Gordon Hughes

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QUALIDADE DO GASTO PÚBLICO NO BRASIL Meio Ambiente

• Gordon Hughes
• Gordon.Hughes_at_nera.com

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Environmental objectives

• Human health
• air pollution - urban traffic, indoor exposure
• water sanitation - infant mortality
• toxic chemicals, etc
• Amenity
• water quality - beaches, rivers - recreation
• protection of biodiversity or forests
• Productivity
• reduction in operating costs of
  industries/utilities
• avoidance of damage to infrastructure -
  corrosion, storms, floods

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Environmental health damage (NL)
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Environmental valuation

• Measuring diverse environmental benefits
• how do we compare 10 km of clean beaches with 100
  cases of respiratory disease?
• weights based on willingness to pay (WTP) for
  different environmental goods
• money as a unit of measure, not a source of value
• Trade-offs implicit in current policies
• huge differences in cost per life saved for
  environmental regulations based on health effects
• public investments in safety vs costs imposed on
  individuals or industries
• environmental spending on amenity vs other
  expenditures on quality of life

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Benefits of environmental measures
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Methods of valuation
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Whose environmental spending?

• Public expenditures vs regulatory expenditures
• budgetary constraints create strong incentives to
  impose costs on private entities
• sometimes justified by the Polluter Pays
  Principle
• but rarely evaluated properly - requirement for
  regulatory cost-benefit analysis
• PPP implies economic instruments rather than
  regulations
• use of fees/taxes to finance clean-up
  expenditures - but what are the incentives?
• Relationships within (quasi-)Federal systems
• unfunded mandates - US clean water program
• uniform standards vs cost-effective interventions

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Analysing environmental costs

• What do environmental policies really cost?
• public spending, licensing and environmental
  regulations, opportunity costs, etc
• who bear these costs - by income group,
  geography, sector?
• What are the benefits of policies?
• by program, medium (air / water / waste), income
  group, geography
• how sensitive are the benefit estimates to
  difference social values?
• Cost-benefit analysis by objective/program

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Results for the USA Europe

• Air quality
• most studies have concluded that benefits of
  major US programs have greatly exceeded the costs
• largely because of health benefits, but also
  visibility
• much dispute about acid rain program
• Water quality
• recreational benefits are usually less than the
  costs of river clean-up programs
• benefits of improving bathing beaches gt costs,
  especially in tourist areas
• Climate change
• key issue is the global distribution of benefits
  costs