Ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture

Agricultural ecosystems are actively managed by humans to optimize the provision of food, fiber, and fuel. These ecosystem services from agriculture, classified as provisioning services by the recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, depend in turn upon a web of supporting and regulating services as inputs to production (e.g., soil fertility and pollination). Agriculture also receives ecosystem dis-services that reduce productivity or increase production costs (e.g., herbivory and competition for water and nutrients by undesired species). The flows of these services and dis-services directly depend on how agricultural ecosystems are managed and upon the diversity, composition, and functioning of remaining natural ecosystems in the landscape. Managing agricultural landscapes to provide sufficient supporting and regulating ecosystem services and fewer dis-services will require research that is policy-relevant, multidisciplinary and collaborative. This paper focuses on how ecosystem services contribute to agricultural productivity and how ecosystem dis-services detract from it. We first describe the major services and dis-services as well as their key mediators. We then explore the importance of scale and economic externalities for the management of ecosystem service provision to agriculture. Finally, we discuss outstanding issues in regard to improving the management of ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture.     

Economic valuation of gas regulation as a Service by rice-duck-fish complex ecosystem

Valuating the fimction of ecosystem services is crucial for accounting green GDP, making a conservation policy of ecological environment and the decision of regional development as well as sustainable development strategy. R ice-duck-fish symbiosis has been promoted in several developing countries as a way of increasing incomes for rice farmers, but investigations of its value have mainly focused on direct economic＇ benefits, such as food and raw material production. Few studies have been conducted on the estimation of indirect services provided by rice-duck-fish complex ecosystem. The gas regulation service and its economic values provided by rice-duck-fish complex ecosystem were studied in Wuhan, China. The major components of gas regulation are O2 emission and greenhouse gases （GHGs, CO2） regulation. The results show that O2 emission from different treatments （including rice-duck （RD）, rice-fish （RF）, rice-duck-fish （RDF） and rice （CK）） ranged from 26,370 kg/ha to 33,910 kg/ha per year. with an economic value of 10,050-12,920 yuan/ha per ）,ear （Chinese currency： 1 euro =10.2475 yuan, August 28, 2007）. The net GHGs exchange varied from 1,200 to 3,320 kg/ha per year; and its economic value ranged from 1,040 yuan/ha to 2,900 yuan/ha per year Consequently, the total economic value of gas regulation provided by symbiosis complex ecosystems ranged from 11,090 yuan/ha to 15,820 yuan/ha per year. and the maximum overall economic value of gas regulation was provided by RDF complex ecosystem. The work will be useful for further understanding of the functions of rice-duck-fish complex ecos.vstem services and supplying the theoretical references to agricultural policy.     

David Pearce and the economic valuation of biodiversity

David Pearce was a pioneer in the economic valuation of biodiversity. His work powerfully influenced both later economists who worked in the field and natural scientists and practitioners who gained and appreciation of the importance of economics to their efforts. Pearce often applied the paradigm of demonstration followed by appropriation: the values of biodiversity must first be demonstrated to those who make decisions concerning its survival, and then appropriated by them. The later step will be possible when market and policy failures are rectified so as to allow the realization of conservation values. While Pearce wrote extensively on these themes, he was also acutely aware of the limitations of the paradigm. Rosy projections of values that could not be realized and appropriated would be of little practical use, and Pearce often cautioned against excesses of optimism. Yet he also clearly believed that there are compelling, if not always easily demonstrated, reasons for conservation. I argue in this paper that Pearce’s seminal work on the valuation of biodiversity cannot be understood without some appreciation of his philosophical perspective. Pearce would have described himself as a pragmatist. However, his pragmatism was grounded in the belief that it is both expedient and ethical to recognize that communities in some of the poorest corners of the world will only conserve biodiversity if they are justly compensated for the sacrifices they must make to do so. Associate Professor of International Policy, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Economist, National Center for Environmental Economics, United States Environmental Protection Agency; and Research Associate, Elliott School of International Studies, George The opinions expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily express the views of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.     

