Measuring Farmer Risk Preferences in Europe: A Systematic Review

We present a systematic review of the extensive body of research on farmer risk preference measurement across Europe. We capture the methodological developments over time and discuss remaining challenges and potential areas for further research. Given the constantly evolving policy environment in Europe, and increasing climate-change related risks and uncertainties, there is large value to be gained from enhancing our understanding of this fundamental aspect of farmers’ decision-making processes and consequent actions.     

Land contamination risk management in Cameroon: A critical review of the existing policy framework

Land affected by contamination from human activities has been identified as a major environmental problem in developed countries and there are established mechanisms for identifying, prioritising, characterising, assessing and remediating the land so that risks to human health and environmental receptors are minimised. However, comparative mechanisms and approaches for sustainable land management are often lacking in developing countries such as Cameroon. This paper presents a critical review of the existing policy framework in Cameroon in relation to environmental management, particularly land contamination.It is established that in Cameroon, there is an acute lack of comprehensive information on land contamination from economic development and industrialisation, inadequate legal and institutional framework, weak enforcement capacity and unsatisfactory coordination between various stakeholders towards sustainable land management practices. The coastal town of Douala, which has the highest level of industrial activity in the sub region is used to demonstrate how dealing with land contamination is a public health priority and requires attention in the context of sustainable development. The United Kingdom (UK) regulatory policy framework on land contamination risk management is used to show how land contamination issues and risk management approaches, including conceptual site models, could be introduced into the sustainability discourse in Cameroon. A number of recommendations including proposals for a radical overhaul of the current regulatory policy framework are formulated and presented. Specifically, the creation of an independent Cameroon Environment Protection Agency (CEPA) that will be the main regulatory body responsible for developing and implementing the policy proposals in this paper is advocated.     

Perceptions of public land governance from two Canadian provinces: How is the social agenda being met through sustainable forest management?

This article presents a comparative assessment of current spaces for public involvement in Crown (public) land management in the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. More specifically, it addresses the barriers to public participation by examining the agency-client relationship – specifically, through the theoretical lens of capture – as an impediment to the inclusion of values that are outside the traditional, technocratic management realm of public forest management. Without public input, the public’s needs, values, and desires are not articulated and the social side of sustainable forest management is likely to be neglected. Low levels of trust in public land management agencies in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, coupled with minimal space for public involvement, have created the perception of a policy network that is dominated by industry and/or government and provides minimal space for other interests. The primary research method is an online survey informed by forty-two interviews. The survey was administered to 89 key forestry stakeholders in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Participation observation and a document analysis are utilized to complement the survey. This research finds that (1) although survey participants come from diverse affiliations and two provinces with different forest policy and unique approaches to public participation, there is essential consensus of the need for an improvement of public involvement processes for public land; (2) trust in the forest industry and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is extremely low in both provinces. Even with recent participatory efforts in Nova Scotia, the trust level is lower than in the neighboring province of New Brunswick. Some participants connect this distrust to privileged access for certain interest groups and a closed policy network; (3) barriers to participatory processes differ between provinces, especially a fear of retribution, which is specific to New Brunswick; and (4) key stakeholders identify barriers to engagement that they perceive to be different for themselves and the general public.     

Flood risk management in Austria: Analysing the shift in responsibility-sharing between public and private actors from a public stakeholder's perspective

The frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events are expected to increase due to the effects of climate change and socio-economic development. Potentially higher flood risk, hence, triggered debate about a shift in flood risk management from mainly public to increasingly private involvement. So far, public flood mitigation schemes were standard modes to deal with flood hazards in many countries, including Austria. With high implementation and maintenance costs as well as substantial losses remaining, alternative management approaches have increasingly been discussed. This paper analyses the debate on shifting responsibilities in flood risk management from public to private actors and whether or not the current governance arrangement would accommodate this shift in the public-private divide. Based on qualitative research, we explicitly analyse this potential shift from an institutional perspective and not from the perspective of individual homeowners, taking the case study of Dornbirn (Austria) as an example. The results show that, firstly, the current governance arrangement hardly encourages property-level flood risk adaptation measures. Secondly, several factors stabilise the current governance arrangement and prevent a shift in the public-private divide. Although the need for an increased sense of responsibility among private actors seems to be evident among interviewees, strong historical narratives and adaptive expectations lead to a society seeing public authorities to be responsible for flood risk management and trust their expertise as well as the technical flood infrastructure. However, such areas of expertise and law are fragmented and therefore impede a redistribution or enforcement of responsibilities. Furthermore, fixed costs delay a shift in the public-private divide as the traditional engineering approach (i.e. structural measures) is predominant with high investments in the current system but limited investment in risk communication to raise awareness. Yet, a shift towards sharing responsibility might contribute to flood risk management for risks to remain manageable.     

