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August 1995 - Do funding priorities for health and safety policies reflect irrational fears? the disaster of the month - rather than address more fundamental problems? A thousand people were surveyed to gauge popular feelings about funding choices between environmental and public health programs. In developing and industrial countries alike, there is concern that health and safety policy may respond to irrational fears - to the disaster of the month - rather than address more fundamental problems. In the United States, for example, some policymakers say the public worries about trivial risks while ignoring larger ones and that funding priorities reflect this view. Many public health programs with a low cost per life saved are underfunded, for example, while many environmental regulations with a high cost per life saved are issued each year. Does the existing allocation of resources reflect people's preoccupation with the qualitative aspects of risks, to the exclusion of quantitative factors (lives saved)? Or can observed differences in the cost per life saved of environmental and public health programs be explained by the way the two sets of programs are funded? Cropper and Subramanian examine the preferences of U.S. citizens for health and safety programs. They confronted a random sample of 1,000 U.S. adults with choices between environmental health and public health programs, to see which they would choose. The authors then examined what factors (qualitative and quantitative) seem to influence these choices. Respondents were asked about pairs of programs, among them: smoking education or industrial pollution control programs, industrial pollution control or pneumonia vaccine programs, radon eradication or a program to ban smoking in the workplace, and radon eradication or programs to ban pesticides. The survey results, they feel, have implications beyond the United States. They find that, while qualitative aspects of the life-saving programs are statistically significant in explaining people's choices among them, lives saved matter, too. Indeed, for the median respondent in the survey, the rate of substitution between most qualitative risk characteristics and lives saved is inelastic. But for a sizable minority of respondents, choice among programs appears to be insensitive to lives saved. The interesting question for public policy is what role the latter group plays in the regulatory process. This paper - a joint product of the Environment, Infrastructure, and Agriculture Division, Policy Research Department, and the Environment and Natural Resources Division, Asia Technical Department - is part of a larger effort in the Bank to see what can be learned about efficient environmental policy by examining the U.S. experience with environmental regulation. The authors may be contacted at mcropper@worldbank.org or usubramanian@worldbank.org.

Air Quality and Clean Air --- Breast Cancer --- Brown Issues and Health --- Children --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Environment --- Environmental Economics and Policies --- Environmental Health --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Health --- Health Care --- Health Education --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health Services --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Implementation --- Industrial Pollution --- Industry --- Insurance and Risk Mitigation --- Internet --- Knowledge --- Ozone --- Population Policies --- Public Health --- Risks --- Screening --- Smokers --- Smoking --- Strategy --- Water and Industry --- Water Pollution --- Water Resources --- Workplace

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Air quality --- Air --- Mortality --- Health aspects --- Pollution

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This paper examines the impact of measures to reduce emissions from passenger transport, specifically buses, cars, and two-wheelers in Mumbai. These include converting diesel buses to compressed natural gas (CNG), as the Indian Supreme Court required in Delhi, which would necessitate an increase in bus fares to cover the cost of pollution controls. The authors model an increase in the price of gasoline, which should affect the ownership and use of cars and two-wheelers, as well as imposing a license fee on cars to retard growth in car ownership. The impact of each policy on emissions depends not only on how the policy affects the mode that is regulated, but on shifts to other modes. The results suggest that the most effective policy to reduce emissions from passenger vehicles-in terms of the total number of tons of PM10 (particulate matter that measure less than or equal to 10 micrometers in aerodynamic diameter) reduced-is to convert diesel buses to CNG. The conversion of 3,391 diesel buses to CNG would result in an emissions reduction of 663 tons of PM10 a year, 14 percent of total emissions from transport. The bus conversion program passes the cost-benefit test. In contrast, the results suggest the elasticities of emissions from transport with respect to a gasoline tax and a tax on vehicle ownership are -0.04 and -0.10 respectively. As a consequence, it would take substantial increases in the gasoline tax or vehicle ownership tax to produce reductions in emissions similar to the bus conversion program. These results, however, reflect the low shares of cars and two-wheelers in the Mumbai emissions inventory and need not apply to cities, such as Delhi, where these shares are higher.

Air --- Air Pollution --- Bus --- Bus Fares --- Bus System --- Buses --- Cars --- Diesel --- Diesel Buses --- Motor Vehicle --- Motor Vehicle Emissions --- Passenger Transport --- Policies --- Price of Gasoline --- Private Vehicle --- Rail --- Taxis --- Transport --- Transport Economics, Policy and Planning --- Trucks --- Vehicle Fleet

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"Benefit-cost analyses of disaster risk reduction (DRR) projects are an important tool for evaluating the efficiency of such projects, and an important input into decision making. These analyses, however, often fail to monetize the benefits of reduced death and injury. The authors review the literature on valuing reduced death and injury, and suggest methods for calculating order-of-magnitude estimates of these benefits. Because few empirical estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) are available for developing countries, methods for transferring estimates from high income to middle and low income countries are reviewed. The authors suggest using the range of values implied by an income elasticity of 1.0 and an elasticity of 1.5. With regard to injury valuation they discuss arguments for and against monetizing Quality Adjusted Life Years, and provide shortcuts to valuing injuries that may be used to assess their importance in DRR benefit-cost analyses. "--World Bank web site.

Disasters. --- Mortality.

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Establishing protected areas (national parks together with wildlife sanctuaries) in North Thailand did not reduce the likelihood of forest clearing, but wildlife sanctuaries may have reduced the probability of deforestation. Where new roads are located affects how much of a threat they are to the protected areas.

Clearing of land --- Deforestation --- National parks and reserves --- Roads --- Wildlife refuges --- Environmental aspects