Economics of Environmental Management

PREFACE This book initially started as a relatively straightforward effort to write a text-book for those interested in the economic aspects of environmental management. This was an area in which my colleague Mark van der Veen and I noticed a considerable gap when teaching environmental management over the years to graduate students and practitioners from a variety of disciplines -though usually with a background in business administration, international management or economics. Business attention to the environment in the past three decades has increased not only the number of interested people, inter-nally and externally, but also the need for more detailed information about what environmental management entails and how to assess firms' activities in this field, ranging from more strategic to practical issues. In the process of writing, this book gradually developed into a more ambi-tious endeavour. This was particularly due to the beginning of different research projects, which renewed the need for a broad 'state of the art' to ground the empirical work. Worth mentioning are the Environment and Econ-omy Programme of the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Scope project on multinational enterprises and internationalisation strate-gies. They have offered valuable opportunities for cooperation with a large number of researchers from other universities and organisations, thus adding to the contacts already established with academics and practitioners. Important for all these projects, however, has been the pleasant atmosphere at the Institute for Environmental Management (WIMM), which is part of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Amsterdam. In this good company, I was able to spend considerable time on writing, which was highly enjoyable in spite of less agreeable developments that had nothing to do with the book. While part of life, it continues to be hard to mourn the loss of those people whose friendship and good sense of humour have been so precious. In the course of the year, cooperation was most intensive with the PhD stu-dents at the institute - Anniek Mauser, Susanne van de Wateringen, Anouk van Heeren, Seb Walhain and Chantal Wouters - and with Rob van Tulder, also involved in supervisory activities and a friendly source of intellectual inspiration. Susanne kindly read a final draft of the manuscript in search of those typical mistakes that an author tends to overlook after having seen a text perhaps too often. Helpful suggestions also came from Mark van der Veen, who shared the earliest ideas on this book and, more importantly, wrote the chapter on environmental management accounting, thus supplementing my lack of expertise on that topic. In the process, it sometimes proved difficult to find enough time and concentration as a result of the work that accompanied the rapid growth of our institute. The final paragraph of a preface always brings the problem of how to circumvent hackneyed phrases, while thanking wholeheartedly the one who is closest. Although not overlooking some assistance in drawing pictures and layout, it is not for this direct contribution to the book that I would like to thank Bart van Lindert - but just for sharing my life the way he has done.