Evaluating renewable energy policies

The merits of renewable energy, of targeted renewable energy policies, and appropriate evaluation methods, are each contested at various levels including national politics and in energy policy literature. Here, first a range of renewable energy goals across countries and the policies directed at achieving those objectives are reviewed. Second, the arguments advanced to support use of renewable energy policies in many nations are critiqued. Third, some principles are proposed for design of renewable energy policies. Context always matters, and it is essential to consider energy, economic, and geography opportunities and constraints before developing renewable energy policies. Fourth, to ensure renewable energy policies contribute towards attainment of high‐level national goals, a decision support approach is outlined that considers the energy context, and asks a series of evaluation questions to aid identification of first best policy measures. Fifth, barriers to and benefits from implementation of appropriate renewable energy policies are briefly reviewed.     

Integrating farmland in urban green infrastructure planning. An evidence synthesis for informed policymaking

The Green Infrastructure (GI) Strategy was adopted by the European Commission in 2013, to promote the deployment of GI by integrating it into main policy areas. Despite a high level of awareness for a policy integration across sectors at the EU level, urban and peri-urban farmland (UPUF) is up to now barely considered. A systematic evidence base addressing the contributions of UPUF can support a more informed policymaking. To address this, our paper developed a first evidence synthesis, to evaluate potential of UPUF contributing to policy objectives, thereby tackling major urban challenges. Furthermore an analysis of policy documents revealed gaps on the current state of policymaking and potentials for the integration in future policies. Due to a reciprocal consideration between EU level policies and scientific knowledge this work provides information that help to further construct scientific evidence to address policy concerns while taking into account multiple perspectives. Furthermore, we discussed the implications of our findings for further UGI research and policymaking and thus hope to extend the current political debate across policy sectors.     

Infrastructure and Rural Development: US and EU PerspectivesInfrastruktur und Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums: Perspektiven aus den USA und der EUInfrastructures et développement rural : Perspectives aux États-Unis et dans l'Union européenne

Infrastructure and Rural Development: US and EU Perspectives
Infrastructural development remains a cornerstone of rural development policy in both the United States and Europe. It is evident that rural development objectives differ, but similar policy measures are used. The economic rationale for infrastructure development centres on efficiency and creation of competitive advantage. Policy intervention is justified because of the added costs of infrastructure provision in remote, sparsely populated areas. Although this policy focus does not guarantee success, regions leading in economic development typically have better physical infrastructure. In the United States, policy must adapt to challenges posed by an ageing rural infrastructure and demographic change that will increase demands on social infrastructure such as housing and health facilities. There will be greater local responsibility for funding, and expanded use of public/private partnerships. In the European Union, the major challenge is in redirecting resources to new member states, where there is urgent need for both large new investments in transport networks and small investments to improve local access. Although two current options for funding these diverse needs focus on European policies only, investments in non-farm physical capital and public infrastructure cannot be sustained without active national policies to complement the European efforts, perhaps through co-financing requirements.     

Afforestation and forestry land allocation in northern Vietnam: Analysing the gap between policy intentions and outcomes

Many tropical countries have recently implemented similar forest policies including large-scale afforestation programmes and the devolution of land-use rights. Their success in enhancing livelihoods and contributing to improved environmental services has been widely questioned. This paper discusses the impacts of state afforestation efforts and forestry land allocation on farmers’ land-use decisions in northern Vietnam. It links policy outcomes with factors located beyond the local level by analysing the decision-making process at the policy implementation stage. Our study suggests that the current national afforestation campaign has not successfully involved households in the forestry sector and that forestry land allocation to households has often disrupted existing land-use systems with little impact on afforestation. These discrepancies between policy intentions and outcomes are partly linked to the relative freedom provinces have to interpret and adapt policies during the implementation stage. In this respect, the political and economic context has played a significant role in providing particular financial and bureaucratic incentives to the former State Forest Enterprises and to civil servants. However, we argue that these actors have been allowed or even encouraged to take advantage of these incentives by national policy-makers thanks to: (1) the lack of clarity or the poor adequacy of the policies designed at the central level, and (2) the blurred character of prevailing national discourses promoting afforestation and community-based forest management. We recommend that national policy-makers allow flexibility in policy implementation but develop mechanisms of accountability and control between the provincial and the central authorities.     

The use of ex-ante modelling tools in European Impact Assessment: What role does land use play?

