Environmental Economics and Sustainability Flashcards
6 cards from real Environmental Science practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 Environmental Economics and Sustainability flashcards as text
A negative externality in economics occurs when:
Answer: A transaction between two parties imposes costs on a third party who is not compensated
Negative externalities (e.g., pollution) are costs imposed on society that are not reflected in market prices, causing overproduction of harmful activities relative to the social optimum.
The triple bottom line (TBL) framework in corporate sustainability reporting measures performance across:
Answer: Profit (financial), people (social), and planet (environmental) dimensions
John Elkington's TBL framework (1994) holds that companies should account for social equity (people) and environmental stewardship (planet) alongside financial profit, recognizing all three as measures of business success.
Ecosystem services are most accurately described as:
Answer: The benefits that humans derive from functioning natural ecosystems
Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect benefits that ecosystems provide to humans, classified as provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment framework).
The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis suggests that:
Answer: Environmental pollution initially increases as a country develops economically but decreases after a certain income threshold
The EKC (Grossman and Krueger, 1991) proposes an inverted-U relationship between per-capita income and pollution: at low incomes, development increases pollution; beyond a turning point, higher incomes support cleaner technology and environmental regulation.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that evaluates:
Answer: The environmental impacts of a product or process across its entire life from raw material extraction through production, use, and disposal
LCA (standardized in ISO 14040/14044) systematically quantifies the environmental inputs (energy, water, materials) and outputs (emissions, waste) of a product system across its full life cycle.
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes work by:
Answer: Compensating landowners or communities for maintaining ecosystems that provide services to others
PES schemes transfer value from beneficiaries of ecosystem services (e.g., downstream water users) to providers (e.g., upstream landowners maintaining forests for water quality) - creating economic incentives for conservation.