Emi Uchida

Grain for Green: Cost-Effectiveness and Sustainability of China’s Conservation Set-Aside Program

Since 1999, China has pursued Grain for Green, an ambitious conservation set-aside program to prevent soil erosion. This paper evaluates its cost-effectiveness and sustainability. The results indicate that while the program has made a clear attempt to retire plots that are susceptible to soil erosion, there is room for better targeting. The government also may be able to generate fiscal savings if the payments more accurately reflect the differences in the opportunity costs of each plot. The study finds that some farmers may reconvert the land back to cultivation after program ends. (JEL Q23, H43)

Economic Growth and the Expansion of Urban Land in China

This paper aims to demonstrate the relationship between economic growth and the urban core area in order to help urban planners reach a better understanding of the pressures that are leading to changes in land use. Using a unique panel dataset with measures of China’s land use, it is shown that, during the late 1980s and 1990s, China’s urban land area rose significantly. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis are then used to identify the determinants of urban land use change. In addition to using more standard regression approaches such as ordinary least squares, the analysis is augmented with spatial statistical analysis. The analysis demonstrates the overwhelming importance of economic growth in the determination of urban land use. Overall, it is found that urban land expands by 3 per cent when the economy, measured by gross domestic product, grows by 10 per cent. It is also shown that the expansion of the urban core is associated with changes in China’s economic structure. If urban planners have access to forecasts of economic growth, using these results they should be able to have a better basis for planning the expansion of the built-up area in the urban core.

Are the poor benefiting from China's land conservation program?

This paper studies the impact of the largest conservation set-aside program in the developing world: Chinas Grain for Green program, on poverty alleviation in rural areas. Based on a large-scale survey, we find that the program was implemented mostly in the areas of China that are fairly poor. In addition, we show that income from livestock activities and some types of asset holdings of participants have increased significantly more than those of non-participants (due to program effects). Only weak evidence is provided demonstrating that participating households have begun to shift their labor into the off-farm sectors. Overall, the results suggest that the program has been moderately successful in achieving its poverty alleviation objectives.

Cost-Effectiveness of Payments for Ecosystem Services with Dual Goals of Environment and Poverty Alleviation

The goal of this article is to understand strategies by which both the environmental and poverty alleviation objectives of PES programs can be achieved cost effectively. To meet this goal, we first create a conceptual framework to understand the implications of alternative targeting when policy makers have both environmental and poverty alleviation goals. We then use the Grain for Green program in China, the largest PES program in the developing world, as a case study. We also use a data set from a survey that we designed and implemented to evaluate the program. Using the data set we first evaluate what factors determined selection of program areas for the Grain for Green program. We then demonstrate the heterogeneity of parcels and households and examine the correlations across households and their parcels in terms of their potential environmental benefits, opportunity costs of participating, and the asset levels of households as an indicator of poverty. Finally, we compare five alternative targeting criteria and simulate their performance in terms of cost effectiveness in meeting both the environmental and poverty alleviation goals when given a fixed budget. Based on our simulations, we find that there is a substantial gain in the cost effectiveness of the program by targeting parcels based on the “gold standard,” i.e., targeting parcels with low opportunity cost and high environmental benefit managed by poorer households.

The effect of a protected area on the tradeoffs between short-run and long-run benefits from mangrove ecosystems

Protected areas are used to sustain biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, protected areas can create tradeoffs spatially and temporally among ecosystem services, which can affect the welfare of dependent local communities. This study examines the effect of a protected area on the tradeoff between two extractive ecosystem services from mangrove forests: cutting mangroves (fuelwood) and harvesting the shrimp and fish that thrive if mangroves are not cut. We demonstrate the effect in the context of Saadani National Park (SANAPA) in Tanzania, where enforcement of prohibition of mangrove harvesting was strengthened to preserve biodiversity. Remote sensing data of mangrove cover over time are integrated with georeferenced household survey data in an econometric framework to identify the causal effect of mangrove protection on income components directly linked to mangrove ecosystem services. Our findings suggest that many households experienced an immediate loss in the consumption of mangrove firewood, with the loss most prevalent in richer households. However, all wealth classes appear to benefit from long-term sustainability gains in shrimping and fishing that result from mangrove protection. On average, we find that a 10% increase in the mangrove cover within SANAPA boundaries in a 5-km2 radius of the subvillage increases shrimping income by approximately twofold. The creation of SANAPA shifted the future trajectory of the area from one in which mangroves were experiencing uncontrolled cutting to one in which mangrove conservation is providing gains in income for the local villages as a result of the preservation of nursery habitat and biodiversity.