Impact Assessment was introduced by the European Commission in 2002 in order to make policy development more transparent and improve the ‘quality’ of European policies. Cross-sectoral consultation, broad participation and the quantitative assessment of the impacts of policies are significant elements of this process. This article specifically addresses the role of tools modelling the impact of policies on land use in Impact Assessment. The choice of a specific modelling tool is conceptualised as an action situation interlinked with other action arenas. The article aims to uncover the institutions structuring the action situation. The outcome of the empirical work suggests that two types of Impact Assessments can be distinguished. Impact Assessments either substantively contribute to the specific policy that the Commission proposes or they legitimise policy choices ex post that have already been adopted. The legislative procedure that applies to a specific policy sector, the policy making culture in the DG and the stakes that are at issue seem to influence whether Impact Assessments contribute to policy development, or legitimise it. Furthermore, the article describes the situation in which desk officers choose a modelling tool throughout Impact Assessment. To advance their careers desk officers aim to produce policy proposals which respond to the issues raised by the actors involved in Impact Assessment and specifically in policy development and, later on, adoption. Therefore, desk officers’ preferences are shaped by the community that is involved in policy development and Impact Assessment. The article describes what role modelling tools play in European Impact Assessment procedures and it names the heuristic of criteria which desk officers use to choose a modelling tool. Besides several technical and data problems of modelling land use impact, it seems to be unlikely that land use will become a significant dimension of Impact Assessment and modelling as it is confronted with an unfavourable institutional environment at the European level.     

Dynamics in national agri-environmental policy implementation under changing EU policy priorities: Does one size fit all?

Over the past 30 years, Agri-Environmental Policies (AEP) in the EU have developed with relative national autonomy and according to the subsidiarity principle. The environmental directives represent an increase in EU-level environmental ambitions and challenge the current implementation of EU AEP by creating an increasingly demanding set of regulations with which each member state must comply. National AEP implementation may, however, maintain original characteristics and fail to adopt or transform as EU policy implementation proceeds or when EU policies develop. This creates a potential gap between EU policies and national policy implementation resulting in the ensuing national policy dynamics and adaptations becoming issues of interest. This raises a central question regarding the extent to which national AEP implementation can help us predict whether AEP will be suitable to achieve environmental directive objectives nationally in the future. In this paper, we first investigate the dynamics in the implementation of national Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) through changes in (i) AES policy objectives over time, (ii) administrative implementation structures, and (iii) administrative policy decision structures in the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Austria and Romania. Second, we examine the extent to which various factors have influenced the development of national policies over time. The study identifies development based on the theory of ‘process of institutional change’, i.e. we qualitatively estimate the costs of change based on proposed factors including economic conditions in relation to AES implementation, political institutional capacity, policy legacy, policy preferences, and current discourse. On this background, we identify differences in implementation strategies or outcomes in terms of inertia, absorption and transformation, which are characteristic of the national responses to changing AEP at the EU level. We discuss AES dynamics; whether policy content or structures should be in focus for future policy design and the implications of these findings for the future role of AEP in fulfilling environmental directives and argue why a one size fits all rule does not adequately cover current AES development.     

New urban planning challenges under emerging autonomous mobility: evaluating backcasting scenarios and policies through an expert survey

The future implementation of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) in cities can have significant impacts, both positive and negative, on their sustainability. The objective of this research is to investigate those impacts and evaluate which policies could be most effective in achieving the desired city scenario through a backcasting planning methodology. To this end, a survey among experts was carried out in which they expressed their opinions on the potential consequences of AVs in cities and on the effectiveness of various policy packages focused on achieving a more sustainable mobility and land use planning. The results obtained show that the experts consulted were sceptical about the positive impacts of AVs, arguing that they could induce an increase in car trips and urban sprawl. The policies that could be most effective in mitigating these effects, leading to a city more aligned with the planned objectives would be: to strengthen active (foot, bicycle) and public transport modes, to restrict access of motorised modes to central urban areas and to use freed spaces for alternative modes of transport, green areas and public facilities. A cluster analysis also showed that most of the experts consulted considered that the policy packages presented could be effective or very effective in reaching the most desirable scenario. Therefore, it is important that the implementation of AVs does not subordinate to, but enhances, the sustainable mobility and land use policies already being developed in many urban areas.     

Livestock pricing policy in sub-Saharan Africa: objectives,instruments and impact in five countries

Livestock pricing policies in many developing countries are often instituted without a good appreciation of the consequences of such policies for allocative efficiency, output and trade. This paper evaluates, in a comparative cross-country context, the objectives and instruments of livestock pricing policy in five sub-Saharan African countries: Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan and Zimbabwe during the period 1970-86. It assesses the extent to which pricing policy objectives have been attained, and also estimates the effects of price interventions on output, consumption, trade and government revenues in order to draw out lessons for the future. The empirical results indicate that in comparison with real border prices, a certain degree of success was achieved in stabilising real domestic producer prices in the study countries. The results also show that since the early 1980s, there has been a gradual shift away from taxation of producers. However, consumers still appear to gain as much as producers in three of the study countries, with negative consequences for foreign exchange earnings and government revenues. The analysis reveals the importance of domestic inflation and exchange rates as key variables for livestock pricing policies and highlights the need to address the macroeconomic imbalances that cause exchange rate distortions and high domestic inflation at the same time that direct price distortions are being tackled.     

