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Comparing environmental risks: tools for setting government priorities J. Clarence Davies 0 Resenhas Resources for the Future, 1996 - 157 páginas The budgetary squeeze occurring at all levels of government in the 1990s has made it obvious that the nation cannot address every existing and prospective environmental problem. Criticism of current programs focuses especially on the low levels of risk posed by many of the problems being subjected to regulation while more important problems may go unaddressed. Comparative risk assessment is increasingly advanced as the appropriate means for setting realistic priorities. Comparing Environmental Risks: Tools for Setting Government Priorities illuminates the increased efforts of the executive branch of the federal government to use risk assessment in its decisionmaking. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pioneered the use of comparative risk assessment (CRA) in its programs and routinely uses risk assessments of individual pollutants, the agency has not made use of CRA throughout the full range of its activities. Nor has any other federal agency. The President's Office of Science and Technology Policy has sought the assistance of Resources for the Future in formulating methods to make broader use of CRA throughout the executive branch. RFF's Center for Risk Management commissioned background papers from leading experts on CRA for presentation at a meeting with federal regulatory officials in February 1994. Comparing Environmental Risks presents the papers of this workshop, revised to include input from the meeting. The book outlines the evolution of CRA and its surrounding controversy, summarizes lessons learned from past efforts at implementation, and identifies new ways for using CRA. Representing the state of the art on programmatic CRA, the methodological analyses andpractical recommendations contained in Comparing Environmental Risks will be invaluable to all public officials and other analysts faced with

           Volume 85    Issue One: November 2010   The French Revision of Prescription: A Model for Louisiana?, Benjamin West Janke & François-Xavier Licari (Lead Article)      The Rome II Regulation: A Comparative Perspective on Federalizing Choice of Law, Clay H. Kaminsky   Why the Beginning Should Be the End: The Argument for Exempting Post-Complaint Materials from Rule 26(b)(5)(A)'s Privilege-Log Requirement, Douglas C. Rennie   Essay: The Quran and the Constitution, L. Ali Khan   Book Review: Saving Civil Justice: Judging Civil Justice by Hazel Genn, Elizabeth G. Thornburg   Comment, Foolish Revenge or Shrewd Regulation? Financial Industry Tax Law Reforms Proposed in the Wake of the Financial Crisis, Richard T. Page    Comment, Breathing Life Into the "Dead Zone": Can the Federal Common Law of Nuisance Be Used to Control Nonpoint Source Water Pollution?, Endre Szalay        Issue Two: November 2010   "Sports Law": Implications for the Development of International, Comparative, and National Law and Global Dispute Resolution, Matthew J. Mitten & Hayden Opie (Lead Article)    A Uniform Framework for Patent Eligibility, Efthimios Parasidis    Tracing the Origins of "Fairly Traceable": The Black Hole of Private Climate Change Litigation, Mary Kathryn Nagle    Convergence in Contort, Melissa T. Lonegrass    Comment, Forum and Venue Selection Clauses in Seaman's Employment Contracts: Can Contractual Stipulations Be Used to Defeat a Seaman's Choice of Forum or Venue in a Jones Act Claim?, Jeremy Jones    Comment, The Downside of Success: How Increased Commercialism Could Cost the NCAA Its Biggest Antitrust Defense, Jeffrey J.R. Sundram      Issue Three: February 2011  Mixed Public-Private Speech and the Establishment Clause, Claudia E. Haupt   Clarity and Confusion: RICO's Recent Trips to the United States Supreme Court, Dr. Randy D. Gordon   Did You Ever Hear of the Napoleonic Code, Stella? A Mixed Jurisdi

