Should Australia be concerned by Beijing’s trade threats: modelling the economic costs of a restriction on imports of Australian coal

A country’s economic dependence on its trade with various other countries is often expressed in terms of trade values and shares. A country’s vulnerability to economic coercion by the countries with which it trades is similarly expressed in such terms. Using the recent issues relating to Australia’s coal trade with China as an example, we propose a better framework for assessing vulnerability to coercive trade instruments. We argue that the capacity for a given export trade to fund real consumption is a superior indicator of economic vulnerability than the simple value of the underlying trade flow. Our framework takes account of trade diversion, foreign capital ownership, the terms of trade, resource mobility, and capital and production tax rates. Using this framework, we demonstrate that the damage from trade sanction is far less than might be expected from a simple focus on the value of the affected trade flow alone.     

10年来中国林业经济研究进展及今后的研究方向

分析在公共财政的投资下,天然林保护、退耕还林等森林生态工程的实施,使森林多目标经营思想得到体现,从而导致林业产出及结构发生了巨变;指出林业经济研究者及时地把握了变化的脉搏,但是森林经营目标的选择过程、约束条件等许多科学问题,期待继续深入探索。阐述市场机制在森林培育、林产品加工、林业企业经营管理等方面充分地发挥着配置资源的作用;林业行政部门的职能和行政管理方式的变化也推动了资源配置的进一步优化;指出学者们对此制度变迁进行了研究,但是重要发现仍显不足。通过《林业经济问题》10年来发表的论文总结出,未来的研究需要以林业经济活动的实践、数据资料的积累工作为基础,把握好选题、适用理论和计量工具等研究方法。     

ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF LAND DEGRADATION IN AUSTRALIA

In this article an overview of several economic aspects of land degradation in Australia is presented. The economic rationale for government intervention in land management decisions relating to degradation is explored. Some potential sources of inefficient private land use decisions are identified. However, there are significant difficulties in designing policies which will result in resource allocation decisions superior to market outcomes.     

A postmortem of forest policy dynamics of Nepal

Evolution of public policy is governed by various factors of political change, institutional realignment, and global environmental discourse. Improved understanding of these factors is a prerequisite for policy-makers to solve forestry related socio-economic and environmental issues. In this study, we assessed the policy and institutional shifts in Nepal’s forest policy regime through discursive institutionalism framework. We conducted a literature review, including Nepal’s forest policy documents that were developed after 1950, and undertook an in-depth interview with twenty-five people representing five stakeholders groups. Based on specific features and objectives of the policies, we classified and discussed four different evolving periods of forestry sector: (1) strict protection period (1950–1975); (2) resource creation for crisis management period (1975–1986); (3) participatory forestry period (1986–2008); and (4) period of broad-based global normative discourse (2008 onwards). Our results showed that framing of ideas and discourse, and its interacting environment (dialectic space and discursive sphere) have determined institutionalization and deinstitutionalization of the country’s forest policy. In addition, Nepal’s forest policy pathways were shaped by a shift in 1) domestic political systems, 2) global environmental discourse and institution, and 3) the process of paradigmatic change and transformation. We conclude that policy durability and discursive shift in public policy are governed by how policy making-institutions embrace public aspirations and consider socio-political context of the country while framing policy discourse. We argue that articulation of discourses into discursive spheres and its ways of deliberation for discursive practices largely defines the trajectories- institutionalization and deinstitutionalization of public policy.     

THE IAC'S APPROACH TO AGRICULTURAL POLICY*

The main recommendations contained in the IAC's reports on rural references are outlined. The Commission's reasoning on four issues that are widely viewed as important to the formulation of rural policy is examined. The four issues are: assistance to industry; terms of trade; uncertainty and instability; and adjustment policy. Criticisms are made of the IAC's argument on these issues, and some inconsistencies between reports are indicated. It is concluded that the IAC has made a valuable contribution to the discussion of rural policy in Australia even though its recommendations are sometimes sounder than the argument offered to support them.     

New Zealand freshwater management and agricultural impacts

In New Zealand, it is increasingly recognised, including by government, that water resource allocation and water quality are issues of national importance. Agriculture is frequently portrayed by public media as a major user of water and a major contributor to worsening water quality. We outline the water management systems in New Zealand, and the use of water by agriculture. Official reports on agriculture's impact on New Zealand water availability and quality are summarised. We report how the New Zealand public perceive water, its management, and the roles of agriculture in water issues. Data from a nationwide mail survey were analysed to determine how New Zealanders assess the state of New Zealand lakes, rivers and streams, and aquifers, the performance of three agencies responsible for management of freshwater resources, and willingness to fund stream enhancement. We provide brief explanations for the failures of water resource management in New Zealand and report on options, including community-based responses that might address some of the mounting public, scientific, and government concerns about trends in water quantity and quality. A willingness to pay proposition, concerning riparian areas, included in the nationwide survey provides some evidence that the public are willing to pay for improved waterway management. Relevant non-market valuation studies also indicate that the public places considerable value on preservation values of water in New Zealand.     