Building resilience: Mainstreaming community participation into integrated assessment of resilience to climatic hazards in metropolitan land use management

Building resilience is critical for metropolitan land use planning to strengthen the ability to cope with and minimize climatic disaster risks. Challenges still remain for metropolitan agencies in identifying the components or metrics for measuring resilience. Particularly, uncertainties in climate change and diversification in local contexts compel urban planners to mainstream community participation, indigenous knowledge and local attributes into the resilience assessment. This article aims to propose a novel methodology for assessing resilience, which can encourage stakeholder participation and communicate planners in shaping metropolitan land use policies. Using the Taichung metropolis, Taiwan as the study area, this article created a resilience metric called the Climatic Hazard Resilience Indicators for Localities (CHRIL) that is appropriate for use in a policy context. Then, this metric combined a fuzzy multicriteria decision analysis with a participatory geographic information system approach to measure and map resilience to climatic hazards. Through the participation of experts, local officers and community members, a multivariate analysis was applied to explain why low resilience areas occur in specific locations. Moreover, we performed a cluster analysis to group the areas into several types of resilience and revealed the relationship between the resilience factors and overall local development patterns. Results show that conflicts and tradeoffs may exist between some resilience factors, especially socioeconomic vulnerability and adaptive capacity. The findings provide stakeholders and policy-makers with a better governance structure to design and synthesize appropriate patchworks of planning measures for different types of resilience areas to reduce climatic hazard risks.     

Communicating Food-Safety Risks to Key Stakeholders

In recent years, the public has become increasingly concerned about the safety of the food they eat. Anxieties are augmented each time there is a food crisis, with each new disease and resultant food safety concern adding to the perception that our food is no longer safe. Bridging the gap between the scientist/veterinarian, economist, farmer and consumer requires effective communication strategies. This article uses the example of paratuberculosis (Johne's disease) in cattle to illustrate the difficulties of communicating food-safety risks when considerable uncertainty exists. Scientific data linking this disease to Crohn's disease in humans is contradictory and far from conclusive. We show how the Codex Alimentarius system can be used as a template for communicating risk in such situations. This is a four-stage process that addresses public perceptions of the risk and the public's related information requirements. One aim is to give peoples' concerns as much emphasis as the risk statistics in an open and honest debate. The example highlights the difficulty of deciding when and how best to instigate the process. However, positive collaboration between epidemiologists, public health specialists, economists, food marketers and policy-makers to work in conjunction with consumers of both food and animal health products and services is essential for a satisfactory outcome.     

不同主体视角下农地流转的风险识别及评价研究——基于上海涉农郊区的调研

[目的]文章界定了农地流转的核心主体为农地流入方、农地流出方及村委会,从农地流转中不同主体的视角出发,对农地流转的风险进行识别和评价。[方法]对农地流出方和农地流入方的风险采取问卷调查的研究方法,对村委会风险采用访谈法。[结果]识别出上海涉农郊区农地流出方主要面临"失地"风险、契约风险、收益分配不合理风险、政策信息传递不充分风险;农地流入方面临政策风险、流转期限风险、自然风险、技术设备风险、市场风险;村委会面临管理风险和履约风险,由此构建不同主体农地流转的风险清单。在此基础上,运用风险矩阵法和模糊综合评价法对上海涉农区域农地流转风险进行评价。[结论]农地流出方的风险等级较高(69.9),农地流入方的风险等级很高(81.9),村委会的风险一般(52.5)。最后,根据农地流出方、流入方和村委会面临的不同风险情况,提出具有针对性的对策和建议。     

The introduction of catchment-wide co-operations: Scalar reconstructions and transformation in Austria in flood risk management

