Historical and future dynamics of land use land cover and its drivers in Ajora-Woybo watershed,Omo-Gibe basin,Ethiopia

Land use land cover (LULC) dynamics have long been recognized as a significant driver of natural resource change. As a result, understanding the spatial and temporal variation of LULC in the watershed is essential for effective natural resource management and long-term development. This study attempts to analyze the dynamics and change drivers from 1990 to 2020 and predict the situation for 2035 and 2050 in the Ajora-Woybo watershed. ArcGIS 10.3 and ERDAS 2015 were used to analyze quantitative data from Landsat imagery. For supervised image classification, a Maximum-Likelihood classification algorithm was used. To identify driver variables, focus groups and key informants' interviews were done. TerrSet 18.31 software was used to predict LULC utilizing the Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network and Cellular Automata-Markov Chain models incorporated in Land Change Modeler. Six LULC classes were discovered: cultivated land, built-up, shrub land, forest land, bare land, and water body. Cultivated land, built-up area, and bare land have increased at the expense of shrub land and forest land over the last three decades. Trends in water bodies show both decreasing and increasing trends. According to the predicted outcomes, cultivated land, built-up and bare land has increased, while shrub land and forest land have declined. Finally, agricultural expansion, population growth, wood extraction, resettlement, urbanization, and lack of environmental consideration were identified as the major drivers of LULC change. The study demonstrated that there have been significant changes in the watershed LULC. As a result, reversing the predicted conditions is critical to ensuring the watershed long-term viability.     

THE TRANSFORMATION OF LANDSCAPE: MODELING POLICY AND SOCIAL IMPACTS ON THE AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE OF LESVOS

ABSTRACT. The term landscape is more and more used as an “umbrella‘ concept, covering a series of cultural, productive and ecological processes. In order to uncover mechanisms, monitor transformations and predict changes, a complicated set of interacting factors has to be taken into account. This paper presents a model for estimating social and policy impacts on agricultural landscapes, based on the assumption that agricultural landscapes are shaped at” macro “(landscape) level by” micro “interventions at farm level. The model consists of three parts: an” ecological processes “part, which deals with processes that shape the ecological and aesthetic value of a landscape, a” population dynamics “part, which examines farmer population dynamics and a” policy impact “part, which deals with direct or indirect impacts on farming systems and farmer dynamics and refers to CAP Rural Development Measures. The model is applied for the olive and graze land agricultural landscapes of Lesvos (Greece). Results, apart from revealing landscape change patterns; help to illustrate some mechanisms behind this change and indicate that Rural Development Measures are inherent with minor but important malfunctions that cannot lead to sustainable landscape management and rural development in the area.     

Innovation as a policy strategy for natural resource protection

Growing global food demands place major strains on water resources, including quality impairments and increased water scarcity. Drawing on the largely separate bodies of literature on externalities and technological innovation, this article develops a dynamic framework to explore the long‐term impacts of alternative policy approaches to the agricultural impacts on water resources. Environmental policies, which focus on correcting environmental externalities, lead to an overall gain because costs to farmers are more than offset by reduced environmental damages. Technology policies, which direct public investments into agricultural eco‐innovations, lead to benefits for farmers as well as the environment. Joint implementation of both types of policies leads to the largest overall gain. In principle, a technology policy alone could have greater environmental benefits than an environmental policy alone. This outcome is most likely in cases where the productivity effect of new technology is large and the cost of research is low. Recommendations for research managers

• As an alternative to traditional environmental policy, investments in research can provide win–win solutions that benefit the environment and agricultural producers.
• Conceivably, eco‐innovations could lead to environmental conditions that are better than those achieved by environmental policy alone.
• Adding research investments to existing environmental policy would lead to further improvements in environmental quality while also benefitting farmers.
• Unlike environmental policies that are perceived to impose costs on agriculture, technology policies impart benefits to farmers and are less likely to face political opposition from industry.
• Technology policies are likely to be the most effective when eco‐innovation leads to technologies that meaningfully reduce environmental impacts and also raise farm productivity.