Evaluating policy changes on council waste generation and diversion: Evidence from South Australia

Australia, like most countries worldwide, faces increasing issues with burgeoning waste generation and its appropriate disposal. Hence, effective policies and programmes are needed to change household waste generation and recycling behaviour, thereby reducing waste into landfill. To date, however, there has been little academic research on the potential effects of various policies on waste generation. We employ a rare data set and the fixed-effects linear regression model with autoregressive disturbances to investigate how a variety of public policies (namely education campaigns, roll-out of food diversion systems and provision of food caddies) influence monthly waste generation and diversion in Adelaide, South Australia, from 2006 to 2020. The results show that the introduction of food waste caddies and diversion systems was associated with increased diversion rates, saving local councils the gross equivalent of AUD$4.67 million in reduced solid waste landfill levies. However, education campaigns regarding food waste and recycling alone were found to have no significant association with reduced waste or increased recycling.     

Stakeholder engagement in water policy: Lessons from peri-urban irrigation

In highly urbanised Australia many cities and towns demand may have exceeded existing water supply. In peri-urban areas this can lead to conflict over access to supplies with priority often given to urban users. In an effort to resolve potential conflicts, water management planning often seeks to engage ‘community stakeholders’ in an attempt to produce a ‘harmonised’ strategic plan. In this paper we focus on the process of developing one such plan for sustainable water management in a peri-urban area with complex and conflicting stakeholder interests. We subject data from a series of planning meetings and ‘stakeholder’ workshops to a critical review and analysis against the project's stated aims for this stage of the process of: engaging key stakeholders, developing a common vision, and deciding research priorities. We conclude that the approach was unable to achieve these strategic outcomes. In discussion we explore how this analysis reflects barriers in the engagement process, which highlight more general concerns about this widely accepted model for stakeholder engagement in resource issues.     

ECONOMIC ISSUES FROM THE BROADS GRAZING MARSHES CONSERVATION SCHEME

The paper examines two key issues relating to the use of fixed-price conservational contracts of the type embodied in the new Environmentally Sensitive Area policy in the UK. It uses data for the Broads Grazing Marshes Conservation Scheme (BGMCS). The budgetary costs of the fixed-price contract are compared to those of (i) public purchase of land with leaseback for grazing, and (ii) of individual management agreements. Using a net present value criterion, public purchase emerges as the cheapest option, and management agreements as a superior option in defined circumstances. The paper also explores equity and efficiency issues arising from fixed price contracts. It is concluded that for many farmers and landlords in the BGMCS the fixed payment exceeded what was necessary to achieve the conservational objectives, while at the same time it was less than the profit foregone by farmers who might possibly have switched to arable farming.     

为老工业基地经济建设提供服务

在中央提出实施东北地区等老工业基地振兴战略三年来,国土资源部做了大量工作,包括:出台相应政策措施、做好土地供应工作、加大基本农田建设和保护力度、大力推进土地整理复垦、加强东北地区矿产资源调查评价与勘查、加强地质资料、信息、技术的社会化服务等工作。实施振兴东北战略亟待解决的主要问题有耕地保护与资源利用效率、矿山地质环境恶化、资源枯竭型城市转型等。对进一步落实振兴东北等老工业基地战略的建议:一是要继续大力支持东北地区等老工业基地建设,切实保障建设依法、及时用地;二是增加公益性调查评价的资金投入,加强老工业基地的地质勘查工作;三是加大矿山环境保护与治理工作。     

Formation of new property rights on government land through informal co-management: Case studies on countryside guerilla gardening

Extant research on guerilla gardening, defined as the unauthorized cultivation of land belonging to another, has hitherto focused on public space in urban areas, neglecting those that occur in rural settings. This rural land policy study examines a form of guerilla gardening in the countryside in Hong Kong, carried out by specific walker communities who routinely do early morning walks. Most of the gardens they have cultivated have become part of country park protected areas. This study identifies five phases of land use status evolution undergone by these morning walkers’ gardens (MWG), from the time the phenomenon of guerilla gardening in the countryside began in the 1960s to recent times, illustrating the role of land use change in enabling squatters with a degree of property rights by way of informal land resource co-management. Through the three case studies presented in this article, it is argued that MWGs can represent the emergence of incipient forms of natural resource co-management in Hong Kong. This study emphasizes the important role of resource user leadership in enhancing the land use value of land in itself and for the wider community. Some recommendations are provided to enhance resource user participation in land resource management.     

