Global investments in agricultural land and the role of the EU: Drivers,scope and potential impacts

This paper investigates the recent wave of investments in agricultural land, often referred to as land grabbing; a term that not only emphasises the appropriation of resources by investors but also implies a criticism of their potential impacts on livelihoods and ecosystems in the target countries. This phenomenon has increasingly been the focus of public attention as well as a source of concern for NGOs, international institutions, academia and civil society. More specifically, this study investigates the role that the European Union member states play, both collectively and individually, in this wave of acquisitions in agricultural land, by providing a comprehensive overview of the drivers, scope and potential impacts of these land deals.     

Addressing water contamination from concentrated animal feeding operations

Pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in the United States is impairing water quality. CAFOs have been designated as point sources of pollutants, so under the Clean Water Act, they need a permit before they discharge pollutants into federal waters. Federal regulations known as the CAFO Rule delineate particulars about which CAFOs need permits and details about how CAFOs must minimize discharges of pollutants. The provisions of the CAFO Rule have been controversial. Revisions in 2003 and 2008 were challenged by agricultural and environmental groups for not complying with the requirements set forth by federal law. Agricultural groups feel the rule imposes too many costs and that some of the regulatory provisions are invalid because they not pursuant to any statutory authority. Environmentalists feel that the rule does not provide sufficient requirements to prevent discharges of pollutants. The analysis of five major issues illuminates the challenges faced by governments as they make efforts to limit contamination of water resources.     

城市化视角下高密度建设区域通风潜力分析——以上海市中心城区为例

随着城市化的推进,城市的下垫面情况发生了巨大的改变,从过往的农田、水系、绿地变为建筑、道路等人工环境。城市下垫面的改变,将对城市的通风潜力造成较大影响,进而影响到城市热岛、大气污染、室外舒适度等问题。传统城市规划中,主要着眼于土地的空间利用,而较少考虑城市通风潜力问题。在全球气候变化影响下,上海作为高密度发展的代表性城市,未来将面临较大的气候风险,在此背景下,本文通过建筑密度、建筑高度、水系覆盖率、绿地覆盖率四个指标及其综合影响对上海展开城市通风潜力研究,并结合未来的规划发展提出建议,具有重要的现实与指导意义。     

Local perception of a regulatory order Closing down an abstraction point as a crisis indicator?

The closure of a drinking water catchment and deterioration of water quality raise questions about concepts such as water quality and territory. This prompts us to consider the interactions between resource and environmental policy, insofar as sensitivity to the standard of water used for human consumption is high and where its operation involves a large number of actors: state departments, public managers and private firms, land and water users and their representatives. Investigations by semi-directive interviews and surveys were conducted with users and water managers at three sites in Brittany (Finistère and in Ille-et-Vilaine) affected directly or indirectly by the Grenelle 1 bill. The results of the survey suggest that the crisis, if it exists, is attributed by the actors to the quantitative evolution of the resource and to regulations perceived as arbitrary in a context of poorly-controlled environmental dynamics. The socio-economic obstacles to quality improvement are frequently advanced in discussions, but management policies capable of removing these obstacles are very rarely mentioned. Instead, the stakeholders place their trust in technological solutions and work towards the political construction of functional solidarities.     

Broad analysis of French priority catchment areas: A step toward adaption of the Water Framework Directive?

