Internalising the costs of fragmentation and nutrient deposition in spatial planning: Extending a decision support tool for the Netherlands

The Land Use Scanner (LUS) is a decision support system for land use planning that is widely used in the Netherlands. The model yields solutions that have a high resolution (500×500 m) and reflect economic equilibrium in the land market, in which eighteen types of land use and nine aggregated habitat types competitively bid for locations. Here, an extension to the LUS is presented that enables the internalisation of environmental externalities. The focus in this study is on two important externalities, namely ammonia emissions from agriculture and habitat fragmentation. We simulate four IPCC-based land use scenarios and assess the level of fragmentation of the nine habitat types. We also perform sensitivity analyses in the most market-oriented scenario on the effectiveness of market-based instruments in promoting more efficient land allocation. The simulation results suggest that particularly the habitat type ‘rain-fed mires and bogs’ is susceptible to fragmentation. The sensitivity analyses show that internalising the damage costs of fragmentation resulted in smaller changes in land allocation than internalising those of nitrogen deposition. For both instruments, the policy effort was large in relation to the efficiency gains in land allocation.     

A critical stakeholder analysis of the Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline (TAGP) Network

This article uses research interviews, field research, and critical stakeholder analysis to identify the relevant actors and institutions involved in the Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline (TAGP) Network, a proposed multibillion dollar energy project in Southeast Asia. Based on more than 100 interviews at government institutions, multilateral development banks, universities, consulting firms, energy companies, and nongovernmental organizations, along with field research in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, the article traces the interests, resources, and agendas involved with TAGP stakeholders. The article finds points of conflict between stakeholders as well as motivations for convergence and cooperation. The article provides insight into whether private interests will trump the public good potential of the TAGP, and also critically questions the efficacy of multilateral coordination on energy issues within Southeast Asia.     

Persistence of cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon: A spatial analysis of the rationale for beef production

Fed by demand for beef within Brazil and in global markets, the Brazilian herd grew from 147 million head of cattle in 1990 to ≈200 million in 2007. Eighty-three percent of this expansion occurred in the Amazon and this trend is expected to continue as the industry bounces back from a recent agricultural downturn. Intensification of the cattle industry has been suggested as one way to reduce pressure on forest margins and spare land for soybean or sugarcane production, and is the cornerstone of Brazil's plan for mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. To this end, federal credit programs and research and development activities in Brazil are aligning to support intensification goals, but there is no guarantee that this push for intensification will decrease the demand for land at the forest margin and as result curb CO₂ emissions from deforestation. In this paper we use a spatially explicit rent model which incorporates the local effects of biophysical characteristics, infrastructure, land prices, and distance to markets and slaughterhouses to calculate 30-year Net Present Values (NPVs) of extensive cattle ranching across the Brazilian Amazon. We use the model to ask where extensive ranching is profitable and how land acquisition affects profitability. We estimate that between 17% and 80% of land in the Amazon would have moderate to high NPVs when ranched extensively if it were settled, i.e. if the rancher does not buy the land but acquires it through land grabbing. In addition, we estimate that between 9% and 13% of land in the Amazon is vulnerable to speculation (i.e. areas with positive NPVs only if land is settled and not purchased), which suggests that land speculation is an important driver of extensive ranching profitability, and may continue to be in the future. These results suggest that pro-intensification policies such as credit provision for improved pasture management and investment in more intensive production systems must be accompanied by implementation and enforcement of policies that alter the incentives to clear forest for pasture, discourage land speculation, and increase accountability for land management practices if intensification of the cattle sector is to deter new deforestation and displace production from low-yield, extensive cattle production systems in frontier regions of the Brazilian Amazon.     

Monetary valuation of urban underground space: A critical issue for the decision-making of urban underground space development

Urban underground space (UUS) has attracted more and more attention worldwide, but its value, external value particularly, is often ignored or underestimated, which will influence or even change the trade-offs in the decision-making processes of UUS development. This paper employed service replacement cost method (SRCM) to access the value of urban underground space. Since the precise estimate of the value of urban underground space is almost an impossible task, this paper can only provide a crude approximation, in other words, a relative magnitude of the value of urban underground space. The case study of Changzhou City in China manifested that urban underground space provided an important portion of urban economy, which reached up to, but not be limited to, 1.8% of its GDP. This paper should aid in giving urban underground space more weight in urban decision-making process.