This book honours Partha Dasgupta, and the field he helped establish; environment and development economics. It concerns the relationship between social systems (to include families, local communities, national economies, and the world as a whole) and natural systems (critical ecosystems, forests, water resources, mineral deposits, pollution, fisheries, and the Earth's climate). Above all, it concerns the poverty-environment nexus: the complex pathways by which people become or remain poor, and resources become or remain overexploited. With contributions by some of the world's leading economists, including five recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics, in addition to scholars based in developing countries, this volume offers a unique perspective on the environmental issues that matter most to developing countries.

About the Author:
Scott Barrett, Lenfest-Earth Institute Professor of Natural Resource Economics, Columbia University, Karl-Goran Maler, Professor Emeritus; Researcher, and former Director, Stockholm School of Economics; The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Eric S. Maskin, Adams University Professor, Harvard University

Scott Barrett is the first Lenfest-Earth Institute Professor of Natural Resource Economics at Columbia University. He also serves as vice-dean at the School of International and Public Affairs. Prior to joining Columbia, Professor Barrett served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He taught at London Business School for over a decade before teaching at Johns Hopkins University and was a distinguished visiting fellow at the Yale University Center for the Study of Globalization. Professor Barrett has been an advisor to many organizations, including the European Commission, the International Task Force on Global Public Goods, the OECD, the World Bank, and the United Nations. He is author of Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-Making (OUP, 2005) and Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods (OUP, 2007).

Karl-Goran Maler is Professor Emeritus at the Stockholm School of Economics and former Director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. His research interests are the measurement of well-being and economic analysis of complex dynamic ecological systems. Together with Professor Partha Dasgupta, he was awarded the 2002 Volvo Environment Prize. Professor Maler is jointly responsible with the EEU for the joint EEU/Beijer PhD program in Environmental Economics financed by Sida. Within this program Professor Maler teaches a graduate course in Welfare Economics.

Eric Maskin is Adams University Professor at Harvard. He received the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (with L. Hurwicz and R. Myerson) for laying the foundations of mechanism design theory. He also has made contributions to game theory, contract theory, social choice theory, political economy, and other areas of economics. He received his A.B. and Ph.D from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge University. He was a faculty member at MIT from 1977 to 1984, Harvard from 1985 to 2000, and the Institute for Advanced Study from 2000 to 2011. He re-joined the Harvard faculty in 2012.