Land speculation and interest rate subsidies as a cause of deforestation: The role of cattle ranching in Costa Rica

Land speculation by cattle ranchers is considered a principal cause of deforestation in Latin America, in particular in combination with (previously) widely provided interest rate subsidies. Proof for the hypothesis that land speculation leads to inflated rates of investment in land is, however, relatively limited and invariably related to the question of whether land prices tend to rise over time. Based on the Neoclassical investment theory with adjustment costs we develop a stochastic cattle ranching model in which land prices are modelled as geometric Brownian motion, to evaluate the effect of expected fluctuations in land prices on land investment decisions by cattle ranchers in Latin America. For a case study in the Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica, results show that the expected rate of investment is almost 35% underestimated in case land prices are assumed constant instead of fluctuating according to the standard deviation, while abolition of interest rate subsidies leads to an almost 15% decrease in the expected rate of investment. Consequently, it is shown that variability in land prices alone is a sufficient condition for land speculation, inflated rates of investment in land, larger farm sizes and, thus, higher rates of deforestation in agrarian frontier areas, while this process is further promoted by subsidized livestock credit or any other form of agricultural subsidy that increases the marginal production value of land.     

Land governance as a precondition for decreasing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

This paper’s aim is to show that improvements in land governance in Brazil, and particularly in the Amazon region, have been the main pre-condition enabling reductions in deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Deforestation occurs primarily where property rights are not clearly established, and occurs mostly on land directly or indirectly under state responsibility. This paper also shows that land speculation plays an important role in deforestation. Based on these findings, it is evident that Brazil must improve its land governance in order to decrease rates of deforestation. The Brazilian government has adopted important new efforts to improve land administration, including improvements in the registration process and the Terra Legal program, which are addressing public land problems across large areas of the Amazon. The concluding section highlights how efforts to reduce deforestation will only be possible through more efficient land governance, especially in the Amazon region, and discusses the important role that participatory land governance may play in improving land use and land ownership through application of land taxes.     

Mapping properties to monitor forests: Landholder response to a large environmental registration program in the Brazilian Amazon

Across the tropics, development banks and conservation donors are investing millions in property mapping and registration projects to improve accountability for deforestation. An evaluation of the effectiveness and accuracy of existing environmental registries is crucial to assure the success of future efforts. This study presents an evaluation of deforestation and registration behavior in response to one of the largest of these property registration programs to date — the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) in the Amazonian state of Pará. From late 2007 to 2013, approximately 100,000 properties covering 30 million hectares of self-declared claims were entered in this digital registry. We used fixed effects regression models and property level data to assess how registration influenced deforestation on different sizes of properties. Registration had little impact on deforestation behavior, with the exception of a significant reduction on “smallholder” properties in the size range of 100–300 ha. We link this reduction to interacting incentives from forest protection and land regularization policies and suggest that desire to strengthen land claims motivates these landholders’ response to the environmental registry. We also present evidence that some landholders may be registering incomplete or inaccurate parcels into the self-declared system to strategically benefit from policy incentives. Our results for smallholder properties indicate that environmental registries may have potential to facilitate reductions in deforestation if combined with a favorable combination of incentives. However, in places where land tenure is still being negotiated, the utility of environmental registries for forest policy enforcement and research may be limited without ongoing investment to resolve uncertainty around land claims.     

Reconciling rural development and ecological restoration: Strategies and policy recommendations for the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Increased demand for both agricultural production and forest restoration may lead to increased competition for land in the next decades. Sustainably increasing cattle ranching productivity is a potential solution to reconcile different land uses, while also improving biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services. If not strategically implemented in integration with complementary policies, sustainable intensification can however result in negative environmental, economic and social effects. We analyzed the potential for sustainable intensification as a solution for a conflict between agricultural expansion and forest restoration in the Paraitinga Watershed at the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, a global biodiversity hotspot. In addition, we provide policy recommendations for sustainable development in the region, based on interviews with producers and local actors. We found that the Paraitinga Watershed has the potential to increase its cattle-ranching productivity and, as a result, relinquish spared land for other uses. This was true even in the most conservative intensification scenario considered (50% of the maximum potential productivity reached), in which 76,702 ha of pastures can be spared for other uses (46% of total pasture area). We found that restoration, apiculture and rural tourism are promising activities to promote sustainable development in the region, thus potentially increasing food production and mitigating competition for land. Our study shows that results from socioeconomic interviews and biophysical modelling of potential productivity increases offer robust insights into practical solutions on how to pursue sustainable development in one of the world’s most threatened biodiversity hotspots.     