Does Self Management in Fisheries Enhance Profitability? Examination of Korea's Coastal Fisheries

Abstract Self management of natural resources has started to gain increasing attention as an alternative tool to command-and-control and market-based tools, but the fundamental question remains: is self management economically beneficial such that it should be promoted in the first place? This article uses a unique set of survey data from South Korea and applies an empirical strategy to provide some of the first quantitative evidence that self management is benefiting the fishermen. We find that positive benefits of fishery self management—an increase in fishery revenue and reduction in cost—are perceived by member fishermen, which is a good start considering the average number of years since the establishment of these self-management groups is only about seven. Empirical results of the magnitude of change in profit showed some consistent results, although the estimates were not as robust. These results suggest that the impact of fishery self management is still in progress. Thus, the government should maintain its current position to support self management as the countrys fishery management policy. JEL Classification Codes: Q22, D71

Modeling the Production of Multiple Ecosystem Services from Agricultural and Forest Landscapes in Rhode Island

This study spatially quantifies hydrological ecosystem services and the production of ecosystem services at the watershed scale. We also investigate the effects of stressors such as land use change, climate change, and choices in land management practices on production of ecosystem services and their values. We demonstrate the approach in the Beaver River watershed in Rhode Island. Our key finding is that choices in land use and land management practices create tradeoffs across multiple ecosystem services and the extent of these tradeoffs depends considerably on the scenarios and ecosystem services being compared.

TURFs and clubs: empirical evidence of the effect of self-governance on profitability in South Korea's inshore (maul) fisheries

Self-governance of natural resources has started to gain increasing attention as an alternative to command-and-control and market-based tools. However, a fundamental question remains: is self-governance economically beneficial, allowing it to serve as an alternative management tool? This paper uses a unique set of survey data from a territorial-user-right-based South Korean inshore ( maul ) fishery and applies an empirical strategy to provide some of the first quantitative evidence that self-governance benefits maul fishermen. We find that members of the self-governance group perceive the management system as having had a positive impact on four out of the eight criteria we tested: stock recovery, curtailed fishing effort, reduced disputes among fishermen and declining incidents of illegal fishing. Considering that these groups have been in existence on average for less than seven years, these results indicate that the management scheme has made good progress overall.

The impact of information on behavior under an ambient-based policy for regulating nonpoint source pollution

[The impact of information on behavior under an ambient-based policy for regulating nonpoint source pollution] Haoran Miao, Jacob Fooks, Todd Guilfoos, Kent Messer, Soni M. Pradhanang, Jordan Suter, Simona Trandafir, Emi Uchida 1 Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, University of Rhode Island 2 USDA Economics Research Service 3 Department of Applied Economics and Statistics, University of Delaware 4 Department of Geosciences, University of Rhode Island 5 Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Colorado State University * Corresponding Author. Email: haoran_miao@my.uri.edu. Kingston Coastal Institute, 1 Greenhouse Road, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881.

Integrating Watershed Hydrology and Economics to Establish a Local Market for Water Quality Improvement: A Field Experiment

Innovative market mechanisms are being increasingly recognized as effective decision-making institutions to incorporate the value of ecosystem services into the economy. We present a field experiment that integrates an economic auction and a biophysical water flux model to develop a local market process consisting of both the supply and demand sides. On the supply side, we operate an auction with small-scale livestock owners who bid for contracts to implement site-specific manure management practices that reduce phosphorus loadings to a major reservoir. On the demand side, we implement a real money, multi-unit public good auction for these contracts with residents who potentially benefit from reduced water quality risks. The experiments allow us to construct supply and demand curves to find an equilibrium price for water quality improvement. The field experiments provide a proof-of-concept for practical implementation of a local market for environmental improvements, even for the challenging context of nonpoint pollution.