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Welcome to the St Andrews Sustainable Development and Environmental Economics blog page!

Written by St Andrews undergraduate and postgraduate students, these blogs analyse environmental economics issues (topics range from plastic waste to climate change), advocating policy to address such issues, and providing implementation ideas.

This is a cross section of the excellent blogs from the 2017-18 academic year to date, with the hope of posting more in future years.

If you are interested in providing a blog for this series, contact Eoin McLaughlin (Lecturer in environmental economics, St Andrews)

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Red Tides – Are We Fertilizing Our Oceans To Death?

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Source: http://otlibrary.com/what-is-a-red-tide/ In November 2017 more than 300 turtles were found floating dead on the Pacific near the coast of El Salvador . Such occurrences had been observed in previous years with smaller numbers of 120 between 200 dead animals. Whereas in past cases the cause for this remained unresolved or related to savage fishermen disposing unwanted haul back into the ocean, a monthlong catching moratorium that was active during the time the turtle die-off was discovered turned the attention to the bloom of toxic harmful algae. Algae blooms are a natural component of marine ecosystems. The majority is non-hazardous to living organisms and serves as food source for sea animals. However, certain combinations of nutrients in the water, temperature and oceanic currents can favour the growth of harmful algae blooms (HAB), also considered as red tides, given the colour of the algae turning the water red (Hallegraeff, 1993). Even though HABs hav
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Can electrical vehicles clean up Europe's transportation sector?

About a quarter of Europe's greenhouse gases (GHGs) come out of exhaust pipes in the transportation sector ( European Commission,  2017). If the European Union (EU) is to fulfil their Paris climate pledge, and cut 40% of domestic emissions from the 1990 baseline by 2030, systemic changes will have to take place within the transportation sector in near future. So far, emission levels in the agriculture and industry sectors are gradually declining, however, the transportation sector proves to be far more stubborn ( European Commission , 2017). Thus, in 2016, the European Commission (EC) introduced a low-emission mobility strategy. The overarching aims therein are ensuring the EU makes a transition towards a low-carbon economy, for the sake of remaining competitive and delivering a transportation sector that is able to meet future demands ( European Commission , 2017). These objectives can be achieved with the deployment of incentives, subsidies, and setting national targets.
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Dhaka Turning into Dystopia with Degrading Air Quality

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Dhaka’s degrading air quality (Source: The Daily Star, 2017). Air pollution is one of the most clichéd phenomena in the unban centers all around the world and Dhaka; the capital of Bangladesh would certainly hold a prime position in this setting. With myriads of economical, political and especially, infrastructural and environmental issues, it is not an exaggeration to say that in the 100 th year of independence in 2071 there might be a documentary broadcasted on international media namely ‘Dhaka: The City That Once Was’ . The megacity comprises of Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) and five adjacent municipal areas covering a total area of 1,353 km 2 . According to Gurjar et.al. (2010), five megacities in the world have excessive number of deaths which is caused by air pollution with Dhaka holding the top position just ahead of Cairo and Beijing. These megacities were distinguished with regards to acute health hazards caused by air pollution in comparison to other megaci
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