Crossing spatial analyses and livestock economics to understand deforestation processes in the Brazilian Amazon: the case of São Félix do Xingú in South Pará

The Amazon is the largest tropical forest area on Earth, and has been undergoing rapid deforestation for the last four decades. In the Brazilian Amazon, large‐scale pasture for cattle ranching and soybean production are the main land uses, leading to a yearly deforestation rate of 0.5%. These conversions are mostly located in frontier areas distributed along the so‐called “arc of deforestation”. Within this large zone, various land use change processes are interacting through several modes of land valuation and organisation. From several case studies in the State of Pará (Brazil), the current project aims at analysing how landscape dynamics are related to infrastructure development, ecological conditions, zoning policies and to the evolution and the organisation of the production, consumption and marketing chains of livestock products. This paper presents the results for one test site, the region of São Félix do Xingú, South of Pará This region is the focus of land speculation, cattle expansion, and deforestation. Road construction, investments in electrical energy, financial credit for cattle, and the land reform policies have all fuelled this process. All these factors make this region one of the most dynamic agricultural frontiers in the Brazilian Amazon. The main objective of the paper is to improve our understanding of deforestation processes by crossing spatial analyses and 1ivestock economics.studies, and to characterise the role and impact of various natural and anthropic factors in the location and development of the main types of farmers, and their policy implications.     

A spatial econometric analysis of land use efficiency in large and small municipalities

We estimate the relationship between urban spatial expansion and its socio-economic determinants in Lombardy, the most urbanised region of Italy (and one of the most of the European Union), at the municipality level. Test results suggest that this relationship varies significantly among municipalities of different size and findings support the hypothesis that larger ones are more efficient in managing land take. In particular, we find that the marginal land consumption per new household is inversely related to the size of the municipality and we link this evidence to the fact that, since more space is often available, small municipalities pay less institutional attention to the issue of land take and consequently internalise less the environmental externalities. This evidence calls for a reflection on the role of planning policies and the effectiveness of undifferentiated measures to contain land take, especially in the case of Italy, where the municipalities, more than 99% of which have less than 50,000 inhabitants, decide on land use transformations.     

Potential hazards of land policy: Conservation,rural development and fire use in the Brazilian Amazon

With growing awareness of fire hazard as an environmental threat within tropical rainforests, the state of Brazil initiated a set of fire control policies aimed at monitoring and ameliorating fire hazard in the Amazon region. These policies were developed in the aftermath of large-scale fire events and reflect a conservationist discourse that responded to internal as well as international environmental concerns. In doing so, the policies have framed the “fire problem” around those who use fire in their land use practices, in particular small-scale agriculturalists. Yet, land policy in general has repeatedly failed to address the institutional arrangements which compel small-scale farmers to use fire in their agricultural practices and the underlying development processes that have made the landscape more vulnerable to accidental spread of fire. Using regional level data on small-scale farmers, I suggest that the conservation oriented approach of fire policy may not be enough to curtail accidental fire events and instead that the fire issue needs to be positioned within rural development as well.     

Spatial restructuring and the logic of industrial land redevelopment in urban China: I. Theoretical considerations

We harness the game-theoretic approach to propose a new conceptual framework for industrial land redevelopment research. Stemming from Harvey's notion of “urbanization of capital” and Foucault's study on “power relations”, we analyze the driver and regulator of urban spatial restructuring. We contend that the redevelopment of industrial land should be re-conceptualized as the competition for land rent gap or land rent surplus. Land redevelopment in urban China could be theoretically interpreted as multiple games between the original land-user and local government or the alliance between local government and new developers. Different equilibriums of games lead to various models/types of redevelopment.     