Is it Possible to Utilise the Agricultural Potential of Ukraine under the Current Agrarian System?

The government of Ukraine aims to transform the country into an ‘agricultural superpower at the international level’ with the hope that the sector will gain high foreign currency earnings and become ‘the engine of national economic development’. The large agribusiness corporations have willingly responded to these calls. However, placing hope solely in the corporate sector is inadequate as the key role of agriculture to create business diversity and achieve rural social and environmental objectives will remain unfulfilled. Many other national economies have experienced ‘the offensive’ of capital on agriculture during the twentieth century, with associated negative consequences, thus encouraging them to adopt more balanced agrarian policies which benefit the whole rural population. Utilisation of Ukrainian agricultural potential as an economic growth engine requires a fundamental change in the interpretation of its purpose, which is currently focused on profit‐making export‐oriented commercial activity. The multifunctional nature of the sector needs to be emphasised, the purpose of which is not only the production of agricultural and food products, but also the creation of public benefits, such as the development opportunities and means for existence for 14 million Ukrainian rural inhabitants, maintenance of ecological balance, regeneration of soil fertility and preservation of rural landscapes.     

Modelling agricultural production of small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa: A case study in western Kenya

Small-scale farmers are known to produce the greater proportion of food consumed in the Third World, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The various national and international agricultural research centres located in these parts of the world have developed agricultural packages which have been proven, at experimental levels, to be highly productive. However, small-scale farmers in these areas continue to produce at levels far below the capacities of these packages as predicted from experimental results. Consequently, these farmers, despite their relatively large number, could not produce enough to feed themselves let alone the general population. To improve the quality of life of these farmers in particular, and the population of the Third World in general, there is a need to study the various factors responsible for low agricultural production at the household level. Models relating production to the various factors need to be formulated to improve our understanding of the functional relationships. This in turn could lead to relevant national and international policies with respect to small-scale farmers in the Third World. In this paper, we develop models to predict production given these factors. For simplicity, the parameters of the models are limited to land size (or herd size), environmental effect and management effect. A statistical examination of our model fitted to a set of survey data on this subject revealed that improving the farmers' management level could greatly enhance their production. Further statistical analysis of the data set showed that the various factors constituting the farmers' management level could broadly be classified into three groups: resources (labour and farm implements), personal characteristics (educational level and age) and external assistance (contact with extension agents/assistance) in that order of importance. We discuss the importance of these findings in the formulation of policies concerning small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.     

The interrelations of land ownership,soil protection and privileges of capital in the aspect of land take

The novelty of this study lies in the analyses of legislation concerning land use policies by examining the specific boundary between land ownership and land take. The basic motive was that the European Commission (EC) withdrew the Soil Framework Directive (SFD) in 2014 following the objections of certain Member States (MS) who countered that as most lands are privately owned, they should not fall under the remit of public governance. Since the withdrawal of the SFD land take is an issue receiving more attention. The legal content of ownership rights has been subjected to constant debate in the context of land-use policies and planning practices, which raises the questions of who decides how the land can be used and whether administrative authorities give priority to non-agricultural uses. Our study seeks to explore these issues through the lens of property law by comparing different legislations on access to land on three levels of policy implementation: the EU, the national, and the local levels. MS legislations are highlighted through the example of Hungary in two aspects: (1) regulation regarding Access to Land and Land Ownership Rights (ALOR), and (2) legislation and results of the LANDSUPPORT decision support system concerning Land Take Changes (LTC). We designed figures to demonstrate how policymakers can use the new LANDSUPPORT platform to show the gaps and inconsistencies among the above aspects. We found that the legislative regulations concerning private land use to achieve soil protection objectives remain the weakest link in the environmental protection legislation of the EU. Anxieties concerning built-in legal guarantees on each of the studied levels actualise our research. Currently, global land management is not on the political table although common European legislation might be able to preserve land for agricultural use.     

