Transboundary Pollution Control Research Articles

Transboundary pollution control under evolving social norms: a mean-field approach

Transboundary pollution control under evolving social norms: a mean-field approach

Transboundary pollution control with ecological compensation in a watershed containing multiple regions: A dynamic analysis

A watershed consists of more than two regions intending to apply ecological compensation to solve the transboundary pollution problems. For this purpose, we develop a differential game model to investigate each region's optimal strategy and show the following main conclusions: (1) There is a set of optimal ecological compensation rates that improve the welfare of each region and produce Pareto improvement results. (2) Ecological compensation shifts partial pollution reduction investments from downstream to upstream regions and increases total reduction investments in the basin. (3) Ecological compensation improves the water ecosystem and increases each region's yield and income level.

Pollution Load Coordination and Eco-Compensation for Trans-Boundary Water Pollution Control: The Case of the Tri-Border Region of the Yangtze Delta

A partitioned governance mode, in the absence of multilateral cooperation, always culminates in recurring instances of trans-boundary conflicts and critical degradation of water bodies in border regions. Addressing the existing gaps in quantitative trans-boundary pollution control research in extensive river network, a new approach was designed to strategically guide water pollution control initiatives throughout the entire tri-border region of the Yangtze Delta (TBYD) via the following steps: (1) Building upon an analysis of the trans-boundary river hydrodynamics, the tri-border effective coordination scope (TECS), i.e., a strategic coordination scope for coordinated pollution control, was delineated, and 13 county-level administrative districts were identified as effective contributing regions for detailed coordination. (2) Considering water quality standard (WQS) attainment in the trans-boundary cross-sections, a one-dimensional mathematical model covering the complex river network was established. Then, the load capacities for all the contributing administrative regions were determined to facilitate coordinated pollution load reduction across the TECS. (3) Leveraging from the sewage treatment costs within the TECS, a standardized eco-compensation criterion was established to guide the coordinated compensation practices across the TECS. (4) By comparing the practical pollution discharging amount, the coordinated load reduction rates and eco-compensation payments of all 13 contributing administrative districts for trans-boundary pollution control were assessed. These assessments will guide policy promulgation and provide quantitative data support for harmonizing pollution control policymaking and addressing intricate trans-boundary pollution issues in complex river networks.

Long term trends of dry and wet deposition of air pollutants at declining forest site of Mt. Oyama in Japan during 1994–2019

Forest decline, which occurs in mountainous regions in many countries, may result from the effects of acid fog, ozone, or deposition of other pollutants. We observed wet deposition of air pollutants at different altitudes on Mt. Oyama, situated southwest of Tokyo, for 1994 until 2019. During this period, the domestic atmospheric environment was improved in Japan. The average concentration of air pollutants around all the sampling sites on Mt. Oyama decreased by 63.01%, 32.08%, 8.80%, and 39.73% for NH3, HCl, HNO3, and SO2, respectively. The volume weighted mean (VWM) pH values showed an increasing trend for bulk deposition (+0.70% y-1), fog water (+2.58% y-1), and throughfall (+2.60% y-1). Stemflow also increased (cedar, +1.17% y-1; fir, +0.82% y-1), although it included organic acids dissolved from the stem and it primarily had a low VWM pH value. The overall pH value of the fog water increased at the site, although acidic fog was still observed. Comparing fog water between winter and summer, a significant increase in pH occurred in summer, whereas no change occurred in winter. In summer, the sources of pollutants at Mt. Oyama are mainly from mainland Japan, and the frequency of low-pH acidic fog decreased annually. In winter, Mt. Oyama was affected by transboundary pollution, and acid fog occasionally occurred. Improvements in the domestic atmospheric environment and control of transboundary pollution will provide better conditions for mountain ecology that are free from acidic pollutants.

