Interaction effects of targeted agri-environmental payments on non-marketed goods and services under climate change in a mountain region

Targeting of agri-environmental measures (AEMs) is a key to increasing the cost-effectiveness of governmental support for biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services from agriculture. Existing literature, however, often focuses on single measures without considering that policies are usually bundles of different measures addressing multiple non-marketed goods and services. Thus, interaction effects of a set of policies in a given policy mix may influence the cost-effectiveness of single measures. Recently, Swiss agricultural policy was redesigned using the Tinbergen rule as its basis, i.e., a single measure for each policy goal, including additional targeted direct payments. This facilitates testing for interaction effects of multiple targeted AEMs. Here we use a social-ecological, agent-based modelling framework to assess interaction effects of these agricultural policies while accounting for climate change impacts in our analysis. The results from our case study in a mountain region show that ecosystem service provision increases with targeted payments. However, interaction effects of the different targeted policies affect the provision levels of all goods and services. In particular, changes at the extensive margin, i.e., the total amount of land that is under production, largely determine the amount of ecosystem services provided. Thus, climate change driven productivity increases and policies that keep land in production may substantially support the provision of non-marketed goods and services in marginal agricultural production regions with a high potential for land abandonment. Consequently, the effectiveness of targeted policy measures should also consider changes at the extensive margin and be assessed in the context of bundles or portfolios of different policy measures.     

Agent‐based Modelling of Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Options in Agriculture

Computer simulation models can provide valuable insights for climate‐related analysis and help streamline policy interventions for improved adaptation and mitigation in agriculture. Computable general equilibrium (CGE) and partial equilibrium (PE) models are currently being expanded to include land‐use change and energy markets so that the effects of various policy measures on agricultural production can be assessed. Agent‐based modelling (ABM) or multi‐agent systems (MAS) have been suggested as a complementary tool for assessing farmer responses to climate change in agriculture and how these are affected by policies. MAS applied to agricultural systems draw on techniques used for Recursive Farm Programming, but include models of all individual farms, their spatial interactions and the natural environment. In this article, we discuss the specific insights MAS provide for developing robust policies and land‐use strategies in response to climate change. We show that MAS are well‐suited for uncertainty analysis and can thereby complement existing simulation approaches to advance the understanding and implementation of effective climate‐related policies in agriculture.     

森林碳生产的认识、方式与政策保障

森林的生产实践活动伴随人类社会文明进程变换其利用方式,森林减碳利用在应对全球气候变化过程中引人关注。森林碳生产作为森林减碳利用的具体表现形式,是森林生态文明的实践进步。本研究从生态、社会、经济等3个方面认识森林碳生产,分析人工造林、森林灾害防治、延迟采伐、土地利用变化等4种最为主要的碳生产方式,提出完善人工造林激励政策、完善采伐限额制度、采取适当的碳税和碳补偿政策、建立有效的碳排放权交易制度等4个方面的政策保障,进而更好地发挥森林在全球气候变化过程中的重要作用。     

Economic valuation of climate‐change‐induced vinery landscape impacts on tourism flows in Tuscany

It is widely acknowledged that landscape features can play a major role in determining tourism demand. The present article assesses the impact of vinery landscape and high‐quality wine production on regional tourism flows in Tuscany, an important tourist region in Italy and renowned for its enchanting countryside. Thus, vinery landscape and high‐quality wine production have been included as explanatory variables in our model for tourism flows. This model has been estimated for both international and domestic markets for the whole region of Tuscany. Estimation results confirm that land areas devoted to the production of these superb Tuscan wines, in the particular case of Siena including the Brunello di Montalcino, play an important role in explaining international tourism flows. In this context, we estimate climate‐change‐induced impacts on vinery landscape and quality wines in the tourism sector. These are estimated to cause a loss in the tourism revenues of nearly 15 and 20 million Euros a year, respectively, for 2020 and 2050, for the Tuscany region. Such losses are quite significant, and reiterate the urgency to identify and implement adequate policy options so as to moderate such land use changes, and respective negative welfare impacts.     