     

COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS APPLIED TO WILDERNESS PRESERVATION—OPTION VALUE UNCERTAINTY AND DITONICITY

It has been recognized for some time that when cost-benefit analysis is applied to irreversible environmental decisions, such as that of developing or preserving wilderness land, there can be an option value associated with the preservation decision, which arises when there is future uncertainty with respect to the benefits of development or preservation. In this paper the provenance of option value is examined and it is shown that an important cause is a special kind of uncertainty, viz. the possibility of reversals in direction of the relative valuations of wilderness land and developed land, a property we refer to as ditonicity. It is shown that the more ditonic the relative valuation process the greater the deviance between the certainty-equivalence development policy and the stochastically optimal one, and thus by implication the greater the option value. In the two cases with zero ditonicity, when relative wilderness valuations always increase or always decrease (even though in a stochastic fashion), there is zero option value. The model used assumes that service flows from wilderness and developed land are size-dependent, with future relative values known only in terms of a stochastic process, which can take jumps up or down of the same proportional size, at random times. Development can be partial or total and can occur in impulses at any time over an infinite time horizon.     

ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION AND UNILATERAL CONTROL IN AN OPEN ECONOMY

In this paper we study two questions in environmental economics. First, within the context of a simple 2 × 2 × 2 static general equilibrium model, we seek to determine the conditions under which environmental policy, pursued unilaterally by a large country will make that country worse off. The empirical dimension of this question is stressed, and the key parameters which are germane to any policy discussion regarding this issue are identified. Second, we study—once again from the perspective of a large country—the possibility of using the domestic tax structure optimally to attain environmental policy objectives. Keeping the empirical dimension of the question in mind, we show how to compute optimal externality correcting taxes. We then briefly focus on the links between our stylized analytical model and the applied general equilibrium models currently being developed to study the effects of environmental policy quantitatively.     

环境规制、环境研发与绿色技术进步

为鼓励和引导绿色技术发展,驱动预防性技术和处理性技术协同进步,有必要开发环境规制的绿色技术进步导向功能,并探究其传导机理。论文通过建立双寡头同时博弈模型对环境规制、环境研发与绿色技术进步进行关联分析。研究表明:环境研发是环境规制推动绿色技术进步的重要传导路径;环境补贴力度会显著影响环境规制政策组合的技术进步效果;绿色技术进步导向的环境规制的政策组合存在一个普适性较强的应用策略;环境税和环境补贴的规制政策组合能够有效增进社会福利,具体表现为通过污染预防技术和污染处理技术的协同进步带来的产量增加、生产成本减少、污染产生量减少以及污染处理量增加。     

DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A SYSTEM DYNAMICS MODEL FOR INVESTIGATING AGRICULTURALLY DRIVEN LAND TRANSFORMATION IN THE NORTH CENTRAL UNITED STATES

Land transformation from grassland to cropland in the Northern Great Plains (NGP) has become a growing concern among many stakeholders. A growing body of work has sought to determine the amount and rate of land use change with less emphasis on the systemic structures or feedback processes of land use decisions. This paper presents the development of a system dynamics simulation model to integrate ecological, economic, and social components influencing land use decisions, including cattle ranching, cropland production, rural communities, land quality, and public policies. Evaluation indicated that the model satisfactorily predicted historical land, agricultural commodity, and rural community data from the model structure. Reference modes for key variables, including the farmland area, were characterized by a bias correction of 0.999, root mean squared error of prediction of 0.053, R² of 0.921, and concordance correlation coefficient of 0.0959. The model was robust under extreme and varying sensitivity tests, as well as adequately predicting land use under changing system context. The model's major contributions were the inclusion of decision‐making feedbacks from economic and social signals with connectivity to land quality and elasticity values that drive land transformation. Limitations include lack of spatial input and output capabilities useful for visual interfacing.     

