Local democracy implications for coastal zone management—A case study in southern Norway

Stakeholder participation is frequently recommended to ensure that public values are taken into account in the decision-making processes. However, few attempts have been made to analyse the extent to which increasing stakeholder participation actually leads to better representation of the public values. The main aim of this study is to obtain more insights about reasons why the most frequently applied form of stakeholder participation, i.e. the public hearings, may fail in representing the general public views and values when applied at a local level. A case study was conducted on policy formulations and decision-making in the coastal zone on the island Flekkerøy in southern Norway. Local- and regional-public authorities contributed in in-depth interviews and with written documentation to inform about a comprehensive stakeholder participation process that took place in the early 1990s. The main findings include that landowner interests, and not public views and values, were legitimised during the participatory process because of: (1) the landowner's strong local social power among inhabitants, (2) the design of the participatory processes favouring the landowner interests, (3) the personal relations between local landowners and public managers, and (4) the low representation of public views and values due to a problem of scale, i.e. the NIMBY syndrome. Based on our experience, we recommend improving representation of public views by changing the frequently applied participatory processes to also include citizens in addition to interest groups and experts.     

The political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture: an empirical study

The paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision‐making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture. We use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures (PARI). The empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses. The analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers, but also to invest in public agricultural research. Furthermore, the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision‐making on PARI is non‐linear and conditional on other factors. Regarding the impact of political institutions, the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers (agricultural protection), nor to lower investment in public goods (PARI). ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.     

An optimization-based framework for housing subsidy policy in China: Theory and practice of housing vouchers

Rapid urbanization has transformed cities by improving the quality and quantity of production factors, such as population, land, and capital gain optimization. However, housing problems of the floating population (liudong renkou) have seriously increased during the urbanization process. This study reviews the history of indemnificatory housing development in China and explore its effectiveness in the context of sustainable urbanization. Difficulties in the housing subsidy policy are identified, and an optimization-based framework for housing subsidy system that focusing on housing voucher is designed with the consideration of capitation grant, occasion for implementation, cost estimation, implementation procedure, and supplementary policy. The appropriateness of the housing voucher policy was tested on Zhejiang Province, and expert interview was conducted to evaluate the proposed housing subsidy system. This study provides an effective alternative housing subsidy policy which can facilitate the settling down of floating population in cities and also contribute to sustainable urbanization.     

Playing musical chairs with land use obligations: Market-based instruments and environmental public policies in Brazil

In Brazil, market-based instruments focusing on land use dimensions are increasingly promoted as a means to make public environmental policies effective. Landowners and farmers call for more flexible regulations and economic incentives to adopt ecologically sound practices, while public agencies and conservation NGOs seek new ways of financing and legitimising legal standards. Market-based instruments are considered by these actors as having the potential to both achieve their own goals and conciliate all interests. As a result, legal frameworks (including cap-and-trade systems, biodiversity offsetting and payments for ecosystem services) are being designed which allow to exchange land use rights and obligations. Under a sociolegal approach, this article provides an overview of such instruments. It shows to what extent they may entail a reconfiguration of the burden sharing and the priority setting of nature conservation. Depending on how actors use legal standards, their responsibilities may be eased and the level of conservation may be lowered, both facts that raise significant controversy.     

嵌入宗族社会网的自然村小型公共品治理——桂东南B乡K村互助基金的个案研究

自然村小型公共品由村民自主治理可能是行之有效的办法,自主治理的关键在于能否有效协调个体与集体行动,能否实现个体和集体利益的兼容。处于制度变迁中的宗族社会网在自主治理中仍发挥独特的作用,把村庄公共品嵌入宗族社会网可能是解决自然村公共品治理问题的一个好办法。     

The effects of housing preference for an apartment on residential location choice in Seoul: A random bidding land use simulation approach

This study evaluates the impact of medium- and high-income households’ preference for apartments on residential location choice by constructing a random utility-based land use simulation model of the Seoul metropolitan area. The simulation results imply that apartment preference of medium- and high-income groups would have contributed to providing more apartment units (about 14.2% of total apartment units supplied), more housing units in the suburbs (61,000 more housing units in the suburbs), and higher apartment rent premiums in wealthy communities than the assumed housing market under the counterfactual scenario in terms of housing type, location, and rents.     

Assets,activities and income generation in rural Mexico: factoring in social and public capital⋆

In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis in the rural development literature on the multiple income‐generating activities undertaken by rural households and the importance of assets in determining the capacity to undertake these activities. Controlling for the endogeneity of activity choice and applying Lee's generalisation of Amemiya's two‐step estimator to a simultaneous equation model, household returns to assets from multiple activities are explored for the Mexico ejido sector. To incorporate the multiple variables representing social and public capital into the analysis, factor analysis is used. The results indicate that the asset position of the household has a significant effect on household participation in income‐generating activities and returns to those activities. Furthermore, the inclusion of measures of social and public capital into the analysis show that these assets play an important role in income‐generating activities and that the influence is dependent on the type of social and public capital as well as the particular activity.     

Application of LADM for the integration of land and housing information in China: The legal dimension

The integration of land and housing registration is a key opportunity for China: improved land governance is the intended outcome. Prior to the design of any integrated information system, the legal requirements the system must satisfy need to be identified. This paper identifies and reviews the legal requirements for the integration of land and housing information in China. Specifically, the existing legislative framework relating to land, consisting of seven levels of legislation, is interrogated. A collection of legal requirements emerges: these are categorized into themes including registration, maintenance, mortgage, transfer of real estate rights, relevant materials and archives, and preliminary notice. In order to be more applicable for the next design of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) country profile for China, these legal requirement are further converted into packages, classes and attributes by referring to the ISO 19152 standard. The existing databases of the Chongqing Municipality are used to support the modelling process. The paper concludes that the legal requirements can be used as a foundation for an integrated system in China.     