Equity preferences and abatement cost sharing in international environmental agreements

AbstractThis paper examines empirically the importance of equity preferences for the formation of international environmental agreements (IEA) for transboundary pollution control. Although it has been shown theoretically that the existence of equity preferences among countries considering an IEA increases the chances for formation and stability of a coalition, empirical assessments of such preferences have been limited to climate change mitigation and single‐country studies. We consider the case of marine plastic pollution, of which a large share consists of food and beverage containers, representing a transboundary pollution control problem of increasing policy concern, with properties that lead to distinct considerations for equity and the sharing of abatement costs. We employ a coordinated choice experiment in the United Kingdom and United States to assess preferences for abatement‐cost allocations in a marine plastics IEA. Pairs of cooperating countries and the relative allocation of abatement costs are varied experimentally. Results show systematic aversion to both advantageous and disadvantageous inequality with respect to abatement costs but also that the relative strength of advantageous and disadvantageous inequality aversion differs across countries. Across both countries, there is evidence that left‐leaning voters generally favor more equal international sharing of abatement costs. Differences of these results from the case of greenhouse gas emission reduction, and implications for current efforts to establish a legally binding global treaty on marine plastic pollution, are discussed.

Transboundary Pollution Control with Both Production and Consumption Emissions

Transboundary Pollution Control with Both Production and Consumption Emissions

Optimal Environmental Policy in a Dynamic Transboundary Pollution Game: Emission Standards, Taxes, and Permit Trading

Global environmental problems such as transboundary pollution and global warming have been recognized as major issues around the world. In practice, governments of all countries are actively exploring various environmental policies to control pollution. The government needs to consider the impact of neighboring regions when formulating environmental policies, especially in the context of transboundary pollution. However, the above problems are less studied, to bridge this gap and aim at solving problems in existing practices, we consider a differential game model of transboundary pollution control to examine which policy is more effective in promoting environmental quality and social welfare in a dynamic and accumulative global pollution context. Three alternative policy instruments, namely emission standards, emission taxes, and emission permit trading, are considered and compared. The results show that the social welfare of each region is the lowest and the total pollution stock is the highest under the emission tax policy due to the “rent-shifting,” “policy-leakage,” and “free-riding” effects. Moreover, the realized level of the environmental policy in the Nash equilibrium of the policy game is distorted away from the socially optimal level. The emission standards policy is found to be better than the emission tax policy and characterized by initiating the rent-shifting effect without the policy-leakage effect. Moreover, the pollution stock of two regions is found to be the lowest and the social welfare is found to be the highest under the emission permit trading policy, which is not associated with any of the three effects. Finally, a numerical example is used to illustrate the results, and a sensitivity analysis is performed in the steady state.

An innovative transboundary pollution control model using water credit

Market-oriented means can effectively solve the problems of a single compensation form and insufficient capital investment in water pollution control measures. Hence, we propose a new trading mechanism using water credit we call “water quality currency.” Pollution control enterprises obtain “water quality currency” by paying pollution control efforts, and production enterprises obtain production licenses by purchasing “water quality currency.” We study the pollution control chain comprising a pollution control and production enterprise and construct a differential game model of random changes in water quality. Moreover, we compare decisions about pollution control effort and trade price under three scenarios and discussed the interaction mechanism between water pollution control and “water quality currency” trade. First, we found that “water quality currency” trading mechanism has created a virtuous circle of mutual promotion between water pollution control and market trading. Second, when all enterprises are farsighted, their pollution control efforts and profits are highest in the three trading scenarios. Third, when all enterprises are farsighted and pollution control enterprises are shortsighted, pollution control responsibility and exchange coefficient affect pollution control efforts positively and negatively, respectively. Higher pollution control responsibility and lower exchange coefficient are found to be conducive to improving water quality. For shortsighted production enterprises, pollution control responsibility and exchange coefficient have negative and positive impacts on pollution control efforts, respectively. Lower pollution control responsibility and higher exchange coefficients are conducive to improving the water quality.