The new economic geography of land use change: Supply chain configurations and land use in the Brazilian Amazon

In this paper we present a framework for understanding regional land use processes by incorporating the concept of agglomeration economies into agricultural frontier theory. We show that agricultural firms can obtain positive externalities from locating in close proximity to other agricultural firms, leading to agglomeration economies. Agglomeration economies lead to high levels of competition and diversity within a local agricultural supply chain and influence local prices, information flows, and private enforcement of environmental institutions. We use the theory of agglomeration economies to understand the development of soybean production in two counties along the Santarém-Cuiaba (BR-163) highway in the Brazilian Amazon: Santarém, Pará and Sorriso, Mato Grosso. We conclude that differences in environmental and land tenure institutions influenced the occurrence of agglomeration economies in these two counties, which in turn affected the total factor productivity of soy in each region. In particular, the supply chain became extremely competitive and diverse in Sorriso where few environmental regulations existed, while environmental restrictions reduced the diversification of the supply chain in Santarém. The presence of a soy agglomeration economy in Sorriso spurred innovation, increased productivity, and led to extremely rapid soy expansion in that county, while the monopolistic supply chain in Santarém reduced producers’ access to land and capital and impeded soy expansion.     

Property-level assessment of change in forest clearing patterns: The need for tailoring policy in the Amazon

Once driven by large-scale clearings, Amazon deforestation now occurs mostly in small increments. Did this result from the emergence of a new group of agents or from a strategic adaptation in the behavior of those who led deforestation in the past? We address this question using georeferenced data on private rural properties and deforestation. We cross property-level and forest clearing data in an empirical setting designed to detect shifts toward clearing patches that were knowingly invisible to the monitoring system. We are therefore able to assess not only whether deforesters were responding strategically to stricter monitoring of deforestation, but also how this response differed across actor types. Results suggest that centralized policy efforts introduced starting in the mid-2000s inhibited medium- and large-scale deforestation, but had heterogeneous effects on small-scale deforestation. Although the relative participation of small deforestation polygons increased in both sample states, the relative participation of smallholders in total state deforestation increased in Pará, while remaining constant in Mato Grosso. We interpret these results as suggestive — albeit not causal — evidence that landholders strategically responded to the monitoring system by adapting their forest clearings practices to elude monitoring in both Mato Grosso and Pará. In the latter, however, the increase in smallholders’ share of annual deforestation suggests that their clearing practices were relatively less affected by what effectively contained deforestation in large properties. The apparent similarity in scale of deforestation across states conceals relevant baseline differences between the agents engaging in forest clearing in each locality. Tailoring policy to account for such differences could strengthen Brazilian conservation policy.     

Internalising the costs of fragmentation and nutrient deposition in spatial planning: Extending a decision support tool for the Netherlands

The Land Use Scanner (LUS) is a decision support system for land use planning that is widely used in the Netherlands. The model yields solutions that have a high resolution (500×500 m) and reflect economic equilibrium in the land market, in which eighteen types of land use and nine aggregated habitat types competitively bid for locations. Here, an extension to the LUS is presented that enables the internalisation of environmental externalities. The focus in this study is on two important externalities, namely ammonia emissions from agriculture and habitat fragmentation. We simulate four IPCC-based land use scenarios and assess the level of fragmentation of the nine habitat types. We also perform sensitivity analyses in the most market-oriented scenario on the effectiveness of market-based instruments in promoting more efficient land allocation. The simulation results suggest that particularly the habitat type ‘rain-fed mires and bogs’ is susceptible to fragmentation. The sensitivity analyses show that internalising the damage costs of fragmentation resulted in smaller changes in land allocation than internalising those of nitrogen deposition. For both instruments, the policy effort was large in relation to the efficiency gains in land allocation.     

Land change in the Brazilian Savanna (Cerrado), 1986–2002: Comparative analysis and implications for land-use policy

The Brazilian Cerrado, a biodiverse savanna ecoregion covering 1.8 million km² south and east of the Amazon rainforest, is in rapid decline because of the expansion of modern agriculture. Previous studies of Cerrado land-use and land-cover (LULC) change imply spatial homogeneity, report widely varying rates of land conversion, use ambiguous LULC categories, and generally do not attempt to validate results. This study addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing moderate-resolution, multi-spectral satellite remote sensing data from 1986 to 2002 in two regions with identical underlying drivers. Unsupervised classification by the ISODATA algorithm indicates that Cerrado was converted to agro-pastoral land covers in 31% (3646 km²) of the study region in western Bahia and 24% (3011 km²) of the eastern Mato Grosso study region, while nearly 40% (4688 km² and 5217 km², respectively) of each study region remained unchanged. Although aggregate land change is similar, large and contiguous fragments persist in western Bahia, while smaller fragments remain in eastern Mato Grosso. These findings are considered in the current context of Cerrado land-use policy, which is dominated by the conservation set-aside and command-control policy models. The spatial characteristics of Cerrado remnants create considerable obstacles to implement the models; an alternative approach, informed by countryside biogeography, may encourage collaboration between state officials and farmer-landowners toward conservation land-use policies.     

