Download or read book The Environmental Implications of Privatization written by Magda Lovei and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments have increasingly come to recognize the economic potential and fiscal advantages of privatization. Privatization, under the right conditions, can also yield environmental benefits and contribute to sustainable development. This report contains a number of case studies which highlight the lessons learned about the environmental implications of privatization. It stresses that privatization offers an opportunity for making strategic decisions with longer-term impacts. This report also emphasizes that integrating environmental and social considerations into the privatization process leads to more sustainable outcomes. It also recommends strategies toward building on the positive linkages between privatization and environmental protection.
Download or read book Privatization and Environmental Policy written by Jerzy Śleszyński and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Privatization of Water Services in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-08-20 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the quest to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of water and wastewater services, many communities in the United States are exploring the potential advantages of privatization of those services. Unlike other utility services, local governments have generally assumed responsibility for providing water services. Privatization of such services can include the outright sale of system assets, or various forms of public-private partnershipsâ€"from the simple provision of supplies and services, to private design construction and operation of treatment plants and distribution systems. Many factors are contributing to the growing interest in the privatization of water services. Higher operating costs, more stringent federal water quality and waste effluent standards, greater customer demands for quality and reliability, and an aging water delivery and wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure are all challenging municipalities that may be short of funds or technical capabilities. For municipalities with limited capacities to meet these challenges, privatization can be a viable alternative. Privatization of Water Services evaluates the fiscal and policy implications of privatization, scenarios in which privatization works best, and the efficiencies that may be gained by contracting with private water utilities.
Download or read book Privatization and the Unanticipated Environmental Consequences Evidence from Ownership Reform of Chinese Firms written by Yunguo Lu and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the effect of privatization on the pollution emissions of companies by exploiting the quasi-natural experimental ownership reforms of state-owned enterprises in China. By matching corporate pollution emissions with firm-level micro data from 1998-2007, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy to identify the environmental effects of privatization, revealing a significant increase of corporate SO2 and COD emissions by 22.5% and 13.9%, respectively. The magnitude of the effect varies largely across regions and differs by the nature of ownerships. Privatized SOEs undergo production expansion, major changes in their corporate energy input structures and tend to make a significant strategic shift in their approach to pollution mitigation, paying less regard to environmental innovation in production, opting rather to put more effort into end-of-pipe treatments. The present study thus documents a significant but unanticipated environmental consequence of privatization.
Download or read book Resolving Conflicts Arising from the Privatization of Environmental Data written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-02-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reliable collections of science-based environmental information are vital for many groups of users and for a number of purposes. For example, electric utility companies predict demand during heat waves, structural engineers design buildings to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes, water managers monitor each winter's snow pack, and farmers plant and harvest crops based on daily weather predictions. Understanding the impact of human activities on climate, water, ecosystems, and species diversity, and assessing how natural systems may respond in the future are becoming increasingly important for public policy decisions. Environmental information systems gather factual information, transform it into information products, and distribute the products to users. Typical uses of the information require long-term consistency; hence the operation of the information system requires a long-term commitment from an institution, agency, or corporation. The need to keep costs down provides a strong motivation for creating multipurpose information systems that satisfy scientific, commercial and operational requirements, rather than systems that address narrow objectives. Resolving Conflicts Arising from the Privatization of Environmental Data focuses on such shared systems.
Download or read book Resolving Conflicts Arising from the Privatization of Environmental Data written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reliable collections of science-based environmental information are vital for many groups of users and for a number of purposes. For example, electric utility companies predict demand during heat waves, structural engineers design buildings to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes, water managers monitor each winter's snow pack, and farmers plant and harvest crops based on daily weather predictions. Understanding the impact of human activities on climate, water, ecosystems, and species diversity, and assessing how natural systems may respond in the future are becoming increasingly important for public policy decisions. Environmental information systems gather factual information, transform it into information products, and distribute the products to users. Typical uses of the information require long-term consistency; hence the operation of the information system requires a long-term commitment from an institution, agency, or corporation. The need to keep costs down provides a strong motivation for creating multipurpose information systems that satisfy scientific, commercial and operational requirements, rather than systems that address narrow objectives. Resolving Conflicts Arising from the Privatization of Environmental Data focuses on such shared systems.
Download or read book Reforming Infrastructure written by Ioannis Nicolaos Kessides and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.
Download or read book Privatization written by Sunita Kikeri and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This paper takes stock of recent privatization trends, examines the extent to which government ownership is still prevalent in developing countries, and summarizes emerging issues for state enterprise reform going forward. Between 1990 and 2003, 120 developing countries carried out nearly 8,000 privatization transactions and raised $410 billion in privatization revenues. Privatization activity peaked in 1997 and dropped off in the late 1990s and, while still at overall low levels, is slowly creeping back. While there are a large number of studies assessing the impact of privatization on enterprise performance and overall welfare, there are no systematic data on the extent to which privatization has changed the role of state enterprises in the economy. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the state's role has been substantially reduced in Eastern and Central Europe and in certain countries in Latin America. But available evidence also suggests that, despite a long track record of privatization, government ownership in state enterprises is still widely prevalent in some regions and countries, and in certain sectors in virtually all regions. The paper shows that the costs of not reforming state enterprises are high and that continued efforts need to be made to improve their performance by improving privatization policies and institutions; adopting more of a case-by-case approach for complex sectors and countries; and exposing state enterprises to market discipline through new private entry and exit of unviable firms and improvements in their corporate governance. "--World Bank web site.
Download or read book Problems in Privatization Theory and Practice in State and Local Governments written by Fred W. Becker and published by Edwin Mellen Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Becker (policy and management, Florida International University) begins with an overview of the problems to be discussed, including propriety, legitimacy, political feasibility, administration challenges, and negative impacts associated with privatization. He goes on to discuss these issues in detail, with particular attention to the expanding scope of privatization, the types of organizations suited to perform the work of government, the dynamics of public- private partnerships, and recommendations for correcting the negative effects suffered by the providers and recipients of privatized services. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.
