ENVIRONMENTAL VALUATION

Road transport infrastructure not only contributes to economic development but is also a considerable source of environmental externalities. One way to internalise the external costs (or benefits) arising from the transport sector is to include them in the economic evaluation process. However, this hardly occurs in developing countries. In Brazil, economic evaluations of transportation infrastructure projects are often called Technical, Economic and Environmental Feasibility Studies (EVTEA) and use Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) as an instrument to verify whether the benefits outweigh the costs of investment. In this book, it is verified how a CBA should be performed, the main environmental externalities of road transport infrastructure are identified and the valuation methods that can be applied to estimate a monetary value for each externality. Finally, this work presents a proposed methodology for environmental valuation with possible applicability in EVTEAs of road projects.