Author(s)

A Rana & T Masui

Abstract

Environmental pollution in India, as in the rest of the world, is increasingly becoming an important issue. Despite the regulations in place the enforcement has been weak. Government policies, in addition to regulatory mechanisms, incorporate a few market based economic instruments in economic and environmental planning. However, there is little integration in the present set of economic and environmental policies in India. A need to assess integrated policies is strongly felt. In this paper, we employ a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. This CGE model includes material flows along with integration of economic sectors with pollutant management activities, particularly solid waste management. Scenarios with environmental constraints and with enhanced environmental investments are constructed and compared with the reference scenario, which does not have any environmental constraints. Preliminary results indicate that the economic growth is affected when constraints, such as limit on emissions or final waste disposal, are imposed but with enhanced environmental investment these losses are mitigated.

Keywords