Migration and diffusion characteristics of air pollutants and meteorological influences in Northwest China: a case study of four mining areas.

In the process of exploiting mineral resources, dust enters the environment through air suspended particles and surface runoff, which has a serious impact on the atmospheric environment and human health. From all-year and seasonal scenarios, the migration trajectories and cumulative concentration based on the secondary development of Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) in four mining areas (SF, BC, SJZ, and MJT) in Northwest China are studied. The convergent cross mapping (CCM) method is used to study the causal relationship between concentration and meteorological factors. In this process, the problem of missing non-station meteorological data is solved with the help of the inverse distance weighted interpolation method, and the problem in which the convergence requirements of the CCM algorithm cannot meet the requirements is solved with the bootstrap method. The results indicated that the short path has the characteristics of slow movement, short migration path, low altitude(< 1 km), and high contribution rate, while the long path has the opposite characteristics. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the concentration is centered on the pollution source and diffuses around, with a diffusion radius of 220–270 km, showing a serious pollution center and slight gradient settlement on the edge, but the overall distribution of accumulated concentration is uneven. The results also show that temperature (TEMP and S_TEMP), evaporation, and air pressure are the main meteorological factors affecting the all-year concentration. The concentration and meteorological factors in the four mining areas also show significant seasonal characteristics, and the correlation in spring, summer, and autumn is stronger than that in winter. This study not only provides a reference for the green and sustainable exploitation of mineral resources but also provides theoretical support for the joint prevention and control of transboundary pollution.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-022-19706-w.

Transboundary pollution control in asymmetric countries: do assistant investments help?

Transboundary pollution control usually requires the cooperation of neighboring countries due to the externality of pollution. However, countries at different levels of development, which are called asymmetric countries in this paper, may have different attitudes toward this cooperation. The developing countries would like to take a free ride and they can benefit from the cooperation with developed countries, but the developed countries may not be willing to afford this cooperation cost. This paper discusses the cooperation between two asymmetric countries that developed country may provide assistant investments to help the developing country reduce pollution stock. We consider a dynamic differential game to model the transboundary pollution control between two asymmetric regions and derive the optimal equilibrium of both regions using the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation. To explore the impact of assistant investments, numerical illustrations and sensitivity analysis are implemented to compare the equilibrium strategies under two scenarios: that with or without assistant investments. We conclude that the common pollution stock will be reduced when the developed country is willing to provide assistant investments to the developing country. Besides, the equilibrium emission strategies of both countries increase with assistant investments, which means more economic benefits for both sides.

Transboundary Pollution Control and Competitiveness Concerns in a Two-Country Differential Game

We analyze a transboundary pollution control problem in a heterogeneous two-country differential game setting in which regulators care for the implications of environmental policies on the competitiveness. We characterize the noncooperative and the cooperative solutions, showing that under both scenarios, in the presence of competitiveness considerations, heterogeneous countries will generally set different carbon taxes. This suggests, while implementing a mitigation policy is necessary to combat climate change, a universally homogeneous policy may not be optimal. Moreover, when countries are symmetric, except for their degree of competitiveness concerns, under noncooperation introduction of such concerns lowers the abatement policies in both countries, however, the self-effect is stronger than the cross-effect. Nevertheless, under cooperation, an increase in country j’s competitiveness concerns leads to more stringent policies in country i, while, the self-effect could be either positive or negative. The latter result emphasizes the importance of cooperation to tackle pollution in the presence of competitiveness concerns.

Analysis of multiple ecological compensation strategies for transboundary pollution control in a river basin

Considering a basin composed of multiple upstream and downstream regions with the pollution occurring across regional boundaries, a Stackelberg game model is developed to investigate the multiple ecological compensation strategies for transboundary pollution control. The results show that (1) under the equilibrium strategy of ecological compensation all regions obtain a Pareto improvement result. (2) Ecological compensation results in an increase in total abatement investment. In particular, a very interesting result is that (3) rising abatement costs in a region compensate more for its upstream regions, whereas its downstream regions do not compensate more for it.

