Australia's coal seam gas boom and the LNG entry result

Queensland experienced extraordinary growth in booked 2P coal seam gas (CSG) reserves, rising from 3,400 PJ in 2005 to 41,200 PJ in 2013. Given annual domestic consumption of ca. 700 PJ/a, 2P reserves rapidly shifted from 14 to 72 years supply. Profit‐maximising firms sought to speed up commercialisation of reserves through the development of three liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants at Gladstone. In this article, we present forecasts of Australia's east coast interconnected gas system with daily resolution using our dynamic partial equilibrium model. Modelling results show the rapid development of LNG plants combined with restrictive CSG development policies in NSW may result in unserved load from 2016. Relaxing development constraints or delaying construction of one LNG terminal by 1 year could have avoided the risk of Unserved Load events in the domestic gas market. Lessons can be learned from this CSG‐LNG boom scenario. Facilitating new gas supplies is the most efficient way of alleviating the impacts of the CSG‐LNG boom on domestic markets in the medium term. In the long‐term, Australian policymakers may consider the merits of a National Net Benefits Test to maximise welfare through appropriate coordination – as is done by policymakers in the USA – as opposed to protecting local industries through ‘domestic gas reservation policies’.     

Understanding the resource curse (or blessing) across national and regional scales: Theory,empirical challenges and an application

The relationship between resource extraction activity and economic growth has been widely studied in the literature, and the resource curse hypotheses emerged as a theory to explain the effects of resource windfalls on national economies. However, within countries, resource booms and busts can have distinctive effects across local economies, as extractive regions face particular economic consequences unlikely to be observed in nonresource regions. Empirically, most studies analysing the resource curse have relied on cross‐country models to estimate effects and inform policy; however, the use of regional – within‐country – analysis has gained attention from scholars lately, promoted by two advantages: it avoids unobserved country heterogeneities confounding economic outcomes caused by resources and exploits the subnational quasi‐natural experimental conditions generated by endowments. This paper contributes to the resource curse literature by discussing its theoretical causes across scale (regional vs. national effects) and highlighting the empirical challenges involved in the analysis of mining economic impacts across regions. We complement the discussions by econometrically modelling economic growth across nonmetropolitan substate regions of Australia during a period of resource windfalls, finding that in most cases, resources have been a blessing for local economies, although negative effects have also been experienced in parts of the country.     

Assessing the trade‐offs of increased mining activity in the Surat Basin,Queensland: preferences of Brisbane residents using nonmarket valuation techniques

The mining boom in Australia since 2003 has produced significant economic benefits for regional, State and National economies, creating new job opportunities and revenue flows. Despite the contribution of the resources sector to economic growth, questions are frequently raised about the concomitant negative social, economic and environmental impacts. The Surat Basin in southern Queensland is a traditional agricultural region with a small but growing coal mining sector and a rapidly developing liquefied natural gas industry (mainly associated with extracting coal seam gas). In this paper, the preferences of residents in Brisbane, the State capital, are explored in relation to the relative importance of social, economic and environmental impacts of the resource boom in the Surat Basin. A choice modelling experiment was conducted to assess the trade‐offs Brisbane residents would make (in monetary terms) between the economic benefits and the associated costs of increased mining activity on local communities. The results identify the strength of concerns about community and environmental impacts and can potentially be used to help evaluate the net benefits of resource development.     

Social resistance to coal seam gas development in the Northern Rivers region of Eastern Australia: Proposing a diamond model of social license to operate

As new industries emerge in rural areas, land use change can have important implications for affected communities. In-turn, social responses to developments can have important implications for industry. The idea that communities may, or may not, approve of landuse change has been conceptualised in the literature on ‘social license to operate’. While a principle focus of the social license literature has been on ways to strengthen relationships between community and industry, literature relating to social resistance movements has focused principally on the processes by which communities oppose developments. Reporting empirical data arising from an election survey, this paper seeks to draw together these two bodies of literature to understand how two rural communities responded to the development of the coal seam gas industry in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia. Perceptions of local benefit provision, against the contextual backdrop of rural economies and local perceptions of sustainability, proved pivotal for the legitimacy of the CSG industry. Instead of CSG companies achieving a social license to operate, a social resistance movement gained broad community support and resulted in social license withdrawal. This paper explores the drivers of social license withdrawal and the dynamics leading to the local success of a resistance movement, proposing a new diamond model of social license to operate. The social license diamond model can be used by policy makers to better understand the progression of community responses to industrial developments, from social license approval to withdrawal and beyond.     

