Reconciling Value Conflicts in Regional Forest Planning in Australia: A Decision Theoretic Approach

The Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) programme introduced in the 1990s, in Australia to protect environmental values, encourage job creation and growth and manage forests in an ecologically sustainable manner. Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques were used in this study to assess their potential for examining the RFA policy. The empirical study of the North East Victoria RFA using MCDA attempted to explore the potential of these techniques. The results indicate that the old-growth forest is the most valued attribute and timber production appeared important. The most preferred forest land management option was option A with a high level of conservation and low level of native timber extraction which differed from the government option for North East Victoria. This observation highlights the fact that non-incorporation of stakeholder preferences into public decision making in forest management can lead to decisions not acceptable to a majority of stakeholders. The three methods namely AHP, MAVT and MAUT provide similar ranking of options. despite the different theoretical bases of the three MCDA techniques. The major implication of this research is that better forest management policies can be developed if we can incorporate stakeholder preferences explicitly.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Determination of yield and erosion damage functions using subjectively elicited data: application to smallholder tea in Sri Lanka

Tea has been Sri Lanka’s major export earner for several decades. However, soil erosion on tea‐producing land has had considerable on‐site and off‐site effects. This study quantifies soil erosion impacts for smallholder tea farms in Sri Lanka by estimating a yield damage function and an erosion damage function using a subjective elicitation technique. The Mitscherlich‐Spillman type of function was found to yield acceptable results. The study indicates that high rates of soil erosion require earlier adoption of soil conservation measures than do low rates of erosion. Sensitivity analysis shows the optimum year to change to a conservation practice is very sensitive to the discount rate but less sensitive to the cost of production and price of tea.Crop Production/Industries,

Ownership, Productivity Change in the Australian Urban Water Sector: a Bootstrap Malmquist indices approach

This paper provides a comprehensive productivity analysis of 53 Australian water service providers during the period 2006-2012. Pressures for sector reform have stimulated interest in identifying and understanding the factors that can contribute to improve the performance of Australian water utilities. The aim is to provide to the policy-makers quantitative-evidences that allow to identify the best interventions, in relation to the alternative forms of ownership that characterize the water utilities in the different territories\states of Australia, to obtain productivity gains

Explaining the environmental efficiency of drinking water and wastewater utilities

Ananda, J ORCiD: 0000-0002-4072-6725Demand for drinking water and wastewater services has increased drastically due to increased urbanization and population growth worldwide. The provision of these services entails several negative externalities including greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Conventional economic performance evaluation methods often ignore the negative externalities of production. Using a nonparametric approach, this paper analyzes the environmental efficiency of drinking water utilities, which incorporates GHGs into the evaluation as an undesirable output. A model based on the directional distance function was applied to drinking water and wastewater utilities in Australia. Findings indicate that the source of raw water, the level of wastewater treatment and production density have a statistically significant influence on the environmental efficiency of drinking water and wastewater utilities. © 2018 Institution of Chemical Engineer

Conflict resolution in forest land use planning and management: The use of multi-stakeholder analysis

Ananda, J ORCiD: 0000-0002-4072-6725Formulating sustainable forest policy has become a crucial issue today with the increased awareness of global environmental problems including global warming and climate change. Conflict resolution in natural resource management and planning is recognized as an important aspect of participatory development. Policy decisions on the use and management of forest resources often engender controversy and conflict among various stakeholders. This chapter presents a multi-stakeholder model - a tool that can help to identify the sources of conflict - to facilitate conflict resolution in forest management and environmental conservation. The regional forest policy process of Australia is analyzed using this approach. The analysis elicits the value judgments and quantifies the critical tradeoffs in forest land uses in order to determine the most preferred forest land-use option for the region. The results indicate that this approach is useful in strategic forest planning exercises as well as forest advisory or citizen's committee settings. Further, the approach can enhance the transparency and therefore the credibility of the decision process, which is vital to conflict resolution. © 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Determinants of real water losses in the Australian drinking water sector

Ananda, J ORCiD: 0000-0002-4072-6725The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda calls for safe drinking water and sanitation for all communities around the world and the use of water in a sustainable and efficient manner. Although under less scrutiny in developed countries, network water losses can be a costly resource misallocation. This paper analyses real water losses in drinking water networks in Australia by applying a panel data regression model with fixed effects to ascertain the main drivers of real water losses. The results indicate population growth and water main breaks as major drivers of water losses in Australia. Real water losses also have an impact on utilities net revenue per unit water delivered, infrastructure leakage index and operational costs. In order to reduce real water losses, water managers and regulators must pay more attention to the health of the distribution network in the face of rapid urbanisation experienced in the east coast of Australia. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Curriculum design for flexible delivery: an assessment of e-Learning approaches

Technological advancements have pushed the boundaries of tertiary education design and delivery across the globe. Flexible teaching and learning delivery approaches have proliferated in recent times without much attention to pedagogically-driven learning designs. This paper reviews various pedagogical designs used as part of e-learning and blended learning models in business education. It also maps the tenets of learning theories to selected e-learning designs. Tertiary educators face several challenges when implementing e-learning designs in business education. They include a traditional structured approach to learning, difficulties in catering to diverse student cohorts equitably, and choosing effective technologies that underpin a particular e-learning pedagogy

Role of local institutions in formulating climate change adaptation strategies for a low water future: A public policy perspective

This paper examines the role of local institutions in supporting climate change adaptation action from a public policy perspective. While certain adaptation actions will provide public benefits, many others will offer private benefits. The paper argues that adaptation investments and assigning the adaptation responsibility across various actors should be guided by a clear public-private benefit framework. A case study of adapting to a ‘low water future’ in North East Victoria is used to discuss the role of local institutions and industries in formulating climate change adaptation strategies. The findings indicate that formulating adaptation strategies, at the local level, has been complicated by the existence of considerable uncertainty in the nature and magnitude of adverse climatic impacts. The planning problem is further exacerbated by considerable information asymmetries and moral hazard issues inhibiting climate change adaptation for reduced water supply by local institutions and industries

Evaluating the performance of urban water utilities: Robust nonparametric approach

This paper empirically analyzes the efficiency of urban water utilities using state-of-the-art methodology combining data envelopment analysis (DEA) and a two-stage double bootstrap procedure. In the first stage, robust efficiency estimates are obtained with an improved DEA analysis. In the second stage, a truncated regression model and a double bootstrap procedure are used to estimate the effect of a set of environmental variables on unbiased DEA estimates. The findings suggest that the efficiency scores obtained after bias correction are significantly different to the original efficiency estimates. The results also show the existence of a significant relation between efficiency and several environmental variables including the proportion of water sourced from groundwater, customer density, and residential consumption