劳动力析出对生态脆弱区耕地撂荒的影响

研究目的:以宁夏南部山区为例,研究农业劳动力析出对生态脆弱区耕地撂荒的影响。研究方法:二分类logistic回归模型。研究结果:撂荒耕地面积与劳动力外出数量、时间及农户所拥有的耕地总面积呈正相关;耕地中的坡耕地和旱地首先被撂荒。研究结论:劳动力析出会促使农户撂荒部分质量差的耕地;这种撂荒行为有助于生态环境的自然恢复。     

Sequester or substitute—Consequences of increased production of wood based energy on the carbon balance in Finland

Forests play an important role in mitigating climate change. Forests can sequester carbon from the atmosphere and provide biomass, which can be used to substitute for fossil fuels or energy-intensive materials. International climate policies favor the use of wood to substitute for fossil fuels rather than using forests as carbon sink. We examine the trade off between sequestering carbon in forests and substituting wood for fossil fuels in Finland. For Finland to meet its EU targets for the use of renewable energy by 2020, a considerable increase in the use of wood for energy is necessary. We compare scenarios in which the wood energy targets are fully or partially met to a reference case where policies favoring wood based energy production are removed. Three models are used to project fossil fuel substitution and changes in forest carbon sinks in the scenarios through 2035.Finnish forests are a growing carbon sink in all scenarios. However, net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be higher in the medium term if Finland achieves its current wood energy targets than if the use of energy wood stagnates or decreases. The volume of GHG emissions avoided by replacing coal, peat and fossil diesel with wood is outweighed by the loss in carbon sequestered in forests due to increased biomass removals. Therefore, the current wood energy targets seem excessive and harmful to the climate. In particular, biodiesel production has a significant, negative impact on net emissions in the period considered. However, we did not consider risks such as forest fires, wind damage and diseases, which might weaken the sequestration policy. The potential albedo impacts of harvesting the forests were not considered either.     

The regional economic effects of a reduction in carbon emissions

Concern about climate change has led to policy to reduce CO₂ emissions although it is likely that policy will have differential regional impacts. While regional impacts will be politically important, very little analysis of them has been carried out. This paper contributes to the analysis of this issue by building a small model involving two regions, incorporating the right to emit CO₂ as a factor of production with the level of permitted emissions set by the national government. We argue that there is likely to be pressure on governments to use other policies to offset the possible adverse regional economic consequences of the pollution‐reduction policy; we also consider a range of such policies. Using numerical simulation, we find that a 10 per cent reduction has relatively small but regionally differentiated economic effects. Standard fiscal policies are generally ineffective or counterproductive while labour market policies are more useful in offsetting the adverse effects.     

气候变化对农户生计的影响研究综述

气候变化是21世纪人类面临的最严峻挑战之一,加剧了许多国家和地区的脆弱性,对以自然资源为生计基础的农业人口的影响尤为显著,明确气候变化对农户生计的影响,对于制定有效的气候变化适应政策,增强农户的气候变化适应能力,减轻农村贫困人口生计脆弱性具有重要意义。目前,国内外围绕气候变化对农户生计影响开展了许多研究,主要集中在过去或当前气候变化对水资源、土地、农作物、病虫害、人类健康等农户生计资本的宏观影响以及局地或区域尺度上气候变化对农户生计策略选择的影响等方面。从发展趋势看,亟需开展气候变化对农户生计的影响机理及适应机制研究,建立合理的气候变化对农户生计影响的评估框架,加强对模拟、分析和预测气候变化及其与其他压力相结合对农户生计要素的可能影响进行广泛评估,科学把握农户生计对气候变化脆弱性的关键影响因素,这对人类科学地适应气候变化和促进人类福祉和恢复力的提升具有重大的科学价值和现实意义。     

Trade liberalisation and greenhouse gas emissions: the case of dairying in the European Union and New Zealand*

The link between trade and the environment has aroused considerable interest both in terms of the impact of trade liberalisation on the environment, and also the impact of environmental policy on production and trade. Of key environmental concern at present is global warming and its association with greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is a sector of the economy that both contributes to, and will be affected by, climate change. This paper models the impact of agricultural trade liberalisation on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture around the world, focusing particularly on the effects on New Zealand, a small economy highly dependent on agricultural trade. A partial equilibrium agricultural multicountry, multicommodity trade model is used for the analysis, extended to include physical production systems and their greenhouse gas emissions. Two simulations are performed: removal of agricultural policies in the EU and in all OECD countries. The results indicate that although producer returns in New Zealand increase, greenhouse gas emissions also increase significantly. EU producers face lower returns but also lower greenhouse gas emissions.     

