Financial incentives for behavioral change in the ecological city

Abstract

The author is a Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto and former Director of the Institute for Environmental Studies. His research interests are in urban environmental management/urban infrastructure; adaptation to climate change; catastrophes, environmental liability and the insurance industry; and risk analysis and environmental finance. He has extensive overseas experience, especially in Africa and China. He was the Principal Investigator for the GIS-based Soil Erosion Management Project in North China and for the Toronto component of the Sustainable Water Management Project in the Beijing-Tianjin Region, both funded by CIDA. He has held teaching appointments at North-western University, McMaster University and Ibadan University, and has also taught short courses in Senegal, Malawi and Vietnam. He holds degrees in geography from Oxford (B.A., 1965), Pennsylvania State University (M.Sc., 1967) and Bristol University (Ph.D, 1971). His most recent books are Building the Ecological City, published by Woodhead Publishing in 2002 and Environmental Finance: A Guide to Environmental Risk Assessment and Financial Products (with Sonia Labatt) published by Wiley in 2002. The text that follows is an edited version of a paper presented at the international symposion on "The Natural City," Toronto, 23-25 June, 2004, sponsored by the University of Toronto's Division of the Environment, Institute for Environmental Studies, and the World Society for Ekistics.