European Regional Science Association
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European Regional Science Association
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The abstract for paper number 103:
Max Munday
Cardiff Business School,
Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom, Annette Roberts, Welsh Economy Research Unit
Cardiff Business School,
Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
Regional environmental input-output tables and new policy directions in Wales
In November 2000, the National Assembly for Wales, committed, under the Government of Wales Act 1998, to a sustainable development scheme. The Assembly now has a duty to promote sustainable development in the exercise of its functions – providing an overarching framework for all of the Assembly’s work. Part of this duty involves setting and using indicators and targets for sustainable development, to monitor, review and evaluate activities and policy (‘Learning to Live Differently’ The Sustainable Development Scheme of the National Assembly for Wales, National Assembly for Wales, 2001.)
Wales is the only region of the UK with a duty (legal obligation) towards sustainable development, and is one of very few EU regions with such a duty. However, there are challenges for the regional government in monitoring progress towards a set of broadly defined sustainable development objectives. This paper examines the suite of methodologies that are currently available or being developed in Wales to help map progress towards meeting these objectives. On-going research is developing very different approaches, with different degrees of resource and data intensity. These approaches include ecological foot-printing, indices of sustainable economic welfare, green national accounts (satellite accounts), and environmental input-output analysis.
The paper then explores and compares the practical usefulness of these different approaches, and how they may be linked together to inform and influence new policy development. The paper then focuses on the practical use of environmental input-output analysis within a broad evaluation framework to inform policy and help understand progress towards sustainable development objectives in the Wales context.
The first section of the paper provides background and context of the policy framework in Wales. This includes a description of the National Assembly’s sustainable development scheme, and describes how policy makers are attempting to assess the progress of the scheme.
The second section explores the potential use of a number of different methodologies for understanding and monitoring progress towards sustainable development objectives in the general, and then in the case region context. The different methodological tools include, regionally derived indices of sustainable economic welfare, ecological foot-printing, green satellite accounts and environmental input-output analysis. The degree of complimentarity in their ‘fitness for purpose’ will be examined, as will their practical usefulness in the case region.
The third section will focus on environmental input-output analysis in Wales. The section presents results from the tables currently being developed and outlines their uses and problems in the regional policy development context. In particular, the partial nature of analysis using environmental input-output tables will be discussed, as will the difficulties of using national environmental coefficients for regional analysis. Results of alternative policy scenarios will be presented to illustrate different potential environmental outcomes, and how these outcomes may be linked to other approaches identified in the paper to inform policy and to understand and monitor progress towards sustainable development.
The final section of this paper will present conclusions, and make recommendations for future research.
Unfortunately full paper has not been submitted.