Climate Change,Crop Selection and Agricultural Revenue in Ghana: A Structural Ricardian Analysis

We apply a Structural Ricardian Model (SRM) to farm‐level data from Ghana for seven principal food crops in order to model the factors which influence farmers' decisions about which food crops to grow and the revenue conditional on these choices. Our application of the SRM incorporates a flexible functional form to allow for the possibility that the effects of temperature and rainfall may not be linearly separable. We use this model as a basis for simulations of the effects of climate change. These simulations suggest that extreme climate change will lead to a significant reduction in the average net revenue per hectare from maize, which accounts for over half of current food production. Across a range of climate change scenarios, there is also substantial substitution of maize for heat‐tolerant millet, and a reduction in the cultivation of other crops. Under most of the climate change scenarios that we consider, these results imply a substantial reduction in the aggregate value of agricultural production, since millet is the lowest‐value crop.     

Promoting GHG mitigation policies for agriculture and forestry: A case study in Guadeloupe,French West Indies

Climate change is now accepted as self-evident. It is time to find new production methods, set up new organizations and introduce new policies and new incentives to enable our economies and societies to face this issue. Innovation is required at all levels, from farming practices to government policy. Agricultural and forestry systems are strongly linked to their local environment and are often interdependent (economically, socially, etc.). This paper discusses how a landscape scale approach can help to mitigate climate change in forestry and agriculture. It describes the French Climagri^® approach, which is based on a GHG inventory and scenario analysis at sub-national scale in order to promote innovation. It discusses the strengths (transversal approach, GHG hot spot identification, impact of non-climate policies) and weaknesses (data collection, uncertainties, incentives) of such an approach based on a case study in Guadeloupe. This paper suggests ideas for tools to help in drawing up new efficient GHG policies and helps to explain landscape scale GHG inventories and data interpretation in a tropical context.     

台湾农地保护政策的演变及对大陆的启示

台湾50多年来的农业发展过程中进行过三次农地改革,每一次农地制度改革对台湾的农业、工业乃至整个社会都产生了十分重要的作用,形成了独特的"台湾模式"。台湾农地改革对大陆的启示是:土他改革是农业生产的推动力,不同的农业发展阶段需采取不同的农地保护政策,农地政策对农地数量的变化具有重要影响,土地改革需有详尽的法律规定作基础。大陆的农地保护应从数量、质量、生态三方面进行,建立产权明晰的土地政策,制定并颁布基本农田保护法规,避免农地非农化的随意性,优化土地利用结构提高农地利用效益。     

The impact of climate and price risks on agricultural land use and crop management decisions

This article aims to investigate the impacts of climate change and of lower and more volatile crop price levels as currently observed in the European Union (EU) on optimal management decisions, average income and income risks in crop production in Western Switzerland. To this end, a bioeconomic whole-farm model has been developed that non-parametrically combines the crop growth model CropSyst with an economic decision model using a genetic algorithm. The analysis focuses on the farm level, which enables us to integrate a wide set of potential adaptation responses, comprising changes in agricultural land use as well as crop-specific fertilization and irrigation strategies. Furthermore, the farmer's certainty equivalent is employed as objective function, which enables the consideration of not only impacts on average income but also impacts on income variability.The study shows that that the effects of EU crop prices on the optimal management decisions as well as on the farmer's certainty equivalent are much stronger than the effects of climate change. Furthermore, our results indicate that the impacts of income risks on the crop farm's optimal management schemes are of rather low importance. This is due to two major reasons: first, direct payments make up a large percentage of the agricultural income in Switzerland which makes Swiss farmers less vulnerable to market and climate volatility. Second, arable crop farms in Switzerland have by law to cultivate at least four different crops. Due to these diverse cropping systems and high government direct payments risk does neither under climate change, market liberalization nor combinations thereof, play a very decisive role in arable farming in Switzerland.     

