Social deprivations coincide with vast deforestation in Brazil's Legal Amazon, or Amazônia. Poverty reduction and sustainable development require renewed efforts to protect the region's exceptional natural wealth, coupled with a shift from an extractive to a productivity-oriented growth model.

With a vast river network and rainforests extending over eight South American countries, the Amazon plays a vital role particularly in maintaining biodiversity and terrestrial carbon storage. Due to its ecological characteristics, the Amazon benefits not only those countries but also the international community at large. However, the Amazon forests are being rapidly cleared with a consequent loss of biodiversity and impact on global climate. This book examines whether international law has an impact on the preservation of the Amazon by inquiring into the forms of cooperation that exist among the Amazon countries, and between them and the international community, and to what extent international cooperation can help protect the Amazon. Given the role of this region in maintaining the balance of the global environment, the book examines whether the Amazon should be granted a special legal status and possible implications in terms of international cooperation.

Climate change has morphed from an environmental problem into a challenge to civilization itself. As CO2 levels have continued to rise, the 8th Edition of this book is now more relevant than ever. Retaining the approach of the original edition, the newest iteration features global warming as the framing example for a comprehensive look at environmental economics. Pedagogical clarity is ensured by the book’s central focus on four highly-focused questions: How much pollution is too much? Is the government up to the job? How can we do better? How can we resolve global issues? The text also continues with a strong focus on natural resources economics and ecosystem services. Updates to the book are included to address the very latest concerns, standards, and legislation related to environmental issues, providing students with a comprehensive look at this important topic while maintaining an accessible approach that makes the material engaging and highly relevant.

Featuring a stellar international cast list of leading and cutting-edge scholars, The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of the Environment presents the state of the art of the discipline that considers ecological issues and crises from a political economy perspective. This collective volume sheds new light on the effect of economic and power inequality on environmental dynamics and, conversely, on the economic and social impact of environmental dynamics. The chapters gathered in this handbook make four original contributions to the field of political economy of the environment. First, they revisit essential concepts and methods of environmental economics in the light of their political economy. Second, they introduce readers to recent theoretical and empirical advances in key issues of political economy of the environment with a special focus on the relationship between inequality and environmental degradation, a nexus that has dramatically come into focus with the COVID crisis. Third, the authors of this handbook open the field to its critical global and regional dimensions: global issues, such as the environmental justice movement and inequality and climate change as well as regional issues such as agriculture systems, air pollution, natural resources appropriation and urban sustainability. Fourth and finally, the work shows how novel analysis can translate into new forms of public policy that require institutional reform and new policy tools. Ecosystems preservation, international climate negotiations and climate mitigation policies all have a strong distributional dimension that chapters point to. Pressing environmental policy such as carbon pricing and low-carbon and energy transitions entail numerous social issues that also need to be accounted for with new analytical and technological tools. This handbook will be an invaluable reference, research and teaching tool for anyone interested in political economy approaches to environmental issues and ecological crises.

In today's increasingly globalized environment, many economic fundamentals need to be reconsidered in order to regain stability in the global marketplace. One such consideration is the failing dynamics of the international tax infrastructure. Neoliberalism 2.0 brings a 21st century assessment of the Pigovian taxes, considering a completely new calibration of the international tax systems, inspired by the historically developed Pigovian tax model. The book considers the impact neoliberalism had and will have on regulatory infrastructure, democracy in an era of globalization and reduced legitimation of the national state. The Pigovian model brings home the often forgotten relationship between taxation (as a part of the regulatory sphere), macro-economics, and the political-philosophical context in which law and economics emerge. The model also takes into account the phenomena of globalization and financialization and is tested using the financial sector as an example. This book addresses the many challenges a Pigovian shift would imply for the sovereign and its national economies. Neoliberalism 2.0 demonstrates the ability to design a paradigm-changing alternative to the current tax infrastructure, while taking into account a low economic growth environment of the future, the implications of globalization and the changing relationship between citizens and their state.

Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have achieved considerable economic growth, yet the region still faces many seemingly intractable problems. The conventional wisdom in development agencies - that prioritization is impossible and that everything must be done - is simply not effective. Latin American Development Priorities shows how limited resources could be used for the greatest benefit of the Latin American and Caribbean region. A panel of economists met over three days in San José to review proposals to tackle the ten most important challenges, which emerged from a survey by the Inter-American Development Bank. The expert panel was asked a question which appears simple but is actually very difficult to answer: What should Latin American governments do with an additional nominal $10 billion? Hard choices are needed if Latin America's problems are to be tackled effectively. This book provides the means to make those choices as objectively as possible.

This book is designed to help policy makers put together strategies for anticipating distributive impacts of biodiversity policy across different groups; and for selecting processes and instruments that manage distributive impacts without compromising conservation and use objectives.