Regional suitability for agricultural intensification: a spatial analysis of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania

Global food production will need to increase by 70–110% to meet the growing demand by 2050. Production per capita remains at 1960 levels in Africa while the agriculture sector accounts for 65% of full-time employment and 61% of rural households in Sub-Saharan Africa depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Globally there is new focus on increasing agricultural investments in Africa. There is a need, however, for understanding regional factors that influence the outcome of agricultural intensification beyond the landscape scale and below the global scale. This paper provides a framework for considering socioeconomic and environmental factors in evaluating suitability for agricultural intensification at the regional scale. The method employs a spatially explicit multi-criteria evaluation based on freely available data that can be applied in any geography. The focus is on the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania which has an area greater than 28 million hectares. These results indicate that the area considered most suitable for agricultural investment is different when considering multiple criteria compared to considering only potential yield. This approach is important for government planners, funding partners, and development agencies who seek sustainable agricultural intensification in Africa and elsewhere.     

Sustainable power plants: A support tool for the analysis of alternatives

Shortage of fossil fuels and global oil crisis are leading many national energy authorities to switch from traditional fuels to other renewable ones. On the other hand, in several western countries – due to an increasing environmental awareness – public acceptance of traditional power plants (e.g., coal or fired oil) is steadily decreasing, mostly because of their significant environmental pressures. Decision makers’ activities need to be supported by objective tools, which must be designed to be able to select the best alternative in order to achieve some prefixed goals. Therefore, in the present study, a tool is proposed to support decision makers: it is based on Life Cycle Assessment data from seven different power plants (coal, fired oil, fired gas, nuclear, wind, solar and hydroelectric), to understand what is taken into in terms of material fluxes, and how much it costs in a specific context. Consequently, an Analytic Hierarchy Process has been proposed to select which one might be the best alternative in function of the considered scale and ten environmental criteria. The proposed procedure aims to evaluate different power plants and identify the most environmentally sustainable one in function of plant construction and operation phases.     

A quantitative assessment of policy options for no net loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the European Union

The Biodiversity Strategy of the European Union includes a target to “ensure no-net-loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services by 2020”. Many policy options can be envisioned to achieve such a no-net-loss target, mainly acting on land use and land management. To assess the effectiveness of such policies at a European Union (EU) scale, we simulated land use changes and their impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services indicators. We analysed a Business–as-Usual scenario, and three no-net-loss scenarios. The no-net-loss scenarios included measures that aim to reduce negative impacts of land use change on biodiversity and ecosystem services, by better implementation of existing biodiversity conservation measures (Scenario 1); and enhancement of existing measures (Scenario 2); and offsetting residual impacts on areas of high biodiversity and ecosystem service value (Scenario 3).Results show that none of the scenarios achieved overall no-net-loss. Compared to a Business-as-Usual scenario, the no-net-loss scenarios reduced the overall degree of land cover change at EU level, hence reducing impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services in large parts of the EU. The more comprehensive no-net-loss scenarios resulted in a gain of natural land cover. Moreover, natural areas became better connected, especially in peri-urban areas as a result of impact avoidance and offsetting. Richness of farmland bird species was projected to increase. Measures included in the no-net-loss scenarios had net positive effects on pollination and carbon sequestration, neutral effects on crop production, erosion prevention and flood regulation, and negative effects on nature-based recreation, compared to Business-as-Usual. In particular circumstances policy measures invoked displacement effects in land use allocation, reducing the effectiveness of the measures. This was primarily the case for flood regulation services throughout the EU.This study differentiates the potential effectiveness of a no-net-loss policy framework in three manners: (i) considering biodiversity and ecosystem services simultaneously; (ii) in the light of existing policies and land use pressures; and (iii) in different land use contexts across the EU. Taken together, we conclude that achieving no-net-loss for biodiversity and ecosystem services throughout the EU remains challenging given high land use demands. Nevertheless, in large parts of Europe there appears room for improvement for certain kinds of biodiversity and ecosystem services compared to Business-as-Usual, while still meeting other land use demands.     

