Undergraduate - UnitECM2360 - Environmental and natural resource economics

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 3, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Business and Economics
Organisational Unit	Department of Economics
Offered	Not offered in 2015
Coordinator(s)	Dr Gamini Herath

Synopsis

This unit applies basic intermediate microeconomic principles to local, regional, and global environmental and natural resource management, such as river water pollution, air pollution and climate change. It provides an in-depth understanding of the theory and concepts underlying how economic and business activities affect environmental and natural resource management issues. It also includes discussion of the inverse relationship between these phenomena - how environmental and resource management concerns affect economic development - as well as how they complement each other without compromising their sustainable association.

Outcomes

The learning goals associated with this unit are to:

identify differences between conventional goods allocated efficiently and environmental commodities allocated inefficiently
explain why traditional economics fails to deal with market failures
understand cost-benefit measurements of changes in environmental quality
understand policy instruments available to achieve the optimal level of pollution and the strengths and weaknesses of policy alternatives.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 40%
Examination: 60%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Independent study may include associated readings, assessment and preparation for scheduled activities. The unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Gamini Herath

Prerequisites

ECW1101