The management of flood risk in Europe is changing. In several European Member States there are significant ongoing processes to shift certain flood risk management duties and responsibilities from the national to the local level. Previously, national authorities dominated the discourse about national flood risk management policy, but increasingly, local and private stakeholders have become responsible for flood risk management. This has greatly influenced the governance structure and arrangements for flood risk management policy. As a result, the co-operation among various stakeholders has become increasingly important. The consequences of this shift toward local stakeholders can be understood in the context of rescaling. This paper analyses the rescaling processes through catchment-wide management plans in the Austrian flood risk management system. Therefore, we selected three different Austrian study sites (Aist in Upper Austria, Triesting-Tal in Lower Austria and Ill-Walgau in Vorarlberg). New management ideas required new dynamics within the current scales and allowed changes in the interaction of local, regional, and national stakeholders in terms of negotiation, funding, and strategy development. The new policy direction demonstrates not only the importance of network connections between stakeholders at the same scale, but also networks between stakeholders at different scales, especially between local and national levels. However, engagement at the local level strongly depends on social capacities, such as knowledge, motivation/self-interest, networks at various levels, and procedural capacity. The theoretical framework of politics of scale helps in understanding and analysing the impact of the new decentralisation policy and practice.     

Food risk perceptions by different consumer groups in Germany

This paper presents an analysis of the changing food risk perceptions of German consumers over the period 1992 to 2002. We analyse the respondents' general risk attitudes and their specific perceptions of food risks. Using cluster analysis we generate a typology of four consumer types. One group is worried about natural food risks, the second does not worry about any types of food risks, the third is concerned about technical food risks and the fourth is concerned about all food risks. A multinomial logit analysis identifies factors that describe the classification of households in this grouping. General risk attitudes and knowledge about food risk are significant variables in the explanation.     

The challenge of legitimizing spatially differentiated regulation: Experiences from the implementation of the Danish Buffer zone act

Differentiating regulation is a promising approach to agri-environmental regulation that may potentially reduce the environmental impact of agriculture at the lowest possible costs for the farmers and society, but also possesses a number of challenges. In this article, we explore the challenges to the legitimacy of agri-environmental regulation that occurs when the regulatory regime changes from general regulation to differentiated regulation. The analysis is based on a case study of the implementation of the Buffer zone act in Denmark – a regulation that prevents agricultural production in a 10 (later 9) meter fringe around selected waterbodies. We distinguish between two different ways of legitimizing: Producing knowledge and participation. We conclude that to harvest some of the obvious benefits of differentiated regulation a number of challenges must be resolved, 1) ensuring legitimacy of differentiated regulation is crucial, 2) differentiated regulation imply that farmers are also differentiated, 3) differentiated regulation implies new uncertainties, 4) the current knowledge regime need to be reconfigured, 5) stakeholders feel that they are unevenly treated and 6) it is difficult to establish a win–win solution for all farmers on an individual level.     

水库移民社会风险评价

针对水库移民安置过程中面临的各种各样的社会风险，通过风险调查表定性分析移民的风险程度，提出作好移民规划、实行有土安置、加强移民技术培训、加大后期扶持力度以及建立移民社会保障体系等一系列弱化风险的措施。     

Brownfield regeneration in Europe: Identifying stakeholder perceptions,concerns, attitudes and information needs

