COVID-19-related litter pollution on Greek beaches and nearshore shallow water environments.

COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in certain types of litter, many of which are expected to end up in the marine environment. The present study aimed to monitor the pandemic-related litter pollution along the Greek coastal environment. Overall, 59 beach and 83 underwater clean-ups were conducted. Litter was categorized as: PPE (face masks and gloves), COVID-19-related, single-use plastic (SUP) and takeaway items. PPE, dominated by face masks (86.21 %), accounted for 0.29 % of all litter. The average PPE density was 3.1 × 10-3 items m-2 and 2.59 items/ 100 m. COVID-19-related items represented 1.04 % of the total. Wet wipes showed higher densities (0.67 % of all litter) than in the pre-COVID era, while no increase in SUP and takeaway items was observed. Benthic PPE, dominated by gloves (83.95 %), represented 0.26 % of the total. The mean PPE density was 2.5 × 10-3 items m-2.

Alternative Types of Ambiguity and their Effects on Climate Change Regulation.

This paper focuses on different types of ambiguity that affect climate change regulation. In particular, we analyze the effects of the interaction among three types of agents, namely, the decision-maker (DM), the climate change experts, and the society, on the probabilistic properties of green-house gas (GHG) emissions and the formation of environmental policy. These effects are analyzed under two types of ambiguity: "deferential ambiguity" and "preferential ambiguity". Deferential ambiguity refers to the uncertainty that the experts face concerning whose forecast (scenario) the DM will defer to. Preferential ambiguity stems from the potential inability of the DM to correctly discern the society's preferences about the desired change of GHG emissions. This paper shows that the existence of deferential and preferential ambiguities have significant effects on GHG emissions regulation.

Ambiguity aversion, modern Bayesianism and small worlds.

The central question of this paper is whether a rational agent under uncertainty can exhibit ambiguity aversion (AA). The answer to this question depends on the way the agent forms her probabilistic beliefs: classical Bayesianism (CB) vs modern Bayesianism (MB). We revisit Schmeidler's coin-based example and show that a rational MB agent operating in the context of a "small world", cannot exhibit AA. Hence we argue that the motivation of AA based on Schmeidler's coin-based and Ellsberg's classic urn-based examples, is poor, since they correspond to cases of "small worlds". We also argue that MB, not only avoids AA, but also proves to be normatively superior to CB because an MB agent (i) avoids logical inconsistencies akin to the relation between her subjective probability and objective chance, (ii) resolves the problem of "old evidence" and (iii) allows psychological detachment from actual evidence, hence avoiding the problem of "cognitive dissonance". As far as AA is concerned, we claim that it may be thought of as a (potential) property of large worlds, because in such worlds MB is likely to be infeasible.

EAERE Award for the Best Paper Published in Environmental and Resource Economics During 2019.

We present details of the EAERE Award for the Best Paper Published in Environmental and Resource Economics During 2019 together with those Highly Commended papers published during this period.

Ten principles to integrate the water-energy-land nexus with climate services for co-producing local and regional integrated assessments.

The water-energy-land nexus requires long-sighted approaches that help avoid maladaptive pathways to ensure its promise to deliver insights and tools that improve policy-making. Climate services can form the foundation to avoid myopia in nexus studies by providing information about how climate change will alter the balance of nexus resources and the nature of their interactions. Nexus studies can help climate services by providing information about the implications of climate-informed decisions for other economic sectors across nexus resources. First-of-its-kind guidance is provided to combine nexus studies and climate services. The guidance consists of ten principles and a visual guide, which are discussed together with questions to compare diverse case studies and with examples to support the application of the principles.

Using a systemic approach to address the requirement for Integrated Water Resource Management within the Water Framework Directive.

Sustainable management of water resources calls for integration of ideas and approaches and revolves around assessment of causal-effect relationships as tools towards defining informed mitigation options and planning. The current paper presents a new holistic approach developed within the Globaqua Coordination Project that combines indicator-based well-established and tested concepts towards developing informed Programmes of Measures and River basin management plans: a. The DPSIR framework that has been engaged as central instrument to address the Water Framework Directive requirements and the concepts embedded in the Integrated Water Resource Management; b. The Ecosystem Services Approach emphasizing on the links between ecosystem services, changes in ecosystems and human well-being, c. Scenario assessment for valuation of future conditions to ensure the sustainability in the use of water resources. The implementation of the new combined framework in two river basins, Ebro in Spain and Evrotas in Greece, stressed the need for revised options targeting elimination of water pollution, measures to ensure water supply that covers the demand even under conditions of climate change and increased water stress and the need for improved valuation of environmental and resource use costs.

Down scaling of climate change scenarii to river basin level: A transdisciplinary methodology applied to Evrotas river basin, Greece.

