Dimitra-Athanasia Litsardou (p)

Julio Vicente Cateia

Under the global ecological crisis and economic recession (after 2008), land management regimes and particularly the development of public land assets in protected areas are affected by policies reform and prevailing practices. Socio-economic phenomena and neo-liberal politico-administrative tendencies at a wider scale give rise to key issues of privatization process in Greece and put emphasis on simplifying procedures for building permits and environmental licensing; challenging the role of spatial planning. An allegedly “flexible” spatial planning system, aimed to put exploitation of public sector’s private property on fast track, facilitates large-scale investments as “a driver of sustainable growth”. This spatial organization model provides special plans as institutional alternatives to traditional land-use planning with no regard to translate the abstract concept of sustainability into tangible actions. The transfer of Greek public land in PAs to the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) and later to the Hellenic Corporation of Assets and Participations (HCAP) for privatization remains a controversial issue of great importance, since it stimulates a development model shift into economic growth with short-term benefits but long-term costs; producing extensive territorial restructuring and deep spatial transformations at a national/ regional/ local level. Having in view the foregoing, such policies consider public property as "dead capital" threaten to transform public goods into rivalrous and excludable private goods. The rapid urbanization of land resource areas in PAs affect adversely the natural heritage reserves, imposing unreasonable limitations on alternative and more profitable future uses of a highly-valued natural capital asset.
Strategically deployed, spatial planning of investments in PAs can be a determinant for public land’s sustainability in generating sustainable outcomes within market and society; iff turning strategic and regulatory plans into actions to (re-)generate consensus-based decision-making and public leadership in a more operational and effective way. Within that framework, establishing an optimal equilibrium among the allocation of natural resources, broader conservation goals, sustainable development and (multi-level/actor) governance modes becomes a prerequisite in qualitative and quantitative terms. Thus, it is critical to develop specific criteria and indicators in order to evaluate the spatial impacts of privatization at different spatio-temporal scales and various consecutive stages of implementation, with a view to outperform conventional coordination and to reconcile the sometime conflicting conservation goals with development objectives. Natural capital can operate as an essential economic factor, being a major comparative and competitive advantage-privilege that triggers development initiatives; optimizing the socio-economic and environmental characteristics of the affected areas in Greece.

Amit Batabyal (p)

Dimitra-Athanasia Litsardou

We study pollution in the Ganges river caused by tanneries in the city of Kanpur in India. Two tanneries, A and B, are located on the same bank of the Ganges in Kanpur. Both produce leather and the production of leather requires the use of chemicals that are toxic to humans. Tannery A is located upstream from tannery B. Tannery A's leather production depends directly only on labor use but tannery B's leather production depends on labor use, the chemical waste generated by tannery A, and the natural pollution absorbing capacity of the Ganges. In this setting, we accomplish three tasks. First, we determine the equilibrium production of leather by both tanneries in the benchmark case in which there is no pollution. Second, we ascertain how the benchmark equilibrium is altered when tannery B accounts for the negative externality imposed on it by tannery A. Finally, we analyze what happens to leather production and to labor use when the two tanneries merge and then we discuss some policy implications emanating from our research.