Environmental impact assessment of urban land use transitions—A context-sensitive approach

Land consumption due to residential development, economic growth and transportation belongs to the most serious environmental pressures on landscapes worldwide, in particular in urbanised areas. Accordingly, the aim of containing the development of land is rated increasingly high on the agenda of environmental policy, at least in densely populated countries such as Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands or the UK. As a result, different strategies and instruments to prevent excessive land consumption are being discussed. However, many of these strategies and instruments adopt a rather general approach, while it seems more effective to define the particular areas where the goal of reducing land consumption is to be pursued. Such an approach must draw on information about how detrimental specific land use transitions are with regard to, for instance, the functionality of soils, water balance or habitat quality at specific locations. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for the impact assessment of land use transition in urban areas which highlights how such information can be acquired. This framework includes the differentiation of two levels of impact assessment: the level of the single land unit and the context level which takes into account regional and aggregated impacts of land use transition bound to the spatial context. The conceptual framework provides a basis to disaggregate (supra-)national policy targets regarding land use, to scale them down to the regional level, and thus to clarify the spatially explicit implications of land use policies.     

To populate or preserve? Evolving political-demographic and environmental paradigms in Israeli land-use policy

There has been a recent proliferation of national land-use policies that emphasize protecting open space and ecosystem integrity. However, countries grappling with internal political conflict, or that are engaged in military conflicts with neighboring countries, have priorities that focus on control of land in areas where state sovereignty is perceived to be threatened. These two concerns, political-demographic control and environmental protection, create very different paradigms for how to think about open space policy. The objective of this paper is to consider the impact of competing paradigms in land-use policy formulation and implementation—one that encourages sprawl and the other that encourages compact development and the preservation of open space. We use Israel as a case study where both political demography and environmental land-use paradigms are currently influencing policy and planning. We explore the historical evolution of both land-use paradigms and consider how they are currently competing in the formulation and execution of land-use policy decisions. We consider how these distinct priorities are playing out in current discourse and policy implementation, and characterize the past, current and prospective future physical outcomes of policies on the landscape. Our goal is to alert policy makers and land-use scholars of the subtle and contradictory influence of political-demographic land-use priorities with regard to their potential impact on the successful implementation of environmental policies. The Israeli case study is indicative of a diversity of countries that have a history of political-demographic land-use policies, but have also begun to adopt environmentally motivated policies.     

农业支持政策结构变迁的国际比较分析

[目的]在多哈回合谈判再次要求削减黄箱政策背景下,通过量化比较分析典型发达国家和地区在多哈回合谈判前后农业支持政策结构变化趋势,为中国农业供给侧结构性改革背景下农业支持政策改革提供方向借鉴。[方法]使用OECD农业政策评价指标对比分析欧盟、美国、日本和中国4个国家和地区农业支持力度、支持结构的变化趋势。[结果]发达国家和地区积极创新农业支持手段以替代市场价格支持,加快农业支持政策的市场化转变,强调支持政策与资源环境保护的交互作用,注重对农业知识和创新体系的资金投入。[结论]我国应持续加大对农业的支持力度,逐渐减少市场价格支持比重,创新支持工具并强化政策间的协调性,优化一般服务支持结构,加大对农业知识和创新体系的财政投入。     

Technology,market policies and institutional reform for sustainable land use in southern Mali

To identify appropriate interventions that support sustainable land use; a farm household modelling approach is applied to analyze micro-economic supply reactions to various policy measures. The modelling framework links agro-technical and economic data, and takes both production and consumption decisions into account, allowing land use and production technology adjustments in accordance with farm household objectives. Different types of farm households are distinguished on the basis of their resource endowments, savings coefficients and time discount rate. Actual and alternative (sustainable) cropping and livestock activities for different weather regimes are defined for southern Mali. The effects on sustainable land use and expected farm household welfare of adopting alternative technologies and modifying prices, transaction costs, access to credit and land taxes are demonstrated. Even with full information on sustainable technologies, strong policy interventions are required to halt soil degradation. Structural policies proved to be more effective than price policies to reduce soil degradation while maintaining positive income effects. When prices are determined endogenously, structural policy loses some effectiveness as an incentive for sustainable land use due to the effect of additional supply on local cereal and meat Prices.     

Managing the energy trilemma of reliability,affordability and renewables: Assessing consumer demands with discrete choice experiments

In response to the looming climate crisis, many countries are adopting technologies to reduce the accumulation of greenhouse gases. However, national energy policies are often multiobjective and resolution deeply divisive. The result is a policy trilemma between the energy mix and the trade-offs with other policy objectives, including cost and reliability. Utilising a discrete choice experiment (DCE), the objective of this study is to explore Australian household preferences for alternative electricity contracts containing features reflecting changes in future energy policy. The first set of features include investments in renewable generation and community-based energy storage. The second set of features reflect demand-side management policies, including installing smart meters and consumption limits being imposed on households during peak demand. Two versions of the DCE were developed to obtain both willingness to pay and willingness to accept estimates for the same features. In line with the literature, differences in the two sets of estimates were observed, with the willingness to accept estimates being statistically larger for some features. These dollar value measures can be used to support public policy decision-making – the choice of which depending on the context of the policy problem being considered.     

