Pushpam Kumar

Greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture

Agricultural lands occupy 37% of the earths land surface. Agriculture accounts for 52 and 84% of global anthropogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Agricultural soils may also act as a sink or source for CO2, but the net flux is small. Many agricultural practices can potentially mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the most prominent of which are improved cropland and grazing land management and restoration of degraded lands and cultivated organic soils. Lower, but still significant mitigation potential is provided by water and rice management, set-aside, land use change and agroforestry, livestock management and manure management. The global technical mitigation potential from agriculture (excluding fossil fuel offsets from biomass) by 2030, considering all gases, is estimated to be approximately 5500–6000 Mt CO2-eq. yr−1, with economic potentials of approximately 1500–1600, 2500–2700 and 4000–4300 Mt CO2-eq. yr−1 at carbon prices of up to 20, up to 50 and up to 100 US

The economics of ecosystems and biodiversity : ecological and economic foundations

t CO2-eq.−1, respectively. In addition, GHG emissions could be reduced by substitution of fossil fuels for energy production by agricultural feedstocks (e.g. crop residues, dung and dedicated energy crops). The economic mitigation potential of biomass energy from agriculture is estimated to be 640, 2240 and 16 000 Mt CO2-eq. yr−1 at 0–20, 0–50 and 0–100 US

Get the science right when paying for nature's services

t CO2-eq.−1, respectively.

Handbook on the economics of ecosystem services and biodiversity

Linking biophysical aspects of ecosystems with human benefits through the notion of ecosystem services is essential to assess the trade-offs (ecological, socio-cultural, economic and monetary) involved in the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity in a clear and consistent manner. Any ecosystem assessment should be spatially and temporally explicit at scales meaningful for policy formation or interventions, inherently acknowledging that both ecological functioning and economic values are context, space and time specific. Any ecosystem assessment should first aim to determine the service delivery in biophysical terms, to provide solid ecological underpinning to the economic valuation or measurement with alternative metrics. Clearly delineating between functions, services and benefits is important to make ecosystem assessments more accessible to economic valuation, although no consensus has yet been reached on the classification. Ecosystem assessments should be set within the context of contrasting scenarios - recognising that both the values of ecosystem services and the costs of actions can be best measured as a function of changes between alternative options. In assessing trade-offs between alternative uses of ecosystems, the total bundle of ecosystem services provided by different conversion and management states should be included. Any valuation study should be fully aware of the „cost? side of the equation, as focus on benefits only ignores important societal costs like missed opportunities of alternative uses; this also allows for a more extensive range of societal values to be considered. Ecosystem assessments should integrate an analysis of risks and uncertainties, acknowledging the limitations of knowledge on the impacts of human actions on ecosystems and their services and on their importance to human well-being. In order to improve incentive structures and institutions, the different stakeholders - i.e. the beneficiaries of ecosystem services, those who are providing the services, those involved in or affected by the use, and the actors involved at different levels of decision-making - should be clearly identified, and decision making processes need to be transparent1. Integrating the Ecological and Economic Dimensions in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Valuation 2. Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services 3. Measuring Biophysical Quantities and the Use of Indicators 4. The Socio-cultural Context of Ecosystem and Biodiversity Valuation 5. The Economics of Valuing Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity 6. Discounting, Ethics, and Options for Maintaining Biodiversity and Ecosystem Integrity 7. Lessons Learned and Linkages with National Policies Appendix 1: How the TEEB Framework Can be Applied: The Amazon Case Appendix 2: Matrix Tables for Wetland and Forest Ecosystems Appendix 3: Estimates of Monetary Values of Ecosystem ServicesAll ecosystems are shaped by people, directly or indirectly and all people, rich or poor, rural or urban, depend on the capacity of ecosystems to generate essential ecosystem services. In this sense, people and ecosystems are interdependent social-ecological systems. The ecosystem concept describes the interrelationships between living organisms (people included) and the non-living environment and provides a holistic approach to understanding the generation of services from an environment that both delivers benefits to and imposes costs on people. Variation in biological diversity relates to the operations of ecosystems in at least three ways: 1. increase in diversity often leads to an increase in productivity due to complementary traits among species for resource use, and productivity itself underpins many ecosystem services, 2. increased diversity leads to an increase in response diversity (range of traits related to how species within the same functional group respond to environmental drivers) resulting in less variability in functioning over time as environment changes, 3. idiosyncratic effects due to keystone species properties and unique trait-combinations which may result in a disproportional effect of losing one particular species compared to the effect of losing individual species at random. Ecosystems produce multiple services and these interact in complex ways, different services being interlinked, both negatively and positively. Delivery of many services will therefore vary in a correlated manner, but when an ecosystem is managed principally for the delivery of a single service (e.g. food production), other services are nearly always affected negatively. Ecosystems vary in their ability to buffer and adapt to both natural and anthropogenic changes as well as recover after changes (i.e. resilience). When subjected to severe change, ecosystems may cross thresholds and move into different and often less desirable ecological states or trajectories. A major challenge is how to design ecosystem management in ways that maintain resilience and avoids passing undesirable thresholds. There is clear evidence for a central role of biodiversity in the delivery of some – but not all - services, viewed individually. However, ecosystems need to be managed to deliver multiple services to sustain human well-being and also managed at the level of landscapes and seascapes in ways that avoid the passing of dangerous tipping-points. We can state with high certainty that maintaining functioning ecosystems capable of delivering multiple services requires a general approach to sustaining biodiversity, in the long-term also when a single service is the focus.For most resource allocation problems economists use a capital investment approach. Resources should be allocated to those investments yielding the highest rate of return, accounting for uncertainty, risk and the attitude of the investor toward risk. As illustrated in Figure 6.1, suppose an investor has a choice between letting a valuable tree grow at a rate of 5 per cent per year, or cutting the tree down, selling it and putting the money in the bank. Which decision is best depends on the rate of interest the bank pays. If the bank pays 6 per cent and the price of timber is constant the investor will earn more money by cutting the tree down and selling it, that is, by converting natural capital into financial capital. This simple example is a metaphor for the conversion of biodiversity and ecosystem services into other forms of capital. The shortcomings of this simple approach to valuing biodiversity and ecosystems include: (1) the irreversibility of biodiversity loss; (2) pure uncertainty as to the effects of such losses; (3) the difference between private investment decisions and the responsibilities of citizens of particular societies; (4) the implicit assumption.

