Working Papers

The WNE Working Papers series has been published by the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw since 2008.

The WNE Working Papers series provides a fast, open channel for disseminating research conducted at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw. The papers hosted here are working versions (pre-prints) and may evolve as authors refine their analyses, incorporate feedback, or progress through formal peer-review. What you read is the current version released by the authors, timestamped and assigned DOI/ISSN identifiers to ensure precise citation and version tracking. Copyright remains with the authors, who may, at any time, upload a revised file or add a note directing readers to a later, peer-reviewed publication.

The Working Papers series accepts articles by research employees of the Faculty and publications from conferences organised at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw. Articles should be original research papers which have not been previously published, on the subject of economics.

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Number of Results 1

WP(19/2022)395. Estimating environmental damages of a tailings dam failure: The case of the Fundão Dam in Brazil

Authors: Czajkowski Mikołaj, Meade Norman, Seroa da Motta Ronaldo, Ortiz Ramon Arigoni, Welsh Mike, Blanc Gleiciane Carvalho
We present the results of a contingent valuation study aimed at estimating the monetary value of environmental and cultural/heritage injuries caused by the Fundão (tailings) Dam failure in Brazil in 2015 as perceived by the Brazilian populatio…

WP395. Estimating environmental damages of a tailings dam failure: The case of the Fundão Dam in Brazil

We present the results of a contingent valuation study aimed at estimating the monetary value of environmental and cultural/heritage injuries caused by the Fundão (tailings) Dam failure in Brazil in 2015 as perceived by the Brazilian population. While the valuation literature considering mining-related externalities is considerable, valuation studies of injuries resulting from mining incidents are scarce and most available damage assessments apply market valuation methods while rarely considering environmental and other nonmarket-valued impacts. The flooding and the release of tailings from the dam failure led to injuries to  sediments, watercourse opacity, and oxygenation, changes in riparian morphology, loss of human life, mortality to fish and wildlife, changes in the food chain and more along the 675 km watercourse of the Doce River. This was arguably the greatest environmental and cultural/heritage  injury ever caused by a single tailings dam collapse. The study followed state-of-the-art recommendations for the development, administration, and data analysis of stated-preference valuation methods. The survey of a representative sample of 5,195 Brazilian urban households revealed that the average lower-bound willingness-to-pay estimate to avoid a similar incident in the near future was 137 USD and the parametric-based estimate was 230 USD per household, which aggregates to 7.96 or 12.91 billion USD, respectively. This corresponds to environmental damages of 176 or 295 USD per m3 of tailings released.


Czajkowski Mikołaj, Meade Norman, Seroa da Motta Ronaldo, Ortiz Ramon Arigoni, Welsh Mike, Blanc Gleiciane Carvalho
tailings dam failure nonmarket environmental damages contingent valuation willingness to pay
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