财政支出、电力消费与农民收入的时空特征分析

本文将财政农业人均支出和农村人均用电量作为解释变量,农民人均纯收入作为被解释变量,利用2000-2005年中国31个省、市和自治区的有关时空数据,建立相应的空间自回归模型.模型数据统计分析表明:a)农民人均纯收入不仅存在空间自相关的特点,而且具有异质性;b)农民人均收入对财政农业人均支出、农村人均用电量存在明显的空间依赖性;c)用财政农业支出和农村用电量来反映农民收入水平十分有效,且都具有显著的正面影响.据此,文章提出了一些有针对性的提高农民收入的政策建议.     

基于向后逐步回归模型的我国农机需求特征及影响因素研究

以2004-2014年数据为样本,以农机总动力为因变量,以农机购置补贴、农机价格、农机作业服务价格、农户人均纯收入、农产品价格、农业劳动力数量和农作物播种总面积为自变量构建了我国农机需求影响因素的回归方程,向后逐步回归结果表明:(1)除农作物播种总面积、农机作业服务价格、农产品价格之外,其余变量对农机总动力的影响均统计上显著;(2)农机购置补贴、农机价格指数、农户人均纯收入及农业劳动力四个变量对农机需求的弹性系数分别为0.027、-0.004、0.457、0.474。最后根据研究结果提出加大与落实农机购置补贴、规范农机价格、培育新型经营主体、加速土地规范流转等政策建议。     

Measurement of a linkage among environmental,operational, and financial performance in Japanese manufacturing firms: A use of Data Envelopment Analysis with strong complementary slackness condition

This study investigates a linkage among environmental, operational and financial performance in Japanese manufacturing industry. All manufacturing firms examined in this study are listed in Tokyo stock exchange market. We use DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) as an evaluation methodology. This study finds that large firms have managerial capabilities to improve their operational and environmental performance. The improvement leads to the enhancement of their financial performance. However, we cannot find such a business linkage in small and medium-sized firms. They improve their operational performance and then direct themselves toward the improvement of their environmental performance. Their environmental performance is, not the first priority, the second priority for the small and medium-sized firms even though Japanese government is currently making a policy pressure on all manufacturing firms to pay attention to various environmental issues related to the global warming and climate change. The environmental protection policy is effective on only large Japanese manufacturing firms that have technological and financial capabilities for environmental protection.     

WILDLIFE LOSSES IN KENYA: AN ANALYSIS OF CONSERVATION POLICY

ABSTRACT. Despite massive conservation efforts backed bysignificant international support, Kenya has lost some 44% of its large mammal fauna over the last 17 years. This catastrophic example of resource degradation stems from a mixture of policy, institutional and market failures. Policy failures include an over‐reliance on Command and Control (prohibition on consumptive use of wildlife, prohibition on use of resources within Protected Areas) without the ability to enforce compliance; subsidies to agricultural and livestock production which, by reducing marginal production costs to below social opportunitycosts, has caused the over‐conversion of rangelands to livestock and agricultural production at the expense of conservation objectives and values; and the establishment of tourism cartels which divert wildlife generated benefits awayfrom landowners. The fundamental institutional failure is the lack of property rights and use rights of landowners over wildlife. Fundamental market failures reflect the absence of financial incentives to landowners to conserve their wildlife resource, thus setting marginal depletion costs to zero, and competing production incentives. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) is reintroducing financial incentives to landowners by permitting some consumptive use of wildlife, bymaking substantial direct grants to landowners and communities who support wildlife and bysidelining the tourism cartels and encouraging private sector tourism on private land. However, investment in conservation is still being hampered by the continuing prohibition of high value activities such as sport hunting, and by over regulation and vacillation. Furthermore, positive net benefits to landowners from wildlife operations are not in themselves adequate to guarantee economic incentives to conserve the resource. First, significant negative externalities are associated with wildlife in that they add greatly to the production costs of livestock and agriculture; second, opportunity costs (in terms of foregone benefits of development) of leaving land undeveloped for conservation are gradually increasing in response to growing populations, expanding markets and new agricultural technology; and third, some policies are having the perverse impacts of creating poverty traps. Wildlife conservation policy must accordingly be much wider in scope and use a much broader range of economic, financial and market instruments, possibly including differential land use taxes, conservation subsidies and easements, and lease back agreements. Simply creating positive net benefits from wildlife is not enough.     