Brownfield areas are a major concern in Europe because they are often extensive, persistent in time and compromise stakeholders’ interests. Moreover, due to their complex nature, from the decision-making point of view, the regeneration of brownfields is a challenging problem requiring the involvement of the whole range of stakeholders. Many studies, projects and organisations have recognised the importance of stakeholder involvement and have promoted public participation. However, comprehensive studies providing an overview of stakeholders’ perceptions, concerns, attitudes and information needs when dealing with brownfield regeneration are still missing.This paper presents and discusses a participatory methodology applied to stakeholders from five European countries to fill this research gap, to develop a system to support the categorisation of the needed information and to support the understanding of which typology of information is the most relevant for specific categories of stakeholders also in relation with their concerns.The engagement process consists of five phases: (i) planning and preparatory work, (ii) identification of stakeholder categories, (iii) engagement activities (e.g. focus groups and workshops), (iv) submission of a questionnaire and (v) provision of feedback to the involved stakeholders.Thanks to this process, appropriate stakeholders have been identified as well as their perceptions, concerns, attitudes and information needs. Stakeholders’ perceptions proved to be different according to the country: German and Italian stakeholders perceive brownfields as complex systems, where several issues need to be addressed, while Romanian stakeholders consider contamination as almost the only issue to be addressed; Czech and Polish stakeholders address an intermediate number of issues. Attitudes and concerns seemed to be quite similar between countries. As far as information needs are concerned, similarities between some groups of stakeholders have been noticed: site owners and problem holders are primarily interested in information on planning and financing, while authorities and services providers are interested in more technical aspects like investigation, planning and risk assessment. Some outstanding outcomes emerged from the scientific community and research group, which showed an interest for remediation strategies and options and socio-economic aspects.The research outcomes allowed to create a knowledge base for the future development of tailored and customised approaches and tools for stakeholders working in the brownfield regeneration field.     

Ambiguity,learning opportunities and risk‐neutral regulation

Two current issues in management of public risks, ambiguity and learning, are addressed in the context of managing ecosystems with thresholds, and regulating treatment safety as might apply, for example, to human and animal health, pesticides and herbicides. Reconsidering a recent claim that, in systems that penalise violation of thresholds, learning opportunities induce riskier decision‐making, I find no incentive for ambiguity seeking. But opportunity to benefit from learning may indeed induce riskier decisions, an effect that diminishes and eventually disappears as penalties become larger. A recent claim that a rational regulator of pharmaceutical drugs would be ambiguity preferring – a claim that has obvious applicability to a broader set of treatments – is then examined. Ambiguity‐tolerant patients may indeed prefer a menu of ambiguous treatments and opportunity to learn and switch, rather than a single treatment with known risk. But the source of ambiguity matters. Patient heterogeneity, prior to and independent of policy, generates ambiguity for individuals and motivates preference for a menu of treatments. However, expanding the menu does not justify approving treatments that are generally riskier. Finally, I challenge the perennial claim that the regulator of risks to human health and safety should seek to maximise expected value.     

土地利用规划的风险管理

通过对现阶段我国土地利用规划内在特点的分析,指出土地利用规划风险存在的必然性和多样性。基于土地利用规划实践,认为土地利用规划中的风险可分为自然风险、社会风险、经济风险、环境风险、政治风险和技术风险。针对这些风险,建立了土地利用规划中实施风险管理的科学程序,提出了具体的风险管理措施。     

What matters most? Stakeholders’ perceptions of river water quality

The need to integrate stakeholders’ views into environmental policy is increasingly gaining attention because this offers the opportunity to design sustainable and synergistic environmental strategies. Understanding and integrating the views of resource users into policy design and implementation could help address the most important challenges, gain community support, enhance project ownership, and avoid policies being rejected by local people. As a result, research in environmental management has focussed on stakeholders’ perceptions of river water quality and how to integrate such views into policy. While existing studies offer insights into the different ways in which stakeholders evaluate river water quality and potential factors influencing judgements, they appear to be limited in a number of ways. First, most of these studies focus on developed countries and may have limited contextual relevance to the developing world. Moreover, past studies focus on segments of society such as farmers and mainly on wastewater for agriculture. These shortcomings may limit our understanding of the topic and our ability to design effective policies to address water quality problems. Drawing on survey data from the Wenchi municipality in Ghana, we examine public perceptions of what constitute important measures of river water quality as well as factors influencing such judgements. Results suggest that while variables such as taste, colour, smell and litter are important, the presence of faecal matter in and/or around the river was rated the most important measure of river water quality while depth of river was the least important. Results further suggest that education, age, number of years a person had lived in a community, depth of river and the presence of aquatic vegetation influence water quality judgements. The findings of this research provide insights into what policymakers and regulators need to consider when attempting to influence behaviours in relation to water resources. We note, however, that while public perceptions of river water quality could guide water management policies, scientific measurements of water quality must not be replaced with stakeholder perceptions. This is because aspects such as ecological integrity may not be important to segments of the public but are an important aspect of water management. This is reinforced in the present study as there seems to be a lack of concern among the participants regarding river depth – an important factor for habitat provision and pollution dilution.     