广西农业生态脆弱性评价及区划研究

［目的］随着经济的快速发展，我国各地区都面临着不同程度的农业生态脆弱性，通过研究特殊地形和气候下的农业生态脆弱性，有助于为农业生态环境的综合治理提供参考。［方法］文章以广西为例，通过构建评价指标体系，采用层次分析法和熵权法确定综合权重，通过构建综合评价模型对广西农业生态脆弱性程度进行评价，利用ArcGIS对生态脆弱性进行分级，以期探究广西农业生态脆弱性的空间分布情况。［结果］权重分析结果表明水蚀面积的权重值最高为0134，年平均降水量的权重值为0113，自然环境指标相对于农业生产和经济指标对农业生态脆弱性的影响更大。区划研究结果表明广西农业生态脆弱性区域大致可分为5个区域，分别是桂西峰丛洼地带、桂东山地丘陵地带、桂中低山丘陵地带、桂东北山地、桂南沿海丘陵地带。［结论］广西农业生态环境整体来看较为脆弱，处于轻度和中度脆弱等级，但生态环境问题仍不容忽视。为了改善农业生态脆弱性，政府应实行区域的联合防治，加大对农业生态环境的监督和治理，积极探寻生态、环保的农业发展方式，调整产业结构，改善农业生态环境的状态，促进广西农业的可持续发展。     

Barriers and requirements to climate change adaptation of mountainous rural communities in developing countries: The case of the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau of China

Systematically identifying the barriers and requirements to adaptation is critical to the successful implementation of climate adaptation planning and policies at the local level, especially in the mountainous rural communities of developing countries with limited resources and technology. We conducted an empirical study of the barriers and requirements to adapting to climate change of 539 peasant households in an ecologically vulnerable area of China to enhance their resilience to climate change by improving our understanding of adaptation process and decision-making. Our findings indicated that farmers in the Gannan Plateau face multiple adaptation barriers, of which normative, information and technology barriers were more serious, such as lack of meteorological information service, infrastructure and technology extension in agriculture or animal husbandry. Adaptation requirements are an important way to effectively reduce or eliminate obstacles and improve farmers' adaptive capacity to climate change. The survey found that local households have an urgent requirement for infrastructure, information and production technologies, such as water, electricity, transportation facilities, disaster warning information, employment information and farming or breeding techniques. In addition, due to the influence of economic level, education level, years of farming, gender and other factors, differences exist in the adaptation barriers and requirements faced by farmers in different regions. These findings extend empirical evidence in favor of formulating a reasonable adaptation framework and choosing optimal adaptation strategies, which are essential for enacting well-targeted regional adaptation policies.     

国外农产品气候品质评价研究进展

目的 文章阐述了围绕气候条件开展的国外农产品品质评价研究,明确国外农产品气候品质评价研究的现状,便于把握今后国内农产品气候品质评价的研究方向。方法 基于国外已有研究成果,从农产品气候品质评价相关概念出发,对农产品气候品质的影响因素、评价方法、指标构建、应用等方面进行了系统归纳阐述。结果 国外农产品气候品质影响因素主要分为天气气候、极端气候事件、土壤、水文、生物和人为等,评价方法主要有数理统计法、模型模拟法以及3S技术监测法,评价指标可分为模型模拟指标、定量指标以及分级指标。近年来国外农产品气候品质评价在特色农产品发展、作物适宜种植区划分、气候变化适应策略制定、农作物品种引进等领域应用广泛。结论 构建基于多环境因素的农产品气候品质评价指标、探索前沿科学技术在气候品质评价中应用的新方法、开展未来气候变化对农业气候资源动态评估和农产品气候品质评价研究、拓展特色农产品的气候品质评价研究等是今后国内研究的重点方向。     

