The decline in vulture populations due to diclofenac poisoning has become an issue of some concern in India. This paper conducts a cost benefit analysis of policy options to mitigate these damages. Vultures compete for food with feral dogs, a major source of rabies and bites. These human health impacts are found to be significant and may outweigh costs of moving to alternative veterinary drugs. A preliminary survey of the Parsi community finds no spiritual values, though further work needs to be done on this issue. Even with a number of key benefits not valued -notably tourism and existence values -the net benefits of policies driven by vulture protection are found to be positive.

Technical and environmental efficiency of some coal-fired thermal power plants in India is estimated using a methodology that accounts for firm's efforts to increase the production of good output and reduce pollution with the given resources and technology. The methodology used is directional output distance function. Estimates of firm-specific shadow prices of pollutants (bad outputs), and elasticity of substitution between good and bad outputs are also obtained. The technical and environmental inefficiency of a representative firm is estimated as 0.10 implying that the thermal power generating industry in Andhra Pradesh state of India could increase production of electricity by 10 per cent while decreasing generation of pollution by 10 percent. This result shows that there are incentives or win-win opportunities for the firms to voluntarily comply with the environmental regulation. It is found that there is a significant variation in marginal cost of pollution abatement or shadow prices of bad outputs across the firms and an increasing marginal cost of pollution abatement with respect to pollution reduction by the firms. The variation in marginal cost of pollution abatement and compliance to regulation across firms could be reduced by having economic instruments like emission tax.JEL Classification: Q 25

The use of simulation models is essential when exploring transitions to low-carbon futures and climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. There are many models developed to understand socio-environmental processes and interactions, and analyze alternative scenarios, but hardly one single model can serve all the needs. There is much expectation in climate-energy research that constructing new purposeful models out of existing models used as building blocks can meet particular needs of research and policy analysis. Integration of existing models, however, implies sophisticated coordination of inputs and outputs across different scales, definitions, data and software. This paper presents an online integration platform which links various independent models to enhance their scope and functionality. We illustrate the functionality of this web platform using several simulation models developed as standalone tools for analyzing energy, climate and economy dynamics. The models differ in levels of complexity, assumptions, modeling paradigms and programming languages, and operate at different temporal and spatial scales, from individual to global. To illustrate the integration process and the internal details of our integration framework we link an Integrated Assessment Model (GCAM), a Computable General Equilibrium model (EXIOMOD), and an Agent Based Model (BENCH). This toolkit is generic for similar integrated modeling studies. It still requires extensive pre-integration assessment to identify the ‘appropriate’ models and links between them. After that, using the web service approach we can streamline module coupling, enabling interoperability between different systems and providing open access to information for a wider community of users.