Environmental Economics and Management (Routledge Revivals)

3

Concepts

3.1 INTRODUCTION

The purpose of Part II is to consider a limited number of pollution problems in an economic context. In order to obtain an overall view of fundamental problems, it has been considered useful to introduce simplifications of the relationships in the natural environment and of relationships between the natural environment and economic activities. The price for a necessary pedagogical simplification of this kind is that a number of concrete phenomena cannot be recognised in the aggregate concepts used.

Economic activity, production and consumption, influences the natural environment in three fundamental ways:

(1) by the occupation of space;

(2) by the extraction of raw materials, such as minerals, oil, fish, etc.;