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Larsen, Bjorn

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environmental health risk assessment, health valuation, cost-benefit analysis, poverty-environment linkages, natural resource valuation, household survey design
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Bjorn Larsen consulting
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
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Bjorn Larsen is an International Development Economist and Consultant to international and bilateral development agencies, consulting firms, and research institutions with 25 years of professional experience.   His primary fields of consulting and research are environmental health and natural resource management from over 50 countries in Asia, Central and South America, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa.  Fields of expertise include environmental health risk assessment, health valuation, cost-benefit analysis, poverty-environment linkages, child malnutrition and environment linkages, natural resource degradation and valuation, poverty and natural resources, household survey design and administration, and statistical analysis of household survey data. He has worked extensively on indoor air pollution from solid fuels, urban air pollution, water supply, sanitation and hygiene, and child nutrition and health.

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Arab Republic of Egypt - Cost of Environmental Degradation: Air and Water Pollution
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-10-01) Larsen, Bjorn
    Quantitative assessments of health impacts from environmental pollution are useful informationfor government and the general public. Such assessments can serve as an instrument to identify environmental priorities, mobilize support for their implementation, and, more broadly, to advance toward realizing environmental objectives. This report provides estimates of health effects of ambient air pollution (AAP) in Greater Cairo, and inadequate household drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) nationwide in Egypt. Monetized estimates are provided of the social and economic cost of these health effects in Egyptian pounds and as a percentage of Egypt’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2016/17, using standard economic valuation techniques. The report finds that 19,200 people died prematurely and over 3 billion days were lived with illness in Egypt in 2017 as a result of ambient PM2.5 air pollution in Greater Cairo, and inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene in all of Egypt. The estimated cost of these health effects was equivalent to 2.5 percent of Egypt’s GDP in 2016/17. The cost of ambient PM2.5 air pollution in Greater Cairo was highest, with a central estimate of LE 47 billion, equivalent to 1.35 percent of GDP. The cost of inadequate drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene nationwide was LE 39 billion, equivalent to 1.15 percent of GDP. However, water related costs are likely higher than suggested by this figure because of undetermined exposure to lead, other heavy metals, and chemicals through drinking water. On a per capita basis, the cost of ambient air pollution in Greater Cairo was LE 2.7 billion per one million people. This is nearly seven times higher than the nationwide cost per million people of inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene. While the report finds that air quality, in terms of PM2.5 concentrations, improved in Greater Cairo over the period from 1999 to 2016, it was outpaced by population growth, resulting in an increase in annual deaths from ambient PM2.5. Annual deaths from ambient PM2.5 per 100,000 people did, however, decline by 8 percent from 79 to 73 from 1999 to 2017.
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    Energy Subsidy Reform Assessment Framework: Local Environmental Externalities Due to Energy Price Subsidies — A Focus on Air Pollution and Health
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06-30) Enriquez, Santiago; Larsen, Bjorn; Sánchez-Triana, Ernesto
    This note aims to provide an overview and guidance on the use of tools to assess the environmental and health effects of changes in the levels of fine particulate matter caused by higher consumption of energy due to subsidized prices at the country level. It also provides information to help practitioners develop reliable estimates even in the absence of data and with limited resources. The topic of the note is highly complex and involves multiple fields and disciplines. The note attempts to reduce such complexity by breaking the assessment down into several distinct steps, each with its own methodologies. The note is intended to serve as a source of resources and practical advice to guide practitioners along each of these steps. This note focuses the analysis of price subsidies on primary and secondary fine particulate matter (PM2.5, atmospheric particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns), the pollutant with the largest health effects worldwide, and using intake fractions to estimate population exposure to PM2.5 from fossil fuels and solid biomass. This approach is like that of recent global studies of energy price subsidies and taxes. The intake fractions are combined with the relative-risk functions for major health outcomes of air pollution from the Global Burden of Disease study to estimate the health effects associated with energy price subsidies. The note proposes three geographic-demographic scales: urban areas with a population over 100,000, urban areas with a population less than 100,000, and rural areas. The note also discusses the availability of monitoring measurement data and alternative options for determining ambient PM2.5 concentrations at the proposed geographic-demographic scale, as well as approaches to deal with data scarcity. The method for estimating the economic value of mortality caused by air pollution follows a recent World Bank report, using a cross-country transfer method of the value of statistical life (VSL). In addition, the note proposes methods for incorporating valuation of increased illness, although morbidity is generally found to constitute a relatively minor share of the health costs of air pollution.
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    Sustainability and Poverty Alleviation: Confronting Environmental Threats in Sindh, Pakistan
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-07-14) Sánchez-Triana, Ernesto; Enriquez, Santiago; Larsen, Bjorn; Webster, Peter; Afzal, Javaid; Strukova Golub, Elena; Raza, Hammad; Ali, Mosuf; Rajani, P. S.
    The underlying goal of this book is to facilitate and stimulate sharing of information on these phenomena and to provide an interdisciplinary framework for bringing about improved environmental conditions in Sindh. The book offers methods to identify environmental and climate change priority problems; analyzes interventions to address such problems; establishes a social learning mechanism to continuously improve Sindh’s responses and build resilience to climate variability and change; and provides opportunities for stakeholders to be involved in decisively tackling climate change and deteriorating environmental conditions.
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    Nicaragua: The Cost of Inadequate Sanitation
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06) Larsen, Bjorn
    This report examines the social economic impact of inadequate sanitation in Nicaragua. The study on which it is based has been promoted by the Economics of Sanitation Initiative (ESI), led by the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank (WSP). The report includes basic information on Nicaragua, records of sanitation in the country and the results of the analysis of the economic impacts on health, water resources, tourism, and other impacts on welfare.
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    The Economics of Regional Poverty-Environment Programs: An Application for Lao People's Democratic Republic
    (World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-04) Buys, Piet; Chomitz, Kenneth; Dasgupta, Susmita; Deichmann, Uwe; Larsen, Bjorn; Meisner, Craig; Nygard, Jostein; Pandey, Kiran; Pinnoi, Nat; Wheeler, David R.
    Program administrators are often faced with the difficult problem of allocating scarce resources among regions in a country when interventions are aimed at addressing multiple objectives. One main concern is the tradeoff between poverty reduction and improvement of environmental quality. To provide a framework for analysis, the authors develop a model of optimal budget allocation that allows for variations in three factors: administrators' valuation of objectives; their willingness to accept tradeoffs among objectives and regional allotments; and regional administrative costs. The results from an application of this model using information for Lao People's Democratic Republic show that simple poverty indicators alone do not provide consistent guidelines for policy. However, when different poverty indicators are embedded in an optimizing model that incorporates preferences and costs, the resulting provincial allocations are very similar. This suggests that adoption of a formal analytical approach to resource allocation can help promote the harmonization of regional policy guidelines.