Environmental Infrastructure Management

Environmental issues continue to burden governments and economies throughout the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the newly-independent states of the former Soviet Union. Severe environmental degradation is endemic to the region, the existing environmental infrastructure is often inadequate, significant new investment is perhaps decades away, and there is little knowledge of advanced techniques for impact assessment, project evaluation and project financing. The first two papers in this collection survey available cost-effective technology for solid-waste treatment and air-pollution control, providing guidance for possible incremental additions to the existing infrastructure. There is also a discussion of transferable pollution credits as an instrument in regulating air quality. The treatment of economic incentives embraces user fees and other pollution-control instruments. A range of methods are presented for the evaluation and comparison of alternative projects where data is poor or scarce. The Canadian experience with specific capital-budgeting techniques is given detailed attention, and debt-financing strategies are addressed in the context of present-day Ukraine. Finally, an outline is given of a general framework for making decisions about environmental projects, including the use of 4nvironmental-impact assessments.