Date of Award
1997
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Master of Science in Maritime Affairs
Specialization
General Maritime Administration & Environment Protection
Campus
Malmö, Sweden
Country
India
First Advisor
Sampson, Theodore.
Abstract
Economics is a science of choice, of unlimited wants chasing scarce resources. In choosing the resources, human-beings leave a mark on the environment - depleting it, degrading it and, sometimes, destroying it. The destruction is manifest in the tropical coastal waters where some of the world’s richest ecosystems, characterised by extensive coral reefs and dense mangrove forests, exist. Large-scale destruction of valuable resources can cause serious degradation of the environment, thus affecting the economic life of coastal habitants. In economic terms then, is the ‘supply’ of coastal resources infinitely elastic? If not, what is the cost of achieving such elasticity, of building it into our development plans? What is the yardstick of sustainability and how can it be used to reach a trade-off‘? These are the issues that this study tackles with respect to coastal zone development. The central idea is to juxtapose the net economic benefits of coastal development projects, namely development of port, coastal tourism and aquaculture, with the environmental implications. The analysis is aimed at developing a method to attach economic value to resources as inputs to economic development, and to the environmental damage resulting from such development. The study goes beyond normal quantifiable effects and utilises the input-output analysis to account for the total environmental effects of an economic development so that cost-benefit analysis will not ignore the interdependent effects on the environment. Finally, the study undertakes to convince the potential decision maker of the utility of amalgamating the model for evaluation of environmental costs with environmentally ethical decision making