From Extensive to Involutionary Growth: A Dialectic Interpretation of the Boom and Busts of Cocoa Production in the Gold Coast

African economic history has undergone impressive revitalization in the past decade. Much of the recent work is, quite naturally, inspired by developments in economic history at large, and increasingly – indirectly or directly – using markets as the organizing principle in understanding how economies evolve over time. More specifically, recent work assumes that markets create the possibility to use resources more efficiently, which, theoretically, enables economies to grow as long as institutions adjust and enable the population to exploit the arising opportunities. That is, the current works in African economic history are to a large extent grounded in Smithian growth models, labelled after Adam Smith's work on the mechanisms of long‐term growth. This paper critically discusses the explanatory value of the Smithian growth models for understanding the long‐term economic development in Africa. The latter is best described as recurrent growth episodes, and we argue that while Smithian models can account for initial periods of growth, they fail to explain why the growth was not sustained. We use the boom and busts of cocoa production in Ghana in the twentieth century as a case in point. We show that the decline in cocoa production was not caused by state policies distorting the functions of the markets, as the Smithian growth models suggest. Instead, the decline in production was an outcome of changes in the ecological and institutional conditions that caused the initial growth. The irony is that it was the initial growth in cocoa production that altered the conditions, making further growth in production impossible. We capture these changes – for the first time ever – by combining the concepts of forest rents and involutionary growth in an African case.     

This land is your land,maybe: A historical institutionalist analysis for contextualizing split estate conflicts in U.S. unconventional oil and gas development

In the 21st century, the U.S. has experienced a boom in unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD). In part due to advances in technology, this rapid increase in UOGD has moved extraction practices into geographic areas that have previously seen little or no oil and gas development. As a result, conflicts over property rights have erupted—particularly in relation to split estate situations. To understand this controversy, we must situate it in the conditions which have shaped land use and mineral rights. We argue that past federal and state level governance decisions have created the conditions for UOGD conflicts today. Here, we utilize historical institutionalism (HI) to review the historical actors, processes, and institutions that have shaped how mineral rights have developed in the context of split estates in the U.S. We suggest that tracing this legislative and judicial history through HI is an essential foundation for exploring issues related to UOGD. Most importantly, we highlight these processes of governance as a bedrock for understanding spatial inequality inherent in current split estate law that grants the mineral estate dominance over the surface estate. We suggest that this codification of spatial inequality is problematic both in and beyond the context of split estates in UOGD.     

Identifying the driving forces of non-grain production expansion in rural China and its implications for policies on cultivated land protection

The rapid expansion of non-grain production (NGP) on cultivated land is of increasing concern regarding grain security in China. Characterizing the developmental mechanism of different NGP types and their responses to current policies is essential for providing critical references for the improvement of cultivated land protection policy. This study was conducted to explore the driving forces of NGP expansion in Tongxiang during three periods (2000–2008, 2008–2012, and 2012–2015). We first mapped the distributions of four types of NGP using multi-temporal high-resolution aerial photos. Then, we identified the driving forces of different NGP types at the parcel level using multinomial logistic regression modelling with geophysical, proximate, neighbourhood and policy variables. Our results showed that the total NGP area in Tongxiang increased from 31.16 ha to 2491.84 ha from 2000 to 2015. Farming conditions, such as soil type and distance to rivers, contributed more than settlements networks to the expansion of NGP in the Tongxiang region. A continuous and significant neighbourhood effect was found among pond fish farming, nursery plantations and duck rearing, demonstrating the strong stimulation of converted NGP parcels to surrounding farmers. Surprisingly, the implementation of policies such as basic farmland and standardized farmland failed to inhibit and actually encouraged NGP expansion. The planning of the main-functional region of grain production had a positive effect on inhibiting the expansion of some NGP types at certain stages. Our study provides valuable insights into the driving forces of NGP expansion at the parcel level and its response to current policies. This study supplements existing research to fully understand the phenomenon of NGP from the perspective of land use decision-making.