Comparative risk assessment and environmental decision making Igor Linkov, Abou Bakr Ramadan 0 Resenhas Springer, 2004 - 436 páginas Decision making in environmental projects is typically a complex and confusing process characterized by trade-offs between socio-political, environmental, and economic impacts. Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) is a methodology applied to facilitate decision making when various activities compete for limited resources. CRA has become an increasingly accepted research tool and has helped to characterize environmental profiles and priorities on the regional and national level. CRA may be considered as part of the more general but as yet quite academic field of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Considerable research in the area of MCDA has made available methods for applying scientific decision theoretical approaches to multi-criteria problems, but its applications, especially in environmental areas, are still limited. The papers show that the use of comparative risk assessment can provide the scientific basis for environmentally sound and cost-efficient policies, strategies, and solutions to our environmental challeng

The sister cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua form one of the largest manufacturing complexes in the world, and provide a unique context in which to examine transnational patterns of environmental injustice. In this paper, we explore residential patterns of environmental injustice related to the location of industrial facilities (ie maquiladoras and facilities regulated by the Toxics Release Inventory) in the El Paso - Juárez metropolis, taking a comparative approach. Our results indicate a striking injustice in the raw level of industrial hazard confronted by residents on the Mexican side of the border compared with those on the US side-a direct result of location within the global economy. In terms of multivariate spatial regression results, patterns of exposure to residential hazards diverged between the two cities. In Mexico, generally marginal neighborhoods (based on low social class and higher proportions of migrants to the city) were located farther away from industry, whereas they were located closer in the US. We explain these findings on the basis of sociospatial differences in urbanization, social marginality, and industrial development between El Paso and Juárez, which reflect the two cities' juxtaposition vis-à-vis global political - economic dynamics. Future research is needed to test relationships between social marginality and industrial hazards in transnational and Southern contexts to determine if similar or divergent patterns exist.

Disaster Management Handbook Jack Pinkowski 0 Resenhas CRC Press, 2008 - 595 páginas Record breaking hurricane seasons, tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes, and intentional acts of mass-casualty violence, give lie to the delusion that disasters are the anomaly and not the norm. Disaster management is rooted in the fundamental belief that we can protect ourselves. Even if we cannot control all the causes, we can prepare and respond. We can craft constructive, workable policy that will contribute to the prevention of enormous financial impact, destruction of the environment, and needless loss of life. Integrating scholarly articles from international experts and first hand accounts from the practitioner community, Disaster Management Handbookpresents an analytical critique of the interrelated, multidisciplinary issues of preparedness, response, and recovery in anticipating and rebuilding from disasters. Beginning with an introduction to the theoretical constructs and conceptual foundations of disaster management, the book reviews the relationship of modern development todisaster vulnerability, the politics of disaster management, leadership, and the role of agency coordination. The second and third sections examine case studies and lessons learned through natural disasters in North America and around the world. They compare and contrast the efficacy of different management strategies from national, provincial, and local governments, as well as non-governmental agencies. Taking a narrower scope, the fourth section focuses on emergency personnel and the methods and issues faced in on-the-scene response and preparation. It also considers the special needs of hospitals and the effective use of the media. Contributions in the final two sections present strategies for limiting and ameliorating the psychological impact of disaster on victims and personnel, and look forward to how we can be better prepared in the future and rebuild stronger, more resilient communities.

672. Steven Shavell, The Corrective Tax versus Liability As Solutions to the Problem of Harmful Externalities, 7/10. Abstract: Although the corrective tax has long been viewed by economists as a theoretically desirable remedy for the problem of harmful externalities, its actual use has been limited, mainly to the domain of pollution. Liability, in contrast, has great importance in controlling harmful externalities. I compare the tax and liability here in theory and suggest that the conclusions help to explain the observed predominance of liability over taxation, except in the area of pollution. The following factors are emphasized in the analysis: inefficiency of incentives under taxes when, as would be typical, it would be impractical for the state to incorporate into taxes all of the variables that significantly affect expected harm; efficiency of incentives under strict liability, which requires only that actual harms be measured; efficiency of incentives to exercise precautions under the negligence rule; administrative cost advantages of liability deriving from its being applied only when harm occurs; and dilution of incentives under liability when suit would be unlikely or injurers would not be able to pay fully for harms caused.