Returns to public sector plant breeding in the presence of spill‐ins and private goods: the case of bean research in Michigan

This article illustrates a methodology for assessing economic returns to a publicly funded breeding program in the presence of private sector investments, and spill‐ins from other contemporary public institutions and past research efforts. The approach consists of determining yield gains from bean improvement research; applying these yield gain estimates to measure benefits attributable to different institutional players and time periods; and then assessing the benefit‐cost ratios of investments in a bean improvement program since 1980 by Michigan State University (MSU). The results indicate that investments in MSU's bean breeding program have yielded benefits to costs ratio in the range of 0.7 to 2.2, depending on the attribution rule used to estimate the benefits. The estimated benefit/cost ratios reported in this study are lower‐bound estimates, as they do not account for potential benefits from area planted to MSU varieties outside of Michigan (spillover effects), which was 1.5 times greater than the area planted to MSU‐bred varieties within Michigan in the period 1998–2002. The implications of the increasingly privatized bean seed markets for the role of public sector research in bean improvement research are discussed.     

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.     

Integrating preferences and social values for ecosystem services in local ecological management: A framework applied in Xiaojiang Basin Yunnan province,China

Previous works have made great progress in mapping and assessing ecosystem services (ES) that are directed toward exploring various aspects of ecological changes and economic values. These preferences, however, may neglect the important role of people who are the direct beneficiaries in this ecosystem. Therefore, including these stakeholders in ES assessment identifies their relations and perceptions between ecosystem services and society. In order to quantify and map these relations and perceptions, we designed and implemented an analytical framework based on the Public Participatory Geographic Information System (PPGIS) method to explore local stakeholders’ (Farmers, Government managers/Experts, and Company employees) similarities and differences in recognition of preferences and social values for ecosystem services in a typical Karst basin. Our results showed that remarkable differences appeared in preferences for ES across three groups. Farmers gave more preferences to provisioning services, Government managers/Experts to regulating and cultural services, and Company employees’ preferences were individualized. The spatial distributions and relations of social values for ES also showed great differentials. Provisioning services were always related to specific natural conditions, regulating services to forests, and cultural services to specific locations around tourism localities, forest, and wetland parks. The three stakeholder groups perceived more synergies than tradeoffs between the different ecosystem services. Landscape beauty was the most influential service in Farmers’ and Company employees’ perceptions, while Local climate change regulation was the most influential service in those of Government managers/Experts. The local stakeholders’ surveys can improve the enthusiasm of the local people to participate in environmental management and provide more socio-ecological information to help the managers alleviate the conflicts among different stakeholders.     

Local stakeholders’ perception of muddy flood risk and implications for management approaches: A case study in Alsace (France)

The inventory of muddy floods in France indicates that the occurrence of these events seriously increased in the North West and the East of the country. Muddy floods triggering can largely be explained by physical characteristics such as a hilly topography, soils prone to crust, and/or heavy rainfall in spring. Although the physical processes are well known by now and despite increasing information about the need of mitigation measures, no significant reduction of these disasters has been registered. Therefore, this should be explained by factors others than scientific reasons or technical knowledge acquisition difficulties.     

A Livelihood and Farming System approach for effective conservation policies in Protected Areas of Developing Countries: The case study of the Niassa National Reserve in Mozambique

Effective conservation requires that conservation policies and management decisions first target local actors who are dependent on natural resource use in Protected Areas (PA) of Developing Countries (DC). In rural areas of DCs, these actors are mainly farmers who also rely on off-farm activities such as harvest of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) to complement their livelihoods. Here, we propose a novel approach to support the development of policy interventions aimed at achieving conservation goals through the sustainable development of local people in PAs of DCs. The approach consists in identifying the main Livelihood and Farming Systems (LFS) and select those that are more conservation-friendly, and that may contribute to solve conservation and development problems such as Human-wildlife conflict. Identifying the existing LFS can also help in searching for conservation-relevant improvements that can contribute to local people wellbeing, considering the existing FS as the starting point for a sustainable development strategy in PAs of DC. Data from the Niassa National Reserve (NNR), the largest PA in Mozambique, were used to develop this LFS approach. Measures of effort applied in harvesting NTFPs and in managing agricultural inputs and outputs were collected from 329 households through a structured survey. Cluster analysis was performed to identify and characterise the main LFS in the NNR. Based on the cluster results, we have identified four livelihood systems (LS): gatherers, hunters, farmers and employees; four farming systems (FS): specialized in maize, rice and sorghum, and a mixed FS. A Multinomial Logistic Model was also applied to understand the drivers of LFS choice. Livelihood systems were mainly driven by household-level socio-economic factors, while FS were driven by village-level biophysical conditions. Households who were employed and had diversified farming and off-farm activities were better off and more resilient to climate change and crop-raiding animals. Intensification appears to occur gradually but has found to be limited by rainfall availability. Based on our findings, we propose that conservation experts and policy-makers should use a LFS approach to re-frame the conservation narrative in PAs of DCs and promote the existing practices that can better protect biodiversity while improving livelihood and welfare of local people.     

Demand for Beef from Cattle Administered Growth Hormones or Fed Genetically Modified Corn: A Comparison of Consumers in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States

We compare consumer valuations of beef ribeye steaks from cattle produced without growth hormones or genetically modified corn in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Results suggest that French consumers place a higher value on beef from cattle that have not been administered added growth hormones than U.S. consumers; however, valuations of non-hormone-treated beef are statistically indistinguishable across Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Results also suggest that European consumers place a much higher value on beef from cattle that have not been fed genetically modified corn than U.S. consumers.