Dynamic Optimal Control Differential Game of Ecological Compensation for Multipollutant Transboundary Pollution

This paper studies a Stackelberg differential game between an upstream region and a downstream region for transboundary pollution control and ecological compensation in a river basin and increases the number of pollutants assumed in the model to multiple. Emission and green innovation investment between upstream and downstream regions in the same basin is a Stackelberg game, and the downstream region provides economic compensation for green innovation investment in the upstream region. The results show that there is an optimal ecological compensation rate, and a Pareto improvement result can be obtained by implementing ecological compensation. Increasing the proportion of ecological compensation can improve the nonvirtuous chain reaction between green innovation investment cost, pollutant transfer rate, and ecological compensation rate. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a joint mechanism composed of the government and the market and formulate a reasonable green innovation subsidy scheme according to the actual situation of the basin, so as to restrict the emergence of this “individual rational” behavior. For river basin areas that can establish a unified management department and organize the implementation of decision‐making, the cooperative game is a very effective pollution control decision.

A Differential Game of Transboundary Pollution Control and Ecological Compensation in a River Basin

This paper investigates a Stackelberg differential game between an upstream region and a downstream region for transboundary pollution control and ecological compensation (EC) in a river basin. Among them, the downstream region as the leader chooses its abatement investment level and an ecological compensation rate to encourage upstream investing in water pollution control firstly. After then, the upstream region as the follower determines its abatement investment level to maximize welfare. FFurthermore, we take into consideration the effects of efficiency-improving and cost-reducing learning by doing which are originated from abatement investment activity of both regions simultaneously. The results show the following. (i) There is an optimal ecological compensation rate and under which a Pareto improvement result can be obtained. (ii) Carrying out EC will shift some abatement investment from the downstream region into the upstream region. (iii) The efficiency-improving and cost-reducing learning by doing derived from abatement investment activity of both regions can decrease the optimal ecological compensation rate, increase abatement investment,and improve the social welfare.

Optimal control for transboundary pollution under ecological compensation: A stochastic differential game approach

Abstract To account for previously ignored, yet widely observed uncertainty in nature's capability to replenish the natural environment in ways that should inform ideal design of ecological compensation (EC) regimes, this study constructs a stochastic differential game (SDG) model to analyze transboundary pollution control options between a compensating and compensated region. Equilibrium strategies in the stochastic, two player game inform optimal control theory and reveal a welfare distribution mechanism to form the basis of an improved cooperative game contract. A case-based numerical example serves to verify the theoretical results and supports three key insights. First, accounting for various random disturbance factors, the probabilistic pollutant stock in Stackelberg non-cooperative game exceeds that of a cooperative game situation. Second, the EC mechanism provides long-term, effective incentives only when the marginal losses of environmental damage in the compensating region are more than twice that of the compensated region. Achieving a Pareto optimal equilibrium relies upon the attainment of a dynamic allocation ratio derived from the analysis of a robust welfare allocation mechanism. Third, cross-region cooperation reliably outperforms Stackelberg non-cooperation due to either overwhelming incumbent economic interests or high abatement costs. This study illuminates the importance of balancing both parties' interests within an EC agreement while reducing uncertainty around unobserved environmental factors during ex-ante negotiations.

A differential game analysis of multipollutant transboundary pollution in river basin

In this paper, we present a differential game model of watershed multi-pollutant transboundary pollution in which the pollutants can be either technological substitutes or complements, and the abatement costs of two pollutants are not separable. It is the first time that the multi-pollutant is derived in a cooperative differential game on transboundary pollution control. The results are discussed with some illustrative examples under the cases of the pollutants are substitutes and complements. Our results show that (i) the system always admits saddle point steady-state equilibrium under the non-cooperative and cooperative games,respectively; (ii) when the pollutants are substitutes or complements, the upstream region optimal emission levels in the cooperative game are lower than that in the non-cooperative game; while the downstream region optimal emission levels in the cooperative game are equal to that in the non-cooperative game; (iii) the upstream region optimal pollution stocks in the cooperative game are lower than that in the non-cooperative game under the case when the pollutants are substitutes or complements.

