers three important messages about environmental protection: economic analysis makes a compelling case that an unfettered market system will generate excessive pollution; economics is able to provide some guidance for the setting of standards for environmental quality; and economics has some important things to say about the design of the policy instruments used to determine the standards for environmental quality.
Wallace E. Oates is a professor of economics at the University of Maryland and a University Fellow with Resources for the Future. He has written widely on environmental affairs and is the author of The Economics of Environmental Regulation, and co-author, with William Baumol, of The Theory of Environmental Policy.
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JOURNALISTS OR EDUCATORS: To obtain a complimentary copy of The RFF Reader, contact Catherine Howard by phone: (202) 328-5115; or by e-mail: [email protected].
GENERAL PUBLIC: To order a copy of The RFF Reader, contact RFF's customer service office at John Hopkins University Press at (410) 516-6955. (ISBN#0-915707-96-9; 340 pages; $22.95.)
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