Randy Stringer

Payments for ecosystem services and poverty reduction: concepts, issues, and empirical perspectives

Paying for the provision of environmental services is a recent policy innovation attracting much attention in both developed and developing countries. This innovation, referred to as ‘payments for ecosystem services’ (when the emphasis is on enhancing ‘nature’ services) or ‘payments for environmental services’ (when amenities provided by the built environment are also included) is referred to here as PES. PES programs aim to harness market forces to obtain more efficient environmental outcomes. Since so many opportunities for PES programs could involve farmers in poor regions, international aid agencies and private donors, looking for a double dividend, increasingly consider using PES programs as a potential way of meeting both social and environmental objectives.

The Economics of Protecting Tiger Populations: Linking Household Behavior to Poaching and Prey Depletion

The tiger (Panthera tigris) is classi- fied as endangered and populations continue to decline. This paper presents a formal economic analysis of the two most imminent threats to the survival of wild tigers: poaching tigers and hunting their prey. A model is developed to examine interactions between tigers and farm households living in and around tiger habitats. The analysis extends the existing literature on tiger demography, incorporating predator-prey interactions and exploring the sensitivity of tiger populations to key economic parameters. The analysis aims to contribute to policy debates on how best to protect one of the world’ s most endangered wild cats.

Grapes, Wine and Water: Modelling Water Policy Reforms in Australia

The policies, incentives and management practices shaping the future availability, access, use and quality of water have enormous implications for Australias wine industry. While grapes are a relatively high value, low volume irrigation activity, growers do depend on reliable supplies of good quality water at specific times throughout the year. This paper explores the key factors motivating change in national, regional and local water institutions and examines how the resulting policy reforms effect water markets, water use, and the profitability of grape growers. FEDSA-WATER, a national level CGE model of Australian is used to examine the removal of implicit subsidies on water usage in irrigation industries in New South Wales and Victoria, and the removal of small implicit taxes on usage in South Australia, for the various irrigation industries. A second scenario taxes producers for salinity. In the water pricing reform scenario, there is a redistribution of irrigation activity to South Australia with pricing reforms. There is an overall decline in agricultural output but this is outweighed by the benefit in terms of reduced salinity damage. Similarly, in the case of taxing producers for the full cost of salinity damage, the benefit of reduced salinity outweighs the reduction in national income.

Elephants or Onions? Paying for Nature in Amboseli, Kenya

Traditional grazing grounds near Amboseli National Park (Kenya) are being rapidly converted to cropland – a process that closes important wildlife corridors. We use a spatially explicit simulation model that integrates ecosystem dynamics and pastoral decision-making to explore the scope for introducing a ‘payments for ecosystem services’ scheme to compensate pastoralists for spillover benefits associated with forms of land use that are compatible with wildlife conservation. Our break-even cost analysis suggests that the benefits of such a scheme likely exceed its costs for a large part of the study area, but that ‘leakage effects’ through excessive stocking rates warrant close scrutiny.

Food Security in Asia

Rapid economic and agricultural sector growth have enhanced greatly food security in Asia during the past three decades. Most studies suggest this positive trend will continue into the next century. This paper reviews past trends and future prospects in access and availability of food in Asia at the national level. The paper concludes that the positive overall trend in increased food security relies on the capacity of Asian economies to address several key policy issues, including sustained economic growth, population pressure, structural changes in domestic economies, shifts in international comparative advantage, technological changes, developments in the domestic and international food markets, and environmental sustainability. The paper identifies cost‐effective ways to increase food security in light of these issues and suggests that Asia’s food security can be maintained only if international and domestic policies, institutional frameworks, and public expenditure patterns are conducive to cost–effective and sustainable agriculture development.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND AUSTRALIA'S HORTICULTURE SECTOR

Horticulture is among the fastest growing agricultural activities in Australia; with production valued at A