Environmental tax policy,habit formation and nonlinear dynamics

In this paper, we study the impact of environmental tax policy on the dynamic property in an environment-growth model (John and Pecchenino 1994) [3]. We assume that the government levies consumption tax and uses the tax revenue to improve environmental quality. We show that the economic dynamics can be represented by a first-order difference equation in environmental quality when there is no habit formation of environmental quality. If agents have habit formation of environmental quality, the economic dynamics will be represented by a second-order difference equation in environmental quality. In both cases, chaotic and cyclical fluctuations may exist if agents’ preference towards environmental quality, the maintenance efficiency relative to degradation and the tax rate are sufficiently low. However, the economy undergoes transformation from complex dynamics to simple dynamics as the tax rate increases. Furthermore, in the presence of habit formation of environmental quality, an increase in the degree of habit formation lowers the possibility of complex dynamics.     

Emergy analysis of a farm biogas project in China: A biophysical perspective of agricultural ecological engineering

This paper aims to present a biophysical understanding of the agricultural ecological engineering by emergy analysis for a farm biogas project in China as a representative case. Accounting for the resource inputs into and accumulation within the project, as well as the outputs to the social system, emergy analysis provides an empirical study in the biophysical dimension of the agricultural ecological engineering. Economic benefits and ecological economic benefits of the farm biogas project indicated by market value and emergy monetary value are discussed, respectively. Relative emergy-based indices such as renewability (R%), emergy yield ratio (EYR), environmental load ratio (ELR) and environmental sustainability index (ESI) are calculated to evaluate the environmental load and local sustainability of the concerned biogas project. The results show that the farm biogas project has more reliance on the local renewable resources input, less environmental pressure and higher sustainability compared with other typical agricultural systems. In addition, holistic evaluation and its policy implications for better operation and management of the biogas project are presented.     

农业科技资源错配对农业科技创新全要素生产率影响的空间溢出效应

为研究农业科技资源错配与农业科技创新全要素生产率之间的空间溢出效应,利用2005-2017年所选取的25个省份的面板数据,通过动态空间杜宾模型进行实证研究.研究显示:①农业科技人力、财力资源错配与农业科技创新全要素生产率存在较强的空间相关性且分别呈现负向的区域内和区域间空间溢出效应.②农业科技财力资源错配程度每提升1%,农业科技创新全要素生产率就会下降0.264%,其中直接效应贡献0.255%,空间溢出效应贡献0.009%;农业科技人力资源错配对于农业科技创新全要素生产率的影响中间接效应起主要作用.③农业科技资源错配对于农业科技创新全要素生产率的空间效应存在显著的地区差异.     

Pesticide use,environmental spillovers and efficiency: A DEA risk-adjusted efficiency approach applied to Dutch arable farming

Pesticides are widely used by crop producers in developed countries to combat risk associated with pests and diseases. However, their indiscriminate use can lead to various environmental spillovers that may alter the agricultural production environment thus contributing to production risk. This study utilises a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to measure performance of arable farms, incorporating pesticides’ environmental spillovers and output variance as undesirable outputs in the efficiency analysis and taking explicitly into account the effect of pesticides and other inputs on production risk. The application focuses on panel data from Dutch arable farms over the period 2003–2007. A moment approach is used to compute output variance, providing empirical representations of the risk-increasing or -decreasing nature of the used inputs. Finally, shadow values of risk-adjusted inputs are computed. We find that pesticides are overused in Dutch arable farming and there is a considerable evidence of the need for decreasing pesticides’ environmental spillovers.     

ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE AND OPTIMAL OIL AND GAS EXPLOITATION

This paper examines the impacts of environmental regulations on firms in the oil and gas industry. A model is developed using optimal control theory, which extends the existing models by incorporating the environmental compliance costs into the exploration and production stages. An approach for measuring the cumulative impacts of these regulations on the firm's exploration and production is presented. The results indicate that rising environmental compliance costs lead to reductions in investment and production, and the alteration of investment and production profiles. This implies that less resources will be developed and associated economic benefit will decline. Therefore, it is vital for policy makers to consider carefully whether the perceived environmental benefits derived from these regulations justify associated compliance costs.     

On the Effects of Nonparallelism,Three-Dimensionality,and Mode Interaction in Nonlinear Boundary-Layer Stability

A self-consistent theoretical investigation is described for the nonlinear stability, and spatial development, of disturbances in a plane boundary layer subject to a number of three-dimensional modes, their nonlinear interactions, and the effects of nonparallelism of the basic flow. For the largest weakly nonlinear disturbances considered, nonparallel-flow effects appear to be negligible at first sight, and primary, secondary, and/or tertiary bifurcations, usually supercritical but not always so, can occur when two fundamental modes are present. As a result the flow downstream then always has three ultimate possibilities: a unique stable disturbed state, two or more possible stable states, or no stable state possible. It is here that the nonparallel-flow effects exert their crucial influence. For nonparallelism comes into play significantly during the initial growth or decay of a disturbance, and that initial spatial development, from given initial conditions upstream, controls what happens subsequently as the disturbance increases. Thus in the first possibility above, the stable state is achieved through a smooth bifurcation, due to nonparallelism; in the second possibility the nonparallelism decides which stable state is attained (smoothly) from the initial conditions; and in the third possibility the nonparallel flow effects force the disturbance to terminate in a singular fashion. This singularity then leads to a fully nonlinear effect, locally on the boundary-layer flow. More complicated interactions can arise if more than two three-dimensional modes are present. The novel effect of the nonparallelism has a connection with related Navier-Stokes calculations even at near-critical Reynolds numbers.     

ON OPTIMAL ENVIRONMENTAL TAXATION AND ENFORCEMENT: INFORMATION,MONITORING AND EFFICIENCY

ABSTRACT. The purpose of the paper is to contribute to the narrowing of the distance between formal theory and practical environmental policy design. We formulate a general and comprehensive theoretical model in order to take into account the different informational and technological problems which characterize the definition and implementation of environmental taxes in a second best world where there also are distortionary taxes. Having formalized these problems, we present a general model which allows us to discuss the existence of efficient and implementable environmental quality objectives and policy instruments, and to analyze many particular cases.     

INTEGRATING MARINE PROTECTED AREAS INTO MODELS FOR FISHERY ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been proposed as an insurance policy against fishery management failures and as an integral part of an optimal management system for some fisheries. However, an incorrectly designed MPA can increase the risk of depletion of some species, and can reduce the value of the system of fisheries it impacts. MPAs may alter structural processes that relate fishery outcomes to management variables and thereby compromise the models that are used to guide decisions. New models and data gathering programs are needed to use MPAs effectively. This paper discusses the motivations and methods for incorporating explicitly spatial dynamics of both fish and fishermen into fishery models so that they can be used to assess spatial policies such as MPAs. Some important characteristics and capabilities which these models should have are outlined, and a topical review of some relevant modeling methodologies is provided.     

Ordered spatial sampling by means of the traveling salesman problem

In recent years, spatial sampling has been the subject of a flourishing literature. Its use had become widespread due to the availability of topographical information about statistical units, especially in the environmental context. New algorithms enable us to take advantage of spatial locations directly. In this paper, we present a new way of using spatial information by using traditional sampling techniques as systematic sampling. By means of a famous optimization method, the traveling salesman problem, it is possible to order the statistical units in a way that preserves the spatial correlation. Next ordered sampling methods are applied on the statistical units. Therefore we can render spatial some non-spatial methods. An economic application on real data is presented and different spatial and non-spatial methods are tested. Results are compared in terms of variance estimation and spatial balance, in order to establish the possibility of spatializing traditional sampling methods and of implementing them on data of different nature, among which economic ones.