In our time, the human species has acquired the capability to destroy both human life and much of the biosphere that hosts it. This potential is even more dangerous as the processes of globalization unfold, especially in their corporate and oligarchic modes, which contribute to increased poverty and environmental degradation. This situation makes the development of a new mode of reason necessary. In this article, I propose to analyze the discursive continuity between the Gaia hypothesis and ecofeminism as a space from where this alternative mode of reason is emerging. This alternative mode of reason, I claim, posits symbiosis rather than independence as the basic form of relatedness between individual entities. Symbiotic reason, I suggest, is exponentially feminine, for women's bodies are predisposed to be two-in-one-to be hosts to other bodies in pregnancy.[ 1] Symbiotic reason understands life as an interrelated web in which each individual is a small node that exists thanks to the others' presence. Life resembles a Deleuzian rhizome, a multiplicity of elements in a free-range order, with each element different from the next, yet all recognizably part of the whole.[ 2] If symbiosis is the axiom on which the new rational mode of thinking rests, then symbiotic reason is ecofeminist.[ 3] Ecofeminism, short for ecological feminism, emerged from a feminist interest in science - the area of knowledge that claims reason and rationality as its own turf. In the 1980s, feminist science studies exposed the white male perspective behind the alleged objectivity of Western science.[ 4] In the 1990s, ecofeminism evolved as a mode of feminist discourse concerned with ecological issues that Western science was unable to resolve.[ 5] While major agents of corporate globalization such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are accustomed to treating the Earth as assemblage of consumable resources, many ecofeminist philosophers are keenly aware that the Earth may ve

A History of Moral Hazard David Rowell and Luke Connelly (University of Queensland)d.rowell@uq.edu.au The term 'moral hazard' was initially developed 150 years ago within the insurance-industry literature, to describe a positive relationship between insurance and a claim. It has been asserted that the concept of moral hazard spontaneously evolved with insurance. However, the earliest insurance contracts predate the first recorded use of the term moral hazard by almost 500 years. When interpreted literately, the phrase moral hazard can evoke a strong rhetorical tone, which has readily been used by a variety of stakeholders, most notably insurers, to influence public attitudes to claimers and claiming. In contrast, the discipline of economics has treated moral hazard as an idiom which 'in fact, has little to do with morality' to analyse the role that incentives play in a broad range of principal-agent relationships. This paper seeks to explore the underlying historical reasons for this impasse by reviewing four distinct and disparate literatures: theological, probabilistic, insurance and economic. The theological literature contains a rich discussion of the liceity of insurance that reveals a medieval concept of providence, which had profound implications for the conceptual development of moral hazard. The emergence of a probability literature from the field of mathematics also contributed to the theory of risk, (e.g. Bernoulli's resolution of the St Petersburg paradox) which were precursors for conceptual development of moral hazard. The eventual genesis of moral hazard in The Practice of Fire Underwriting in 1865 was followed by some ambiguity in the interpretation of this term. A careful inspection of the early insurance literature suggests that the term moral hazard was used pejoratively to also describe the related actuarial process of adverse selection, i.e., morally suspect people were observed to purchase insurance with a view to committing fraud. The insuranc

The central goal of this book is to provide a state of the art overview of the literature with respect to the economic analysis of tort law. It sure meets the challenge, offering with great expertise a comprehensive presentation of tort law in both economic and comparative perspectives. The clarity of the text, unusual in the law and economics literature, makes the book accessible to a broad readership of economists with a limited legal background and lawyers with limited economic skills.' Olivier Moreteau, Louisiana State University, US 'Tort Law and Economics, ed. Michael Faure, provides a highly useful economic overview of the most important topics of tort law. The authors clearly show the main developments of the discussion, examining the results of recent studies and stating their own opinions. Detailed bibliographies are included. The volume has to be warmly recommended to friends and foes of economic analysis who are provided with a comprehensive update in this field while also indicating areas which critics have to focus on.' Helmut Koziol, European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law, Austria This volume provides a state-of-the-art overview of the literature on the economic analysis of tort law. In sixteen chapters, the specialist authors guide the reader through the often vast literature in each domain providing a balanced and comprehensive summary. Particular attention is paid to the evolution of the field, further refinements to economic models and relevant conclusions and lessons for the policymaker. Tort Law and Economics is part of the Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, and enables readers, some not familiar with law and economics, to obtain an insight in the relevant economic literature concerning tort law and economics. This book will be of interest to lawyers and economists, practitioners and academics interested in accident law, tort law, insurance and regulation. It will also appeal to students in economic analysis of law and policymakers working on

Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society Committee on Risk Characterization, National Research Council 0 Resenhas National Academies Press, 1996 - 264 páginas   

Uncertainty: a guide to dealing with uncertainty in quantitative risk and policy analysis Millett Granger Morgan, Max Henrion, Mitchell Small 0 Resenhas Cambridge University Press, 1990 - 332 páginas This book explain the ways in which uncertainty is an important factor in the problems of risk and policy analysis

Environmental risk assessment: quantitative measures, anthropogenic influences, human impact Ian Lerche, Walter Glässer 1 Resenha Birkhäuser, 2006 - 343 páginas This book deals with environmental and human risk problems caused by contamination from the perspective of real world applications with quantitative procedures. It includes risk methods for the discussion of environmental problems where data are sparse or fuzzy, as well as incorporating political, social and economic considerations in determining directions of remediation solutions for environmental contaminant problems. Furthermore, it highlights the impact of contaminants on human health, in some cases ultimately leading to death, as well as the anthropogenic exacerbation of natural processes.

Assessment and management of environmental risks: cost-efficient methods and applications Igor Linkov, José Palma-Oliveira 0 Resenhas Springer, 2001 - 440 páginas The management of environmental contamination requires decision makers to weigh existing risks against the potential effects of implementing environmental policies, considering both the benefits and disruptions that may result from different courses of action. The present book represents an major advance in the development and application of cost-efficient methods of risk assessment, especially under circumstances of budget constraints and in developing countries. The book explores the potential of risk assessment to act as a unified and unifying technique for addressing a wide range of environmental problems. A wide range of issues are discussed, ranging from specific and local studies through global decision and management frameworks. The approaches developed range from specific methods through widely applied public policies. The book shows that the use of risk assessment can provide the scientific basis for environmentally sound, cost-effective policies, strategies and solutions to our environmental challenges.

Handbook of environmental risk assessment and management Peter Calow 0 Resenhas Wiley-Blackwell, 1998 - 590 páginas At the heart of environmental protection is risk assessment: the likelihood of pollution from accidents; the likelihood of problems from normal and abnormal operation of industrial processes; the likely impacts associated with new synthetic chemicals; and so on. Currently, risk assessment has been very much in the news--the risks from BSE and E. coli, and the public perception of risks from nuclear waste, etc. This new publication explains how scientific methodologies are used to assess risk from human activities and the resultant objects and wastes, on people and the environment. Understanding such risks supplies crucial information--to frame legislation, manage major habitats, businesses and industries, and create development programmes. Unique in combining the science of risk assessment with the development of management strategies. Covers science and social science (politics, economics, psychology) aspects. Very timely - risk assessment lies at the heart of decision making in various topical environmental questions (BSE, Brent Spar, nuclear waste).

The government of risk: understanding risk regulation regimes Christopher Hood, Henry Rothstein, Robert Baldwin 3 Resenhas Oxford University Press US, 2001 - 217 páginas Why does regulation vary so dramatically from one area to another? Why are vast sums spent on controlling some risks but not on others? Is there any logic to the techniques we use in risk regulation? In this work, Hood explores these crucial questions explored. It looks at a number of risk regulations' regimes, considers the respects in which they differ, and examines how these differences can be justified.