Preface

The paper examines the main issues surrounding distributional effects in the domains of natural resource management and land policies, agricultural technology and research policies, agricultural market and trade policies, and consumer‐oriented policies, including standards, subsidies, and labeling. Agriculture is drifting into an ever more drastic bifurcation at a global level and within many countries. Correcting that bifurcation will require large investments in rural areas and rural people, in institutions, and in information and biological technologies accessible by the poor in the world's smallholder sector. Large and growing national and international inequalities related to agriculture and rural areas threaten peace, growth, and sustainable development.     

Standing at the Crossroads – the Future of a Strong Common Agricultural Policy is at Stake A la croisée des chemins – l’avenir d’une politique agricole commune forte est en jeu Am Scheideweg – die Zukunft einer starken Gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik steht auf dem Spiel

Standing at the Crossroads – the Future of a Strong Common Agricultural Policy is at Stake The issues and targets in the European Union’s agenda are largely in line with Hungarian objectives; job creation for example is one of the main targets of the Europe 2020 strategy and also of the Hungarian Government. Hungary’s development and competitiveness are linked to the internal development and global competitiveness of the European Union; and so our primary objective is to strengthen the integration process and to obtain a strong Common Agricultural Policy. The CAP has reached the highest level of integration among EU policies and its original objectives have been reinforced by the Lisbon Treaty. Europe needs a strong and common agricultural policy beyond 2013; the main task of agriculture will be to ensure the security of food supplies. The future success of the CAP requires appropriate financial support to secure future targets. Rural development has already become an integral part of the CAP structure; but rural areas will not be viable without an evolving agriculture. Without the provision of a proper level of income subsidies many farms would be forced to stop production. CAP adjustments should promote the catching up of new Member States and eliminate the current system of direct subsidies that disadvantage the new members.     

European Soil Data Centre: Response to European policy support and public data requirements

In the context of the European Union's Soil Thematic Strategy, policy makers require easy access to soil data and information of various types and scales to assess the state of soils at European level. To satisfy this need, the European Commission and the European Environment Agency (EEA) decided to establish the European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC), located at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.The ESDAC is one of ten environmental data centres that have been established during the last 4 years in support of policy development, implementation and monitoring by the European Commission's Directorate General for Environment. The ESDAC, located at http://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu, has become the focal point for soil data and information at European Union level by hosting a series of soil products and web-based tools that allow access to the data. The ESDAC acts as the primary data contact point for the Commission and EEA to fulfill their information needs. The establishment and the evaluation of harmonised databases should facilitate improved soil protection measures.     

A quick scan tool to assess the relative prospects of European regions for sustainable agriculture in a liberal market

The European Union (EU) most likely will continue to adapt its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to a more liberal market policy. We assume that this process will take place in the next 20 years. A relevant question then is which European regions, under such conditions, have prospects to maintain a sustainable agriculture in terms of the objectives within the ‘People, Profit and Planet’ framework of sustainability. We explored the question by defining simple indicators for the 3 P-objectives, quantifying the indicators per region, ranking the regions per indicator and defining the prospect of a region in comparison to other regions. The approach is very robust, easy to update and indicative for quickly assessing future prospects of regions. The results are presented in three maps showing more than 160 regions of the EU-25 member countries classified according to their agricultural prospects for competitiveness (Profit), employment (People) and land use (Planet). By considering the three maps in combination, the overall prospects for sustainable agriculture under “liberalised” conditions can be assessed. Based on this quick scan, it is concluded that: (a) the few highly developed and highly productive regions in the UK, the Netherlands, France and Germany will out-compete the numerous still poorly developed and low-productive regions in the Southern and Eastern EU member states; (b) these regions in the UK, the Netherlands, France and Germany will maintain their already minimized and highly productive employment at the expense of the member states with a relatively high agrarian employment, notably Poland and the Baltic states; (c) the sparsely populated regions of France, Denmark, Scotland, Ireland, Czech Republic and Germany will maintain their agrarian land use, at the expense of densely populated regions with relatively small holdings in Poland, Italy, Germany, Portugal and Spain. Policy makers and entrepreneurs can obtain an integrative view by taking into account the three prospect maps to support decision-making on long-term policies and sustainable investments in terms of the 3 Ps.