Gordon Hughes

Gordon.Hughes@nera.com

QUALIDADE DO GASTO PÚBLICO NO BRASIL

Meio Ambiente

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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 > costs,

especially in tourist areas Climate change

: key issue is the global distribution of benefits & costs