Download or read book Privatization of Water Services in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-09-20 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the quest to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of water and wastewater services, many communities in the United States are exploring the potential advantages of privatization of those services. Unlike other utility services, local governments have generally assumed responsibility for providing water services. Privatization of such services can include the outright sale of system assets, or various forms of public-private partnershipsâ€"from the simple provision of supplies and services, to private design construction and operation of treatment plants and distribution systems. Many factors are contributing to the growing interest in the privatization of water services. Higher operating costs, more stringent federal water quality and waste effluent standards, greater customer demands for quality and reliability, and an aging water delivery and wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure are all challenging municipalities that may be short of funds or technical capabilities. For municipalities with limited capacities to meet these challenges, privatization can be a viable alternative. Privatization of Water Services evaluates the fiscal and policy implications of privatization, scenarios in which privatization works best, and the efficiencies that may be gained by contracting with private water utilities.
Download or read book Beyond Politics written by Michael P. Vandenbergh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private sector action provides one of the most promising opportunities to reduce the risks of climate change, buying time while governments move slowly or even oppose climate mitigation. Starting with the insight that much of the resistance to climate mitigation is grounded in concern about the role of government, this books draws on law, policy, social science, and climate science to demonstrate how private initiatives are already bypassing government inaction in the US and around the globe. It makes a persuasive case that private governance can reduce global carbon emissions by a billion tons per year over the next decade. Combining an examination of the growth of private climate initiatives over the last decade, a theory of why private actors are motivated to reduce emissions, and a review of viable next steps, this book speaks to scholars, business and advocacy group managers, philanthropists, policymakers, and anyone interested in climate change.
Download or read book Water Wars written by Vandana Shiva and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed author and award-winning scientist and activist Vandana Shiva lucidly details the severity of the global water shortage, calling the water crisis “the most pervasive, most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth.” She sheds light on the activists who are fighting corporate maneuvers to convert the life-sustaining resource of water into more gold for the elites and uses her knowledge of science and society to outline the emergence of corporate culture and the historical erosion of communal water rights. Using the international water trade and industrial activities such as damming, mining, and aquafarming as her lens, Shiva exposes the destruction of the earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of rights to a precious common good. Revealing how many of the most important conflicts of our time, most often camouflaged as ethnic wars or religious wars, are in fact conflicts over scarce but vital natural resources, she calls for a movement to preserve water access for all and offers a blueprint for global resistance based on examples of successful campaigns. Featuring a new introduction by the author, this edition of Water Wars celebrates the spiritual and traditional role water has played in communities throughout history and warns that water privatization threatens cultures and livelihoods worldwide.
Download or read book Privatizing Water written by Karen Bakker and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water supply privatization was emblematic of the neoliberal turn in development policy in the 1990s. Proponents argued that the private sector could provide better services at lower costs than governments; opponents questioned the risks involved in delegating control over a life-sustaining resource to for-profit companies. Private-sector activity was most concentrated—and contested—in large cities in developing countries, where the widespread lack of access to networked water supplies was characterized as a global crisis. In Privatizing Water, Karen Bakker focuses on three questions: Why did privatization emerge as a preferred alternative for managing urban water supply? Can privatization fulfill its proponents' expectations, particularly with respect to water supply to the urban poor? And, given the apparent shortcomings of both privatization and conventional approaches to government provision, what are the alternatives? In answering these questions, Bakker engages with broader debates over the role of the private sector in development, the role of urban communities in the provision of "public" services, and the governance of public goods. She introduces the concept of "governance failure" as a means of exploring the limitations facing both private companies and governments. Critically examining a range of issues—including the transnational struggle over the human right to water, the "commons" as a water-supply-management strategy, and the environmental dimensions of water privatization—Privatizing Water is a balanced exploration of a critical issue that affects billions of people around the world.
Download or read book Public Sector Reform written by Jan-Erik Lane and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1997-12-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deregulation, privatization and marketization have become the bywords for the reforms and debates surrounding the public sector. This major book is unique in its comparative analysis of the reform experience in Western and Eastern Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Leading experts identify a number of key factors to systematically explain the similarities and differences, map common problems and together reflect on the future shape of the public sector, exploring significant themes in a lively and accessible way.
Download or read book Environmental Taxes written by European Environment Agency and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Report focusing on the environmental effectiveness of green taxes and on policy barriers and solutions to their implementation. It also tries to emphasize the value of non-energy taxes. The book attempts to be accessible to non-experts.
Download or read book Bank Privatization and Performance written by Thorsten Beck and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beck, Cull, and Jerome assess the effect of privatization on performance in a panel of Nigerian banks for the period 1990--2001. They find evidence of performance improvement in nine banks that were privatized, which is remarkable given the inhospitable environment for true financial intermediation. Their results also suggest negative effects of the continuing minority government ownership on the performance of many Nigerian banks. The authors' results complement aggregate indications of decreasing financial intermediation over the 1990s. Banks that focused on investment in government bonds and non-lending activities enjoyed a relatively higher performance. This paper--a product of the Finance Team, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to study the effects of bank privatization in developing countries"--World Bank web site.
Download or read book Privatization written by John R. Nellis and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governance, as defined by the World Bank in its 1992 report, Governance and Development, is the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country's economic and social resources for development. The report deemed it is within the Bank's mandate to focus on the following: -the process by which authority is exercised in the management of a country's economic and social resources -the capacity of governments to design, formulate, and implement policies and discharge functions. Also available: Governance: The World Bank's Experience (ISBN 0-8213-2804-2) Stock No. 12804.