发挥中国林业优势 积极应对气候变化

阐述了林业与气候变化的关系,以及国际社会关于林业在减缓与适应气候变化中的特殊功能和重要作用的共识,介绍了中国政府推进林业应对气候变化工作采取的重大政策和取得的重大成就,提出了进一步加强林业应对气候变化工作的对策措施。     

我国耕地变化驱动力研究进展：驱动因子与驱动机理

[目的]综述耕地数量变化的驱动因子与驱动机理,为未来丰富相关研究以及针对性地制定耕地保护对策提供参考。[方法]文章主要应用了文献分析法、分类统计法和比较分析法。[结果](1)耕地数量变化的驱动因子主要包括自然因子和社会经济因子,地形、气候等自然因子往往在较长时间内发挥作用,经济状况、区位条件等社会经济因子在短期内对耕地变化的影响较大,国家政策是特殊的社会经济因子。(2)自然因子和社会经济因子分别通过改变土地生产潜力、影响耕地和建设用地平衡来驱动耕地数量变化,社会经济因子中的政策因子通过强化或减弱土地某项功能对耕地变化产生影响。(3)自然因子对耕地数量变化的驱动作用在快速城镇化地区、粮食主产地区和生态脆弱地区依次增强,社会经济因子的驱动作用依次减弱,政策因子是所有区域耕地数量变化的主要驱动因子。(4)快速城镇化地区、粮食主产地区和生态脆弱地区的耕地数量变化分别主要受到建设占用、粮食生产和经济发展压力、自然条件限制及退耕还林驱动。[结论]探究耕地变化的驱动因子和驱动机理是提高耕地管理效率的有效途径,未来研究应当向全面分析耕地变化内涵,定量研究政策因子,衔接耕地保护对策制定等方向发展。     

农民合作社培训、社员认知与绿色生产意愿

目的 基于四川省538份社员微观调查数据，探讨农民专业合作社培训教育对社员绿色生产意愿的影响机制，并分析社员认知在其中的中介作用。方法 文章运用Oprobit模型与中介效应模型进行分析，并利用工具变量法（IV-Oprobit）进行内生性处理与稳健性检验。结果 （1）合作社培训频度整体一般，提高培训次数，可显著提升社员绿色生产意愿。具体而言，合作社培训每增加1次，社员“非常愿意”参与绿色生产的概率提升3.6%。（2）合作社培训能够显著增强社员绿色生产认知，从而提升其绿色生产意愿，即社员认知是这一影响的重要传导中介，中介效应占总效应的比重为9.85%。（3）异质性分析结果表明，无论年轻或者年老社员，合作社培训对绿色生产意愿的影响均正向显著。结论 农民合作社培训教育对社员绿色生产意愿的影响显著，社员认知在其中发挥了部分中介作用。据此，提出建立健全农民合作社绿色生产培训教育体系、多渠道全方位提升社员认知水平、持续增强社员参与绿色生产的内在动力、优化农业绿色生产的支撑保障机制等政策建议。     

Agriculture and climate change in global scenarios: why don't the models agree

Agriculture is unique among economic sectors in the nature of impacts from climate change. The production activity that transforms inputs into agricultural outputs involves direct use of weather inputs (temperature, solar radiation available to the plant, and precipitation). Previous studies of the impacts of climate change on agriculture have reported substantial differences in outcomes such as prices, production, and trade arising from differences in model inputs and model specification. This article presents climate change results and underlying determinants from a model comparison exercise with 10 of the leading global economic models that include significant representation of agriculture. By harmonizing key drivers that include climate change effects, differences in model outcomes were reduced. The particular choice of climate change drivers for this comparison activity results in large and negative productivity effects. All models respond with higher prices. Producer behavior differs by model with some emphasizing area response and others yield response. Demand response is least important. The differences reflect both differences in model specification and perspectives on the future. The results from this study highlight the need to more fully compare the deep model parameters, to generate a call for a combination of econometric and validation studies to narrow the degree of uncertainty and variability in these parameters and to move to Monte Carlo type simulations to better map the contours of economic uncertainty.