Within a context of known and alarming deterioration of water bodies and under pressure from the European Water Framework Directive, in 2009 the French government designated slightly more than 500 priority catchments. In so doing, it declared its objective of concentrating its efforts on these areas, trying out a methodology for action, and proving to the European Union that it was taking action. The present study has documented the on-going situations and actions on these Grenelle catchment areas and identified the broad types of actions and situations as part of a critical analysis of the approach retained by the government. After constructing an analytical framework of these areas, we assembled together a large collection of data to be analyzed with multivariate statistical analysis.These data were either gathered from surveys based on a questionnaire encompassing biophysical, agricultural, social, and economic aspects or based on spatialized statistical data sources. This work demonstrates key factors characterizing the catchment areas: the hydrological entry point for the definition of a field of action involves great variability of territorial size and therefore of the players involved (municipalities, farmers, cooperatives, users). Little attention is given to this aspect in the relatively rigid single legal procedure presently in force. On these catchment areas, we emphasize two main lines of structuring parameters: on the one hand, the relative diversity of land use and forms of agriculture, and on the other, the relative strength of the administrative structure. These results could be useful for those managing these issues in the different government agencies, those implementing the approaches, or local authorities responsible for resource management, as they provide a better understanding of how to adapt these experiments to other areas concerned by water resource issues.     

水溶性涂料使用性能研究

<正> 1997年7月初爆发的东南亚金融危机,已历经数月,至今仍余波不断,这不仅使东南亚各国的经济发展面临重大挫折,而且也触发了香港、纽约等世界性股票市场掀起急剧大幅下挫浪潮,从而引起各有关国家政府和国际货币基金组织等的高度关注。应当说,这次发生在亚太地区的金融危机的程度和涉及面都远远超过了几年前发生在墨西哥的金     

Water pricing policies,public decision making and farmers' response: implications for water policy

The problems caused by water scarcity demand important changes in the criteria and objectives of water policies. The agricultural sector in Spain consumes up to 80% of all available hydric resources and the need to increase the efficiency of current uses of water in the agricultural sector is at the core of the country's national water policy. One alternative would be to resort to water pricing policies with the aim of providing incentives to save water consumption although it would inflict a certain degree of income losses to the farmers and raise the revenue collected by the water authorities. The objective of this research is to analyze the effect caused by the application of different water pricing policies on water demand, farmers' income and the revenue collected by the government agency. To undertake this analysis a dynamic mathematical programming model has been built that simulates farmers' behavior and their response to different water pricing scenarios. Empirical application of the model has been carried out in several irrigation districts in Spain covering varied farm regions and river basins. Results show that the effects of alternative pricing policies for irrigation water are strongly dependent on regional, structural and institutional conditions and that changing policies produce distinct consequences within the same region and water district. Thus, equivalent water charges would create widespread effects on water savings, farm income and collected government revenue across regions and districts.     

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.     

The impact of smart meters on residential water consumption: Evidence from a natural experiment in the Canary Islands

Smart meters can promote behavioral changes and water conservation by improving information and providing feedback about water consumption to households. In this paper, we evaluate a large-scale programme implemented by the municipal water company of La Laguna (Tenerife). Exploiting quasi-experimental variation brought about program, we estimate the effect of water meter replacement on measured water consumption and the behavioral effect of the installation of the smart metering technology allowing households to access daily water consumption and real-time feedback through an online portal. Our main empirical analysis employs a difference in differences identification strategy and uses annual consumption data from 51,674 households observed over 10 years. We find a positive effect of water meter replacement on measured water consumption. Our main finding is that providing access to the smart metering technology induces households to reduce consumption by around 2% on average. Our results point to consumers’ engagement with the information portal as the main mechanism behind the observed behavioral response.     

Irrigator preferences for water recovery budget expenditure in the Murray-Darling Basin,Australia

This study presents results from a survey of southern Murray-Darling Basin irrigators about the percentage of funds they would allocate towards a variety of current and hypothetical trade-off choices for recovering environmental water. The findings, allowing for state-based differentials, suggest irrigators marginally prefer infrastructure expenditure above the sum of a set of market-based options (namely water entitlement purchasing, temporary water market products and exit-based packages). However, their infrastructure preference weighting is less than current budget expenditure, and use of market-based options has higher support from irrigators than current policy recognises. Further, analysis of past and current infrastructure and market-based water recovery expenditures reveals large price-per-megalitre disparities, which may be explained by diminishing marginal returns. Targeting expenditure in line with preferences of irrigators may result in increases in economic efficiency.