EEPSEA’s 35th Biannual Workshop was held in Hanoi from May 18–20, 2011, and was attended by 49 participants from 12 countries. The four plenary talks are summarized below. The EEPSEA-EAAERE Joint Conference was held from 19–20 May back-to-back with the workshop.
Engendering Economic Analysis
Dr. Donna Doane, a visiting professor from the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, briefly discussed the three main approaches in conducting gender analysis: (a) Women in Development (WID), (b) Gender and Development (GAD) and (c) Women/Gender, Environment and Development (WED/GED).
Dr. Doane explained that the WID framework stressed on women’s equality based on their active contribution to development processes, both through their productive and reproductive roles. The GAD framework went further and pushed for women to be given greater access to resources to enable them to play a more active role in supporting the development process through ways that fitted their needs and capacities. In the WED/GED framework, Dr. Doane said that the focus was on providing men and women with equitable access to natural resources and the benefits derived from them. Dr. Doane stressed that gender analysis was still very much a ‘frontier’ area in environmental and natural resource economics and said she hoped that EEPSEA would pursue research in this area.
Environmental Challenges in the Mekong Region
The second plenary talk was delivered by Dr. Vithet Srinetr, Program Coordinator of the Environment Programme of the Mekong River Commission (MRC). Dr. Srinetr discussed the importance of the Mekong River in supporting agriculture, trade (through inland navigation), tourism, hydropower, and biodiversity. The flow of these services and the integrity of the river ecosystem are, however, under increasing pressure from economic development and population growth. The main challenge comes from the rapid expansion of dams in some countries in the Mekong Region. While dam construction would benefit the countries building the dams, it will negatively affect the countries downstream as well as disrupt the ecological habitats of critical fish species in the Mekong. During the discussion, it became clear that the MRC was being increasingly challenged to resolve such trans-boundary conflicts but had limited power to do so. At best, it could only facilitate discussions on the issue.
Climate Change and Health
Prof. Daigee Shaw from the Chung Hua Institution for Economic Research, Taiwan, stressed that the impact of climate change, especially temperature and rainfall changes, on human health had already manifested itself in various forms. Prof. Shaw highlighted two dominant theories on the relationship between temperature and health; the threshold theory and the adaptation theory, and presented studies that supported or rejected these theories. The threshold theory postulates a linear relationship between temperature and mortality and suggests the existence of a threshold of temperature beyond which the risk of mortality becomes higher. The adaptation theory, on the other hand, stresses that it is the variance in temperature that affects human health. Empirical studies have produced mixed results. In some cases, it is extreme temperature and in others, the variance in temperature that appears to be the critical factor determining the health impacts of climate change.
What Has Environmental Economics Ever Done for the World? From Theory to Policy
Prof. Nancy Olewiler from Simon Fraser University, Canada, began with a brief review of the theoretical contributions of environmental economics. The establishment of environmental agencies like the USEPA and the creation of environmental legislation like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were some of the many examples given by Prof. Olewiler of how environmental economists had added value to public policy decision-making and contributed to saving the planet. Prof. Olewiler opined that the biggest contribution of environmental economics to policy-making came from the shift to market-based instruments in the US and Europe in the 1990s. She highlighted the three core components of environmental economics that marked the discipline’s added value: market failure and the means to achieve social efficiency, the valuation of non-market attributes, and a better understanding of the general relationship between the economy and the environment.