Coping with change in rural landscapes: The psychological stress of rural residents experiencing unconventional gas developments

Rural landscapes in many parts of the world are experiencing increasing pressure from competing uses. One particular use, unconventional natural gas extraction, has received considerable attention over the past decade owing to its rapid growth and associated impacts on rural landscapes. This study examined how a sample of Australian rural residents experienced the processes of psychological stress induced by a coal seam gas project that created perceived undesirable changes to resources they valued. Its effect on residents’ psychological well-being slowly unfolded over several years. We deconstructed the stress processes by investigating primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, and subsequent emotional and coping responses guided by the cognitive theory of stress and coping. Primary appraisal measured how the impacts of change on personal and communal resources were assessed while secondary appraisal gauged the options available to individuals to cope. Our results show that when primary appraisal alerts individuals of resource loss, negative emotions are more likely experienced. Such an appraisal directly drives engagement in eight coping strategies classified into four categories: problem-focused, support-based, emotion-focused, and maladaptive coping. It also motivates coping indirectly except for one strategy of emotion-focused coping mediated by negative emotions. While secondary appraisal also directly contributes to four coping strategies that each pertains to one of the four coping categories, it has no effect on negative emotions and four remaining coping strategies that are emotion-focused and maladaptive. These findings shed light on our understanding of the psychological consequences of undesirable change of land use on rural communities. Implications for land use policy are discussed with an emphasis on the need for considering a holistic perspective on the multi-dimensional nature of rural resources valued by community residents and establishing procedural fairness and legitimacy for proposed changes.     

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.     

Information exchange under uncertainty: The case of unconventional gas development in the United Kingdom

New techniques of unconventional oil and gas extraction, such as hydraulic fracturing, challenge current political, institutional and administrative practices in how to regulate activities in the underground. Conflicts of interests between economic promotion, landscape and natural resource protection, and new trends on energy markets are further intensified by the fact that techniques of oil and gas extraction come with a considerable amount of uncertainties regarding ecological and health impacts. Information exchange is one important aspect of how political actors try to reduce uncertainties and conflicts. Based on exponential random graph models (ERGM) for network data, we analyze to what degree ideologies, public authority, existing collaboration and scientific expertise drive information exchange in hydraulic fracturing regulation in the United Kingdom. Results show that technical and political information exchange have to be disentangled, and that the former is driven by expertise and existing collaboration, the latter by ideology, public authority and existing collaboration.     

Rethinking the Land: The Development of Inland Saline Aquaculture in Western Australia

Inland saline aquaculture may offer an opportunity for income diversification and a potentially productive use of land that can no longer support traditional agriculture in salt-affected parts of inland Australia. Interest in inland saline aquaculture is increasing in Western Australia, however, production and investment levels are characteristically low. Inland saline aquaculture presents a continuum of production and investment options for landholders and investors, from being a small-scale, hobby-like remedial use of salinised farmland to a novel and legitimate agricultural industry. Successful progress toward the latter depends on a number of factors: appropriate production technology; identification and establishment of sustainable markets; establishment of environmentally sustainable production systems; and industry management. We use preliminary data from finfish aquaculture in inland Western Australia to consider why industry success requires concurrent development across all these fields.     

黑龙江省采矿业能源消费碳排放影响因素研究

本文对黑龙江省采矿业2005年至2012年的能源消费碳排放量进行估算,并对碳排放现状进行分析。运用改进的STIRPAT模型对黑龙江省采矿业碳排放的影响因素进行分析,得出影响采矿业碳排放的影响因子,运用计量经济学软件采用面板固定效应对数据进行回归分析,得出影响因子对于碳排放量的影响系数,根据黑龙江省采矿业分行业二氧化碳排放影响因素实证分析结果,提出黑龙江省采矿业碳减排的对策与建议。     

Tracking farmland investment in Australia: Institutional finance and the politics of data mapping

Tracking farmland purchases is central to interpreting transnational finance's growing power in agrarian restructuring. Australia's public Register of foreign land ownership reveals little about agrarian change, however. In presenting the first comprehensive mapping of farmland purchases made between 2008 and 2020, this paper examines the ways that financial investments are altering farm ownership patterns in Australia. First, we show that most foreign owned land has been purchased by only 10 pastoral companies, which are implicated in speculative development activities. Second, foreign investment in cropping and horticulture is more significant than it appears in the Register, with investments in agricultural infrastructure increasingly driving land use change. Third, we illustrate the deepening entrenchment of institutional finance. By engaging with the findings from our dataset as well as with the politics of data that have shaped the availability of information, the paper progresses understandings of the financialization of farmland in both its material and ideational aspects.     