Urban Shopping Patterns in Indonesia and Their Implications for Small Farmers

3.2 billion in 1995. It is also the second largest agricultural industry, after meat. Yet while Australias horticultural producers are intensive users of land, water and farm chemicals, few economic research efforts have investigated the environmental problems associated with fruit and vegetable production. Since the early 1990s, Australias growing focus on sustainable agriculture has led to greater scrutiny of horticultural activities, revealing several important trends and issues. These include: high and growing domestic demand for and consumption of horticultural products; increasingly health and nutrition conscious consumers concerned more and more with the quality and safety of their food; the expanding share of Australias horticultural exports going to Asia; and growing domestic and international pressure on policymakers to address agriculture-related environmental problems and to devise measures to promote more sustainable practices. The common outcome of these interrelated trends is further intensification of land use each year as producers convert land to fruit and vegetable farming from other, less valuable production, and as they open up new lands for fruits and vegetables, especially in the tropical north of the country. This expansion on the ground has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in water, fertiliser and chemical use. Research has identified two broad types of environmental problems linked to Australias fruit and vegetable production practices: (1) pollution and contamination of soil, water, air and food resulting from the use of farm chemicals; and (2) degradation of natural resources, especially the deterioration in the available quantity and quality of soil and water. More recently, fruit and vegetable production has been indirectly associated with disturbance and reduction of biotopes and wildlife habitats (e.g. on the Great Barrier Reef) and with reduction in wildlife species and loss of biological and genetic diversity of plants and animals. After reviewing these linkages between horticultural production and the environment, this paper examines the types of environmental policies that local, state and national level policymakers are using to address environmental degradation caused by horticultural production. These approaches include persuasion, education, regulation, economic incentives and property rights systems.

The Environmental Benefits of Organic Wine: Exploring Consumer Willingness-to-Pay Premiums?

In developing countries, the expansion of supermarkets and other modern food retailers has raised concerns about the potential impact on traditional retailers and fruit and vegetable farmers. Will small farmers, in particular, be squeezed out of this growing, remunerative market by the quality standards imposed by supermarkets? In an attempt to answer this question, we analyse data from a stratified random sample of 1,180 urban households in Indonesia. We find that only a small share of fruits and vegetables are purchased from modern outlets, even among high-income urban households. On the basis of the relation between income and shopping patterns in our data, we project that even after 15 years of income growth, supermarkets will account for less than 40% of urban food spending. The impact of supermarket standards on small farmers may be less dramatic than has been feared.

Market-Channel Choices of Indonesian Potato Farmers: A Best–Worst Scaling Experiment

Consumers and the producers have shown interest in organics, but there exist gaps in their common interest. Producers require premiums for their products based on the peculiarity of their production circumstances and the perceived benefits inherent in their products. Predicting consumer willingness to pay a premium for the environmental benefits of organics (WTPe) is a challenge and is of interest in this study. The contingent valuation method was used to gather information on WTPe from a sample that yielded 2,099 surveys. The econometric test ordered probit regression and other analyses were carried out. On average, respondents indicated WTP 23% premium. The proposed hypotheses were tested, and all were accepted except social demographic variables that presented a mixed outcome. The results have implications for consumer sensitization and enlightenment programs of the wine industry, wine market segmentation, and government’s climate change policy. This study is exploratory and has presented a snapshot scenario. Confirmatory and longitudinal studies are recommended to validate this study’s outcomes.

Determinants and Effects of Small Chilli Farmers' Participation in Supermarket Channels in Indonesia

We present an empirical analysis of how buyer (and trader) attributes influence decisions of market participation and channel choice among smallholder potato farmers in West Java, Indonesia. We use a best–worst scaling experiment to evaluate the determinants of these decisions and gauge the influence of buyer attributes. Our latent-class cluster analysis reveals that producers have heterogeneous preferences for buyer attributes, which address classic smallholder constraints such as access to inputs, credit, and information. This heterogeneity can be somewhat explained by household characteristics and assets. The broad mass of our sample sought buyers whose attributes imply lower market risk for farmers. Yet roughly a quarter of our sample, a portion that included farmers with large, specialised farms, sought buyers who could provide inputs such as high-quality seeds.