遥感技术在矿山资源管理中的研究与思考

遥感技术在矿山生产与管理中发挥着重要的作用,为地质找矿、区域环境监测、矿山测绘等基础性工作提供全面、精确、丰富、可靠的信息源,同时也为矿山资源管理规划与决策、矿山资源开采过程环境宏观监控提供依据,是依法办矿和科学办矿的保证。文章以遥感技术在唐山矿山环境监测中的应用为实例,说明了遥感技术对矿山资源管理的重要性,并探讨了在矿山资源管理中进一步应用遥感技术等问题。     

Is Australia on a sustainability path? Interpreting the clues*

Genuine savings is a conceptually valid one‐sided indicator as to whether Australia is on a weak sustainability path (negative GS would warn that current welfare is unsustainable). The World Bank's adjusted net savings (ANS) data summarise the available evidence, and by this indicator Australia is muddling along, at best. ANS misses some important pieces of the picture – net depletion of water, soil and biodiversity, and most kinds of pollution damage – and thus overstates Australia's genuine savings performance. Weak sustainability can be promoted by getting the prices right, and piecemeal efforts are underway via regulatory approaches and resource/environmental markets of various kinds. Nevertheless, particular resource problems – habitat conservation, biodiversity, climate change and dryland salinity – are likely to also require strong sustainability approaches. A sustainable future involves pushing weak sustainability as far as the body politic permits, invoking precautionary instruments for specific resource crises, and nurturing policy processes that encourage the consensus‐building that will be necessary to get it done.     

Models of Site‐choice for Walks in Rural Ireland: Exploring Cost Heterogeneity

Farmland can confer significant public good benefits to society aside from its role in agricultural production. In this article, we investigate preferences of rural residents for the use of farmland as a recreational resource. In particular, we use a choice experiment to determine preferences for the development of farmland walking trails. Our modelling approach uses a series of mixed logit models to assess the impact of alternative distributional assumptions for the cost coefficient on the welfare estimates associated with the provision of the trails. Our results reveal that using a mixture of discrete and continuous distributions to represent cost heterogeneity leads to a better model fit and lower welfare estimates. Our results further reveal that Irish rural residents show positive preferences for the development of farmland walking trails in the Irish countryside.     

Public participation and organizational change in Wisconsin land use management

This article explores the issues that arise when land use management organizations change their previous ways of relating to the public. I introduce an analytic framework for evaluating organizational changes that are grounded in participatory planning and decision making. Using a case study of a recent planning initiative of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, I examine dynamics of trust, civic capacities, personal demands, history of working relationships, and interest in the issue at hand. Though preliminary, the conclusions drawn from this research illustrate how these dynamics may influence the success of participatory planning that reflects organizational change.     

论土地制度的公私矛盾

研究目的：梳理土地制度的公私关系,探讨土地制度运行的内在规律。研究方法：归纳与演绎、文献研究法、比较分析法。研究结果：土地制度是人类进入文明社会（出现国家及法律）以后的基础性制度,并交替存在着公有制、私有制等制度形态;无论是实践中还是在理论上,土地公有制与私有制选择始终是一对矛盾,但产权是否清晰与土地公有私有无关,财产权神圣不可侵犯应同等保护公私财产,平等保护财产权并非追求财产平等。研究结论：土地作为自然资源的本质属性决定了其产权制度的基本特征,土地所有制度属于政治范畴,土地产权制度与财富分配机制属于经济问题,土地制度规则应遵循公权与私权均衡,公利与私利分野。     

Agricultural extension policy in Australia: the good, the bad and the misguided

In most states of Australia, agricultural extension policies and practices have increasingly been based on considerations of private/public goods, user pays and cost recovery. In addition, the delivery of extension has been strongly influenced by changing administrative structures and a change in the paradigm within which the extension community operates. These changes have had major impacts, including more extension being delivered by the private sector. There are positive aspects to the changes and, for some issues, they are appropriate. However, we have a number of reservations, particularly about the effectiveness of current extension systems in assisting the adoption of complex environmental and farming system technologies.     

Resource regimes and cooperation

The choice of resource regimes is a choice over the cost of transacting and the ability and willingness to cooperate. This paper argues that people may be willing to forgo individual gains for the sake of the common good. This depends, however, on the institutional context. Hence, it is argued that an important role of resource regimes is their capacity to define whether the issue is one of individual gain or cooperation. The paper builds its arguments on material from experiments in psychology and economics. They show that cooperative action dominates under certain institutional structures while individual gain is fostered in others. Moreover, studies of behavior in real-life institutional settings—e.g., of markets, common property regimes and public provisioning—support these findings. The lessons learned are finally used to introduce a discussion over the direction of institutional design being able to solve the growing problems of global environmental degradation.     

Open Agricultural Markets and Trade Foster Development of LDC's

Small economies with a narrow resource base need open international trade more than a large country with a wide range of resources. This paper discusses the role of open markets and trade in development of LDC's. It emphasizes the importance of constitutional law that guarantees basic freedoms of choice as the foundation of open market systems. Governments most useful role in development is to provide essential public services and infrastructure and to provide the legal and economic environment for opportunity, incentives and innovation.     

应当关注老矿山地质生态环境治理

老矿山地质生态环境问题 ,是多年来欠下的旧帐 ,它所造成的危害日益显露出来 ,必须给予特别的关注 ,在财政上应列出专项。同时对它的治理 ,不仅有环境效益 ,还有资源效益 ,经济效益和社会效益 ,应当根据不同效益 ,多渠道、多方法筹资 ,实行产业化运作。