Value of land as a pollutant sink for international waters

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare the values of a marginal change in the area of land as a pollutant sink under different decision-making contexts and objectives: international coordination versus national policies for pollutant reduction, and maximization of net benefits versus minimization of costs for pollutant reductions. The analytical results show that a coordinated policy between countries generates a higher value of a marginal change in the supply of land as a pollutant sink than an uncoordinated policy. It is also shown that the value is lower (higher) under the decision objective of maximizing net benefits when the efficient pollutant load is higher (lower) than the load target under the cost effectiveness approach. An application to the Baltic Sea drainage basin land as a nitrogen sink for the management of eutrophication reveals that the differences between values under different policy contexts and objectives can be quite large in magnitude. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.