Environment and Development. Get the science right when paying for nature's services.

Few projects adequately address design and evaluation Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanisms leverage economic and social incentives to shape how people influence natural processes and achieve conservation and sustainability goals. Beneficiaries of natures goods and services pay owners or stewards of ecosystems that produce those services, with payments contingent on service provision (1, 2). Integrating scientific knowledge and methods into PES is critical (3, 4). Yet many projects are based on weak scientific foundations, and effectiveness is rarely evaluated with the rigor necessary for scaling up and understanding the importance of these approaches as policy instruments and conservation tools (2, 5, 6). Part of the problem is the lack of simple, yet rigorous, scientific principles and guidelines to accommodate PES design and guide research and analyses that foster evaluations of effectiveness (4). As scientists and practitioners from government, nongovernment, academic, and finance institutions, we propose a set of such guidelines and principles.

The Marginal Poor and Their Dependence on Ecosystem Services: Evidence from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa

In recent years, there has been a marked proliferation in the literature on economic approaches to ecosystem management, which has created a subsequent need for real understanding of the scope and the limits of the economic approaches to ecosystems and biodiversity. Within this Handbook, carefully commissioned original contributions from acknowledged experts in the field address the new concepts and their applications, identify knowledge gaps and provide authoritative recommendations. The Handbook offers a wealth of case studies and further: • identifies the conceptual underpinnings of economics of ecosystems and biodiversity • demonstrates new research methodologies and their applications • provides authoritative assessment of the recent results and findings in ecosystems’ services and biodiversity valuation and accounting • provides the reader with the state of the art of the research on the economics of ecosystem services and biodiversity • provides spatial explicit tools for mapping ecosystem services values for land-use planning, including in the context of business and industry. This authoritative assessment will appeal to researchers and academics at both the advanced undergraduate and post-graduate levels of environmental economics and ecological economics. Policy makers in government, business and conservation sectors will find much to engage them as the work will prove essential for implementing effective response policies for the management of ecosystems and biodiversity.

Get the science right when paying for nature's services: Few projects adequately address design and evaluation

Few projects adequately address design and evaluation Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanisms leverage economic and social incentives to shape how people influence natural processes and achieve conservation and sustainability goals. Beneficiaries of natures goods and services pay owners or stewards of ecosystems that produce those services, with payments contingent on service provision (1, 2). Integrating scientific knowledge and methods into PES is critical (3, 4). Yet many projects are based on weak scientific foundations, and effectiveness is rarely evaluated with the rigor necessary for scaling up and understanding the importance of these approaches as policy instruments and conservation tools (2, 5, 6). Part of the problem is the lack of simple, yet rigorous, scientific principles and guidelines to accommodate PES design and guide research and analyses that foster evaluations of effectiveness (4). As scientists and practitioners from government, nongovernment, academic, and finance institutions, we propose a set of such guidelines and principles.

Impact of economic drivers on mangroves of Indian Sundarbans: an exploration of missing links

In this chapter the authors employ a meta-study to explore why it is critical to address the degradation of ecosystems for poverty alleviation, especially in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors also investigate the linkages between ecosystem services and aspects of extreme poverty. Their findings suggest that the poor are often more vulnerable to the loss of ecosystem function that restricts the supply of natural goods and services. The poor depend upon ecosystem services, but the nature of this dependence is necessarily not uniform throughout the year. The poor also tend to benefit less from environmental conservation efforts than those who are not poor. The dynamic patterns of dependence on ecosystem services of the poor and their coping strategies require regionally specific and in-depth evaluation.

Lessons learned and linkages with national policies

Few projects adequately address design and evaluation Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanisms leverage economic and social incentives to shape how people influence natural processes and achieve conservation and sustainability goals. Beneficiaries of natures goods and services pay owners or stewards of ecosystems that produce those services, with payments contingent on service provision (1, 2). Integrating scientific knowledge and methods into PES is critical (3, 4). Yet many projects are based on weak scientific foundations, and effectiveness is rarely evaluated with the rigor necessary for scaling up and understanding the importance of these approaches as policy instruments and conservation tools (2, 5, 6). Part of the problem is the lack of simple, yet rigorous, scientific principles and guidelines to accommodate PES design and guide research and analyses that foster evaluations of effectiveness (4). As scientists and practitioners from government, nongovernment, academic, and finance institutions, we propose a set of such guidelines and principles.

Ecosystems and Human well-being

Export of shrimps and prawns using intensive cultivation in the Sundarban area of Indian Bengal had a negative impact on mangrove forests in 1980s. Land conversions from agricultural use and mangrove forest to shrimp ponds are significant. The impact of changing economic factors such as trade on mangrove forests is evident but as yet this link is not clearly understood by decision-makers. In this context, this study analyses the impact of economic driver on land use changes by combining socio-economic data (economic variables) and satellite data (land use change). Using the panel data method for 1986–2004 in eight administrative units of the Sundarbans area, the study identifies relative return and productivity of labour for various types of land use together with population density as the major drivers of land use change. Identification of these drivers would help to design an effective response policy for management of this UNESCO Heritage site.