Valuation of the ecosystem services: A psycho-cultural perspective

Valuation of ecosystems services has been a challenging issue for economists. There is a growing concern to capture the total and incremental changes in services of different types of ecosystems, mainly, due to perturbations arising from anthropogenic activities. Market-based valuation techniques have long been declared inadequate and a constructed market method such as the contingent valuation method albeit a robust tool does not seem to capture the expanse, nuances, and intricacies of many of the ecosystem services. The paper attempts to address the lacunae in valuation of ecosystem services from a psychological perspective by arguing that the common person's perception of the ecosystem is quite different from what is conceptualized by conventional economists. The paper shows how the ecological identity of individuals is revealed at various levels of the decision-making hierarchy that is, from local to regional and further onto a global level. The paper builds upon insights from psychoanalytic psychology and environmental-psychology. Further, it outlines recent research findings from experimental psychology to redefine concepts such as ecological identity, self-other dichotomy, and the fostering of identification with nature, as issues that must be embraced in the valuation of ecosystem services. Extending the idea of relational goods and reciprocity, the paper offers a deconstructed view of market forces and furthers the idea of interdisciplinary collaboration and cooperation in the valuation of ecosystem services. In this perspective the dichotomy and schism between markets, missing markets and non-markets, gets renovated and reconstructed beyond a utilitarian discourse.     

农业保险的经济学属性分析

本文从经济学的角度，分析了农业保险的性质，指出农业保险具有风险系统性、信息不对称性以及外部性的特殊属性。针对这三大属性，作者认为再保险、相互组织和政府干预是解决农业保险市场失灵的主要措施。     

Accounting for the ecosystem services of migratory species: Quantifying migration support and spatial subsidies

Migratory species support ecosystem process and function in multiple areas, establishing ecological linkages between their different habitats. As they travel, migratory species also provide ecosystem services to people in many different locations. Previous research suggests there may be spatial mismatches between locations where humans use services and the ecosystems that produce them. This occurs with migratory species, between the areas that most support the species' population viability - and hence their long-term ability to provide services - and the locations where species provide the most ecosystem services. This paper presents a conceptual framework for estimating how much a particular location supports the provision of ecosystem services in other locations, and for estimating the extent to which local benefits are dependent upon other locations. We also describe a method for estimating the net payment, or subsidy, owed by or to a location that balances benefits received and support provided by locations throughout the migratory range of multiple species. The ability to quantify these spatial subsidies could provide a foundation for the establishment of markets that incentivize cross-jurisdictional cooperative management of migratory species. It could also provide a mechanism for resolving conflicts over the sustainable and equitable allocation of exploited migratory species.     

Measures of the effects of agricultural practices on ecosystem services

Agriculture produces more than just crops. Agricultural practices have environmental impacts that affect a wide range of ecosystem services, including water quality, pollination, nutrient cycling, soil retention, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. In turn, ecosystem services affect agricultural productivity. Understanding the contribution of various agricultural practices to the range of ecosystem services would help inform choices about the most beneficial agricultural practices. To accomplish this, however, we must overcome a big challenge in measuring the impact of alternative agricultural practices on ecosystem services and of ecosystem services on agricultural production. A framework is presented in which such indicators can be interpreted as well as the criteria for selection of indicators. The relationship between agricultural practices and land-use change and erosion impact on chemical use is also discussed. Together these ideas form the basis for identifying useful indicators for quantifying the costs and benefits of agricultural systems for the range of ecosystem services interrelated to agriculture.     