Transboundary Pollution Control and Competitiveness Concerns in a Two-Country Differential Game

We analyze a transboundary pollution control problem in a heterogeneous two-country differential game in which each country’s regulator cares for the implications of environmental policy on its competitiveness. We characterize and compare the noncooperative and the cooperative solutions, showing that under both scenarios, the heterogeneous countries impose different tax rates despite such competitiveness concerns. This may suggest that, while implementing some kind of mitigation policy is necessary to combat climate change, a universally homogeneous environmental tax may not be either desirable or optimal.

Environmental awareness and environmental Kuznets curve

We study the impacts of environmental awareness on environmental quality and income-pollution relationship. For our theoretical analysis, we examine a non-cooperative transboundary pollution control game between a less developed country (LDC) and a more developed country (MDC), and find that a higher level of environmental awareness by the government and citizens of the LDC has comprehensively beneficial effects on environmental policy and regional environmental quality. It also flattens the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and shifts it to the left. Our empirical findings confirm the theoretical projections. In the LDCs, environmental awareness plays an influential role in determining environmental expenditure; also, EKCs arrive at the peaks earlier, in countries where the public has higher environmental awareness.

Spatial vs. non-spatial transboundary pollution control in a class of cooperative and non-cooperative dynamic games

We analyze a transboundary pollution differential game where, in addition to the standard temporal dimension, a spatial dimension is introduced to capture the geographical relationships among regions. Each region behaves strategically and maximizes its welfare net of environmental damage caused by the pollutant stock. The emission-output ratio is reduced by investment in region specific clean technology which evolves over time. The spatio-temporal dynamics of the pollutant stock is described by a parabolic partial differential equation. Using aggregate variables we study the feedback Nash equilibrium of a discrete-space model which could be seen as a space discretization of the continuous-space model. The discrete-space model presents the three main features of the original formulation: the model is truly dynamic; the agents behave strategically; and the model incorporates spatial aspects. For special functional forms previously used in the literature we analytically characterize the feedback Nash equilibrium and evaluate the impact of the introduction of the spatial dimension in the economic-environmental model. We show that our spatial model is a generalization of the model that disregards the spatial aspects. We analytically show that as the parameter describing how pollution diffuses among regions tends to infinity the equilibrium policies converge to those in the non-spatial setting. In the non-cooperative framework the spatially non-myopic behavior prescribes lower equilibrium emission rates, and consequently a lower global pollution stock. This is compatible with greater long-run welfares. In the cooperative framework, although the strategic interaction among the players does not exist, the only decision-maker still makes spatially strategic decisions.

Study on the Cooperation Mechanism of Transboundary Water Pollution Control in China from the Perspective of Network Governance

Transboundary water pollution affects the sustainable socio-economic development in the region.Based on the current social governance tone of co-governance and sharing and the complexity of water pollution, the governance of transboundary water pollution is not just the "one-man show" of the government, but also included in the main body of private enterprise organizations, non-profit environmental organizations and citizens.The multiple subjects included in the network of governance should take into account the goals of ecological effects, social effects and economic effects, and establish cooperation in cross-border water pollution control by establishing good communication channels, coordinating governance activities, strengthening trust and sharing relationships, and handling cultural differences mechanism. Compared with the traditional model of control and governance by a single administrative force, the network cooperative governance of transboundary water pollution is more flexible, autonomous, innovative, public and economical. Its core philosophy is "cross-border cooperation and pollution sharing Governance, effectiveness sharing, multi-win-win situation. "