Lost in participation: How local knowledge was overlooked in land use planning and risk governance in Tōhoku,Japan

This article aims to identify gaps in public participation in land use planning to improve risk governance, using the case of the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) in 2011. Overreliance on technical information and on the opinion of experts is occurring side by side along with negligence of local knowledge and lack of effective public participation in decision-making, creating a sense of overconfidence regarding scientific knowledge and new infrastructure's abilities to withstand future disasters. Using the case study method in GEJE, our research identified three main overall gaps in participation. Firstly, a lot of local knowledge from previous experiences was not incorporated into land use plans in the region even after similar events in the past. Secondly, there was technical information that alerted to possible risks for land use in certain areas, but this information did not impede development in risk areas due to lack of effective participation in the land use planning processes. Finally, Japan allows participation in many land use planning process, but some of the most important decisions, such as on the sitting of nuclear plants had little or any local participation. Thus, strengthening public participation in land use by closing those three gaps could improve risk governance and resilience of localities to cope with large natural and technological disasters in the future.     

商品林投资风险的类型、成因与对策分析

在综述国内外学者对商品林投资风险类型及其成因研究成果的基础上,从风险管理角度出发,分析了商品林投资中可能产生的风险类型,主要有自然风险、经济风险、技术风险、政策风险。深入探讨这4种风险形成的原因,并提出有针对性的风险管理对策,即运用多样化经营、产业化经营、合同管理、套期保值、森林保险、专用基金等手段和方法防范和化解商品林投资风险。     

被征地农民贫困风险及安置措施研究

研究目的:为妥善安置被征地农民和防范风险的产生提供政策建议和决策参考。研究方法:阐述了被征地农民面临的贫困风险及风险程度,分析现行安置措施防范贫困风险的效用。研究结果:被征地农民面临的最主要的风险:收入下降、就业困难和长远生计缺乏保障。不同失地状况的被征地农民面临的风险程度是有差别的;不同的安置方式对防范风险的效用是不同的。研究结论:完善被征地农民安置政策措施,应明确以促进就业和建立社会保障体系为重点的基本政策取向,积极开拓多种安置途径。     

耕地非农化风险及增值收益分配机制研究——以哈尔滨市为例

研究目的:探寻合理分配耕地非农化增值收益的方法,从耕地非农化风险角度构建增值收益分配机制。研究方法:联盟利益分配机制,模糊综合评价法。研究结果:在耕地非农化中,各权利主体所担风险从高到低依次为农民、中央政府、地方政府、村集体;假设各权利主体参与征地行为是一种投资行为,各权利主体耕地非农化增值收益分配比例为中央政府占26%,地方政府占22%,村集体占17%,农民占35%;运用"联盟利益分配机制"测算耕地非农化各权利主体之间的增值收益分配比例是可行的。研究结论:以缩小征地范围、尊重农民意愿为条件制定征地补偿标准不仅体现补偿公平原则,也符合通过市场机制对农民进行补偿的改革方向。     

Derivatives for Development? Small‐Farmer Vulnerability and the Financialization of Climate Risk Management

While agricultural production has always been a risky endeavour, it has become even more so in the current context of climatic change and increasing market uncertainty. Meanwhile, the rollback of state protections has rendered small‐scale farmers, especially marginalized peasant producers in the Global South, particularly vulnerable to these contemporary stressors. This essay critically evaluates the contemporary roll‐out of financial derivatives that purportedly aim to mitigate smallholder vulnerability. It gives particular attention to a novel type of derivative known as index‐based agricultural insurance (IBAI) that plays an increasingly prominent role in initiatives to ‘climate proof’ agriculture. The creation of IBAI markets has required significant work, including (1) technical interventions to debundle environmental risk from agricultural production and rebundle it in novel ways that support private financial capital and agricultural input suppliers, (2) extensive state support in the creation of risk markets, and (3) the construction of an accommodating ‘insurance culture’ among small‐scale producers. In addition to mitigating weather‐based risk, a primary objective of IBAI is to spur agricultural modernization. In promoting this agenda, IBAI initiatives may have the paradoxical effect of exposing smallholders to new risks while expanding their overall vulnerability to environmental and economic stressors.