基于当地居民感知视角的煤炭资源型城市生态系统服务福祉效应研究——以新泰市为例

研究目的:基于当地居民感知视角,研究分析煤炭资源型城市生态系统服务福祉效应及其与生态系统服务类型、变化趋势及受益者社会经济特征之间的关系。研究方法:采用问卷调查法对煤炭资源型城市不同类型生态系统服务福祉效应进行定量评估;运用数理统计方法确定生态系统服务福祉效应评估的关键因子及影响方式。研究结果:(1)受访者认为研究区生态系统服务基本呈增长趋势,且调节服务和支持服务福祉效应高于供给服务和文化服务;(2)煤炭资源型城市生态系统服务福祉效应与受访者是否居住在采煤沉陷区、年龄、受教育程度以及收入构成等因素显著相关。研究结论:煤炭资源型城市生态系统服务的福祉效应受当地生态系统和社会经济特征的双重制约,基于当地居民感知的生态系统服务福祉效应评估可为该类城市生态系统管理提供科学决策依据。     

Towards the measurement of the impacts of improving research capacity: an economic evaluation of training in wheat disease resistance*

It is notoriously difficult to assess the economic value of research aimed at improving research capacity, particularly for the human capital component of research capacity. In this paper, a framework is developed and an analysis is undertaken of the value of training for scientists in wheat rust resistance. The value of improving human capital is assessed through a framework based on marginal analysis of the improvement in productivity outcomes flowing from the increased capacity. On that basis, the value of programs to build human capacity through training or further education can be estimated. Although such estimates are necessarily qualified, they provide a basis for quantifying the value of building research and development capacity.     

Water rights: a comparison of the impacts of urban and irrigation reforms in Australia

Although there has been a policy thrust towards making all Australians more cognisant of the relative scarcity of water resources, the approach adopted for urban dwellers differs markedly from that applied to irrigators. These differences are examined from a property-rights perspective focussing primarily on the institutional hierarchies in the Victorian water sector. The analysis reveals significant attenuation of urban dwellers' rights, presumably on the basis of the information deficiencies that circumscribe urban water use. Alternative policy options are then proposed, which might alleviate some of these information deficiencies and simultaneously address the efficiency losses that attend the present arrangements.     

An assessment of the economic and environmental potential of biomass production in an agricultural region

The establishment of deep-rooted perennial species and their processing for biomass-based products such as renewable energy can have benefits for both local and global scale environmental objectives. In this study, we assess the potential economic viability of biomass production in the South Australian River Murray Corridor and quantify the resultant benefits for local and global scale environmental objectives. We model the spatial distribution of economically viable biomass production in a Geographic Information System and quantify the model sensitivity and uncertainty using Monte Carlo analysis. The total potentially viable area for biomass production under the Most Likely Scenario is 360,728 ha (57.7% of the dryland agricultural area), producing over 3 million tonnes of green biomass per annum, with a total Net Present Value over 100 years of A$ 88 million. The salinity in the River Murray could be reduced by 2.65 EC (μS/cm) over a 100-year timeframe, and over 96,000 ha of land with high wind erosion potential could be stabilised over a much shorter period. With sufficient generating capacity, our Most Likely Scenario suggests that economically viable biomass production could reduce carbon emissions by over 1.7 million tonnes per annum through the production of renewable energy and a reduced reliance on coal-based electricity generation. Our analyses suggest that biomass production is a potentially viable alternative agricultural system that can have substantial local scale environmental benefits with complimentary global scale benefits for climate change mitigation.     

Optimal surveillance against foot‐and‐mouth disease: the case of bulk milk testing in Australia

Previous foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) outbreaks and simulation‐based analyses suggest substantial payoffs from detecting an incursion early. However, no economic measures for early detection have been analysed in an optimising framework. We investigate the use of bulk milk testing (BMT) for active surveillance against an FMD incursion in Australia. We find that BMT can be justified, but only when the FMD entry probability is sufficiently high or the cost of BMT is low. However, BMT is well suited for post‐outbreak surveillance, to shorten the length of time and size of an epidemic and to facilitate an earlier return to market.     