The Mediterranean region is anticipated to be (or, already is) one of the hot spots for climate change, where freshwater ecosystems are under threat from the effects of multiple stressors. Climate change is impacting natural resources and on the functioning of Ecosystem Services. The challenges about modelling climate change impact on water cycle in general and specifically on socio-economic dynamics of the society leads to an exponential amount of results that restrain interpretation and added value of forecasting at local level. One of the main challenges when dealing with climate change projections is the quantification of uncertainties. Modellers might have limited information or understanding from local river catchment management practices and from other disciplines with relevant insights on socio-economic and environmental complex relationship between biosphere and human based activities. Current General Circulation Models cannot fulfil the requirements of high spatial detail required for water management policy. This article reports an innovative transdisciplinary methodology to down scale Climate Change scenarii to river basin level with a special focus on the development of climate change narrative under SSP5-RCP8.5 combination called Myopic scenario and SSP1-RCP4.5 combination called Sustainable scenario. Local Stakeholder participative workshop in the Evrotas river basin provide perception of expected changes on water demand under to two developed scenario narratives.

Do agents' characteristics affect their valuation of 'common pool' resources? A full-preference ranking analysis for the value of sustainable river basin management.

In this paper we develop a full-preference ranking Choice Experiment (CE) designed to investigate how respondents evaluate a set of proposed improvements towards sustainable river basin management, as per the prescriptions of the European Union-Water Framework Directive (2000). The CE is applied in the Asopos River Basin (ARB) in Greece. Our interest is to test whether residency in the river basin, or otherwise, affects the preferences of the relevant agents. We first estimate a rank-ordered logistic regression based on a full set of choices in order to calculate the willingness to pay (WTP) of respondents for each one of the three attributes considered in the CE (i.e., environmental conditions, impact on the local economy and changes in the potential uses of water). The model is initially estimated for the full sample and then re-estimated twice for two sub-samples: the first one only includes the residents of Athens and the second only includes the residents of Asopos. Afterwards, we examine the effect of various demographic and socio-economic factors (such as income, gender, age, employment and education) on the estimates of our model in order to reveal any differences among respondents with different characteristics, mainly focusing on whether they reside or have personal experience of the RB under valuation. Thus, our analysis simultaneously provides a robustness check on previous findings in the literature and additional information about how various demographic and socio-economic characteristics affect the evaluation of the selected attributes.

Managing the effects of multiple stressors on aquatic ecosystems under water scarcity. The GLOBAQUA project.

Water scarcity is a serious environmental problem in many European regions, and will likely increase in the near future as a consequence of increased abstraction and climate change. Water scarcity exacerbates the effects of multiple stressors, and thus results in decreased water quality. It impacts river ecosystems, threatens the services they provide, and it will force managers and policy-makers to change their current practices. The EU-FP7 project GLOBAQUA aims at identifying the prevalence, interaction and linkages between stressors, and to assess their effects on the chemical and ecological status of freshwater ecosystems in order to improve water management practice and policies. GLOBAQUA assembles a multidisciplinary team of 21 European plus 2 non-European scientific institutions, as well as water authorities and river basin managers. The project includes experts in hydrology, chemistry, biology, geomorphology, modelling, socio-economics, governance science, knowledge brokerage, and policy advocacy. GLOBAQUA studies six river basins (Ebro, Adige, Sava, Evrotas, Anglian and Souss Massa) affected by water scarcity, and aims to answer the following questions: how does water scarcity interact with other existing stressors in the study river basins? How will these interactions change according to the different scenarios of future global change? Which will be the foreseeable consequences for river ecosystems? How will these in turn affect the services the ecosystems provide? How should management and policies be adapted to minimise the ecological, economic and societal consequences? These questions will be approached by combining data-mining, field- and laboratory-based research, and modelling. Here, we outline the general structure of the project and the activities to be conducted within the fourteen work-packages of GLOBAQUA.

Information sharing and environmental policies.

Based on the assumption that in a standard eco-dumping model governments are uncertain about future product demand and allowing governments to obtain information from firms, we examine governments' and firms' incentives to share information. We show that when governments regulate polluting firms through emission standards, then governments and firms will reach an agreement concerning information sharing. The opposite holds when governments regulate pollution through emission taxes.

Environmental effects on public health: an economic perspective.

In this article we critically review the economic literature on the effects of environmental changes on public health, in both the developed and the developing world. We first focus on the economic methodologies that are available for the evaluation of the effects (social costs and benefits) of environmental changes (degradation/preservation) on public health. Then, we explain how the monetary evaluations of these effects can feed back in the construction of economic policy for creating agent-specific incentives for more efficient public health management, which is also equitable and environmentally sustainable. Our exposition is accompanied by a synthesis of the available quantitative empirical results.

Using economic valuation techniques to inform water resources management: a survey and critical appraisal of available techniques and an application.

The need for economic analysis for the design and implementation of efficient water resources management policies is well documented in the economics literature. This need is also emphasised in the European Union's recent Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC), and is relevant to the objectives of Euro-limpacs, an EU funded project which inter alia, aims to provide a decision-support system for valuing the effects of future global change on Europe's freshwater ecosystems. The purpose of this paper is to define the role of economic valuation techniques in assisting in the design of efficient, equitable and sustainable policies for water resources management in the face of environmental problems such as pollution, intensive land use in agriculture and climate change. The paper begins with a discussion of the conceptual economic framework that can be used to inform water policy-making. An inventory of the available economic valuation methods is presented and the scope and suitability of each for studying various aspects of water resources are critically discussed. Recent studies that apply these methods to water resources are reviewed. Finally, an application of one of the economic valuation methods, namely the contingent valuation method, is presented using a case study of the Cheimaditida wetland in Greece.