Institutional incentives for managing the landscape: Inducing cooperation for the production of ecosystem services

Agricultural landscapes hold tremendous potential for producing a diverse stream of ecosystem services. Yet, because the spatial configuration of particular ecosystems is critical to the supply of many services, realizing this potential requires that farms be managed in a coordinated way across landscapes rather than as independent units. Under existing incentive programs, this level of coordination is typically neither required nor encouraged.Here we explore how to achieve such coordination from an institutional perspective using voluntary incentives rather than regulation. We focus on three services operating at contrasting scales, from local to global: pollination, hydrologic services, and carbon sequestration. First, we briefly illustrate how agricultural practices can diminish or enhance their provision. Next, we show how all three services require coordinated, landscape-scale management because provision depends upon particular spatial configurations, of which we provide several stylized examples. Finally, based on these stylized configurations, we evaluate the relative merits of three incentive designs-the “cooperation bonus,” the “entrepreneur,” and the “ecosystem service district”-to promote cross-farm cooperation to enhance service provision.All three incentive systems rely on rational self-interest, have cooperative configurations to promote ecosystem services across different scales, use tiered reward systems, and have a major voluntary element. They are distinct in certain key features. The cooperation bonus system rewards conservation even without cooperation but adds a bonus for cooperation. In the entrepreneur incentive, all tiers of reward are contingent upon cooperation. The ecosystem service district scheme is only partially voluntary and forces cooperation of all landowners once the district is formed. Our analysis of these heuristic alternatives integrates biophysical, economic, and institutional factors with the aim of addressing the suite of institutional barriers for landscape-scale management.     

Economic valuation of species loss in the open sea

Although the oceans cover 70% of the surface of the planet few studies have considered the economic valuation of marine biodiversity, despite the importance of such information for marine management and conservation. This study uses a contingent valuation method to estimate the public's willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid loss in the number of marine species in the waters around the Azores archipelago. We estimated the marginal value associated with increased levels of species loss (10% and 25%) in five marine taxa (mammals, fish, algae, birds and invertebrates) and all marine species considered as a whole, via a face to face survey of residents and visitors to two Azorean islands. The results suggest small but statistically significant differences in the WTP to prevent losses in the different taxa (mammals = fish > birds = invertebrates = algae). The results also suggest a greater WTP to preserve all marine taxa as a whole, than for a series of individual marine taxa. The valuation of the ecosystem and taxa may be influenced by the maritime culture of the respondents, but despite this, the findings challenge the commonly held premise that charismatic taxa have a disproportionately strong influence on WTP, and they provide important insights into human preferences for biodiversity conservation.     

Testing for the effects of credit crunch on agriculture investment in the EU

There are several research papers focusing on the detrimental effects of the credit crunch on the economic performance. A sector of the economy where the implications of the credit crunch have not been thoroughly studied is the agriculture. This is surprising given the importance of agriculture for the European economy. We focus on agriculture in fourteen European Union (EU) Member States in the aftermath of the credit crunch. To this end, we employ the micro-econometric data set of Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) of EU at NUTS 2 level. From a methodological point of view, we model agriculture investment based on a flexible panel Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model that provides impulse response functions (IRFs) and variance decompositions (VDCs). The empirical estimates indicate that agriculture investment has been constrained by negative shocks in interest paid and total liabilities. Unless those financial constraints are eased, agriculture investment in EU would remain rather sluggish at best.     

Sustainability and the value of the ‘regulating’ services: Wetlands and water quality in Lake Victoria

The regulating services provided by ecosystems are amongst the most important for the sustainability of resource use, and yet they are also amongst the least understood. This paper considers one set of regulating mechanisms - the buffering functions of wetlands - and considers the information needed to identify both the value of the services offered by wetlands, and their substitutes. Using data from a catchment discharging water and nutrients to the Kenyan segment of Lake Victoria, the Yala catchment, the paper models the interactions between agriculture and fisheries as mediated by wetlands at the lake margin. More particularly, it estimates the value of the forgone nutrient retention function involved in the conversion of the wetland to agriculture, and the scope for providing the same services through land use change elsewhere in the catchment. The total cost of the payments that would compensate farmers for on-farm nutrient buffering services is 3.86 M US$ year^− 1, or 35% of the total gains from wetland conversion to crop production. This finding contributes to an understanding of both the value of regulating services and how they might most effectively be delivered in alternative ways.     