Leveling the field for biofuels: comparing the economic and environmental impacts of biofuel and other export crops in Malawi

Biofuels often raise the specter of food insecurity, water resource depletion, and greenhouse gas emissions from land clearing. These concerns underpin the “sustainability criteria” governing access to European biofuel markets. However, it is unclear if producing biofuels in low‐income countries does exacerbate poverty and food insecurity, and moreover, whether the sustainability criteria should apply to all agricultural exports entering European markets. We develop an integrated modeling framework to simultaneously assess the economic and environmental impacts of producing biofuels in Malawi. We incorporate the effects of land use change on crop water use, and the opportunity costs of using scarce resources for biofuels instead of other crops. We find that biofuel production reduces poverty and food insecurity by raising household incomes. Irrigated outgrower schemes, rather than estate farms, lead to better economic outcomes, fewer emissions, and similar water requirements. Nevertheless, to gain access to European markets, Malawi would need to reduce emissions from ethanol plants. We find that biofuels’ economic and emissions outcomes are generally preferable to tobacco or soybeans. We conclude that the sustainability criteria encourage more sustainable biofuel production in countries like Malawi, but are perhaps overly biased against biofuels since other export crops raise similar concerns about food security and environmental impacts.     

基于本地劳动力就业的资源型地区发展对策研究--以西藏甲玛铜多金属矿区为例

西藏是我国重要的矿产资源基地和独特的民族地区,随着矿产资源开发力度的加大,对促进就业和推动当地农牧民增收起到了积极的作用。本研究通过实地调查,以甲玛铜多金属矿区为案例,分析研究就业状况和矿区产业发展与城镇体系建设中创造的非农就业机会,主要结论：甲玛铜多金属矿区及其周边地区正处于“人口红利期”;现行发展战略对本地劳动力吸纳度有限,背离本地丰富的劳动力供给市场;应推行就业创造战略,改善经济增长绩效;实施新型城镇化战略,促进分工与劳动力就业。区域发展对策：走可持续发展、多元化道路;资源适度开发与保护环境相协调;知识化改造及引资引智。     

Marginal abatement costs of greenhouse gas emissions: broadacre farming in the Great Southern Region of Western Australia

Broadacre agriculture is a major emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG). To improve efficiency of climate change policies, we need to know the marginal abatement costs of agricultural GHG. This article combines calculations of on‐farm GHG emissions with an input‐based distance function approach to estimate the marginal abatement costs for a broadacre farming system in the Great Southern Region of Western Australia. The results show that, in the study region, the average marginal abatement cost for the 1998–2005 periods was $29.3 per tonne CO₂‐e. Farms with higher crop output shares were found to have higher marginal abatement costs. Overall, our results indicate that broadacre agriculture is among the lowest cost sources of GHG mitigation.     

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.     

Local economic structure,regional competition and the formation of industrial land price in China: Combining evidence from process tracing with quantitative results

The price of industrial land in China has been found distorted and remarkably low. However, it is overlooked that industrial land price is relatively high in some regions. This local variation cannot be explained by classical theories on land price that focus on local economic level, population density, and location factors. We propose a theoretical framework incorporating local economic structure and governments’ behavior in regional competition, to interpret the formation of industrial land price in China. We first model local firms as foot-tight ones, whose relocation costs are enormous, and outside firms as foot-loose ones, whose relocation costs are negligible. Then we divide local governments as outside-capital-dependent governments (OCDGs) and non-outside-capital-dependent governments (NOCDGs) according to the role of outside capital in local economic structure. In such a setting, OCDGs are supposed to aggressively pursue outside firms and use industrial land as a critical endowment to engage in race-to-bottom competition, making the price extremely low. On the contrary, the optimal strategy for NOCDGs, who lack strong incentives in attracting outside investment, is to stay aside and let potential land users compete to determine the land price, resulting in a higher land price. Evidence from quantitative results and comparative case studies with process tracing based on Suzhou and Wenzhou together prove the validity of this theory. This paper advances the conventional understanding of industrial land price and concludes with implications on industrial land policies and sustainable development.