区域经济发展的脆弱性及其评价体系研究--兼论脆弱性与可持续发展的关系

区域经济发展具有脆弱性特点，要实现区域经济的可持续发展就要减少发展的脆弱性。脆弱性与可持续发展具有密切相关关系。应从稳定性、敏感性和损失度三个方面评价区域经济发展脆弱性程度。     

Integrating the valuation of ecosystem services into the Input-Output economics of an Alpine region

Traditional economic accounting mostly ignores the benefits provided by nature, and thus falls short in giving incentives for improving the way the economy uses natural resources. In this study, we develop a general framework for integrating the value of ecosystem services into an Input-Output Table. In particular, we integrate regionally valued ecosystem services on the supply side of an Input-Output Table to quantify what natural resources offer to economic development. Using several different indicators, we show the benefits of the ecosystem services under the status quo and a scenario for regional development. Our results suggest that economic activities should be encouraged to use the ecosystem services more intensively, while landscape development should aim at providing the required services. We conclude that such an approach can provide a platform for decision-makers to learn quantitatively about the dependency of the regional economy on natural services.     

Economic valuation of habitat defragmentation: A study of the Veluwe, the Netherlands

This paper offers an economic value assessment of a nature protection programme in the Veluwe, the Netherlands. This programme involves two defragmentation scenarios: the first scenario connects the central part of the Veluwe with river forelands in a north-eastern direction (i.e. the meadows of the IJssel river), while the second scenario is focussed on defragmentation in a south-western direction (i.e. the meadows of the Rhine river). The valuation is based on a questionnaire that was administered during face-to-face interviews in the area and through the Internet. We employ a contingent valuation approach to assess the respondents' willingness to pay for the realisation of the defragmentation scenarios. It appears that the mean willingness to pay (WTP) for the two defragmentation scenarios is € 162.2 (lognormal distribution) per respondent. Because the Veluwe is considered a nature park of national importance, we performed an aggregation of individual WTP estimates over Dutch households. With the resulting aggregate estimates we can compare the total costs and benefits of the two scenarios for habitat defragmentation in the Veluwe. In addition, we test whether respondents value the two scenarios equally. We also check whether the methods of data collection (face-to-face interviews and Internet questionnaires) have distinct influences on the stated WTP responses.     

Economic valuation of environmental services sustained by water flows in the Yaqui River Delta

We attempted to estimate the economic value of environmental services provided by restored instream flows in the water-scarce Yaqui River Delta in Mexico. The Yaqui River begins near the U.S.-Mexico border and continues for 400 km before reaching the Oviachic dam, but has not reached the nearby Gulf of California for decades due to diversions for irrigation. These diversions have degraded the riparian ecosystem, coastal wetlands, and estuaries. Environmental services provided by restored flows in the Yaqui River would include healthy riverside vegetation, wetlands and estuaries, fish and wildlife habitats, non-use values, and recreation. A contingent valuation survey in 40 neighborhoods in the most populated Delta city, Ciudad Obregon, was administered to estimate non-market values of instream uses. Respondents were given a current and hypothetical Delta scenario (the latter assumed restored water flows in the River) and asked a willingness-to-pay (WTP) question regarding purchasing water for environmental flows through higher water bills. Results from 148 in-person interviews indicated that households would pay an average of 73 pesos monthly. WTP was found related to key variables suggested by economic theory and contingent valuation studies elsewhere: income, educational level, number of children in the household, and initial bid amount. These results will allow decision makers to compare the benefits generated by different water uses, including environmental services, and to manage scarce water resources under a long-term sustainable approach.     

农业信贷与我国农村经济增长的相关性分析与政策建议

三农问题已经成为制约我国经济整体发展的“瓶颈”问题,农村经济发展缓慢既有政策制度性因素,又有经济性因素。农村金融供给不足在我国表现非常突出,农民贷款难就是其例证。本文从金融供给角度给出了农村经济发展缓慢的经济解释,并且在政策性金融、商业性金融和合作性金融的框架内提出了相关对策建议。     

经济特区中后发展区域从投资驱动向创新驱动转型研究:以深圳龙岗为例

以深圳龙岗区为例,探索经济特区中后发展区域由投资驱动向创新驱动转型路径。首先,从系统论和生态论视角界定了创新驱动的内涵,指出实施创新驱动发展的关键是建立良好的创新生态系统,并以“创新要素树”形象描述创新生态系统;然后,基于波特竞争优势理论,研判出龙岗区正处于从投资驱动向创新驱动迈进阶段;最后,借鉴美国硅谷、新加坡裕廊和以色列特拉维夫的成功经验,提出了龙岗区创新驱动转型的对策建议。     

Economic development and the decline of rural and urban community‐based networks*

This paper studies how traditional networks in rural and urban India have responded to economic development. In rural areas, the impact of the Green Revolution on within‐network inequality has resulted in defection by the wealthiest members of caste‐based social insurance networks. In Bombay, the most able members of the caste‐based labour market networks are exiting from the traditional occupations to participate in new occupations in which individual rather than group ability is rewarded. In both cases, the weakest members of the community are left in networks that now have lowered capacity to provide services.     

Marginal abatement costs of greenhouse gas emissions from European agriculture, cost effectiveness, and the EU non-ETS burden sharing agreement

We propose a quantitative assessment of the marginal abatement costs (MAC) of greenhouse gas emissions from European agriculture and analyze the implications of the non-ETS burden-sharing agreement (BSA) for this sector. This assessment is based on MAC reduced forms, the generic specification of which enables simple parameterization and numerical computations. Such MAC curves are parameterized for each Member State using the outputs of a detailed model of the European agricultural supply. They are then used to compute total and marginal abatement costs involved by the BSA targets, as well as the cost-effective effort sharing, the corresponding emission price and abatement costs. The main findings are: (i) flexibility mechanisms such as a cap-and-trade system for agricultural emissions could reduce the total costs of meeting the 10% EU abatement target by a factor two to three relative to the strict implementation of each country's target, (ii) the corresponding equilibrium emission price is found to be 32-42 €/tCO₂eq depending on the assumption regarding business-as-usual emissions, and (iii) a cap-and-trade system with allowances based on the BSA targets would involve substantial transfers from EU-15 countries to New Member States, an important share of which being made of ‘hot air’.     

The effect of individual ‘ability to choose’ (scale heterogeneity) on the valuation of environmental goods

Environmental valuation methods, such as choice experiments, are increasingly being used to value complex and often unfamiliar environmental goods. A potential risk is that some survey respondents may not be capable of developing and expressing preferences for such goods. The noise from these individuals may then conceal the well-defined preferences of other respondents and affect valuation estimates. We address this problem by estimating a range of models that accounts for scale heterogeneity (which we interpret as a respondent's ability to choose: ATC) and taste heterogeneity. These models are applied to two case studies: amenity from coastal defence and biodiversity. In both case studies, model fit was improved in a scale-heterogeneity multinomial-logit (S-MNL) model (compared to a standard MNL model) suggesting the accounting for ATC (scale heterogeneity) improved preference revelation. A mixed multinomial-logit (MIXL) model outperformed the S-MNL model suggesting that accounting for taste heterogeneity was also important. However, a generalised multinomial-logit (G-MNL) model improved model fit over the MIXL model only for the biodiversity data suggesting that for these data both taste heterogeneity and ATC were important. We conclude that accounting for ATC can improve the reliability and robustness of the results when valuing complex or unfamiliar environmental goods.