From vicious to virtuous cycles: a sustainable future for Australian agriculture

From vicious to virtuous cycles argues that farmers at the leading edge of sustainable, regenerative farm businesses are opening up exciting new opportunities for better economic and ecological performance in Australian agriculture. The report suggests that this requires breaking out of a vicious cycle of resource depletion that is undermining the long-term prospects of the sector.  The condition of soil, water, and other natural resources that underpin our agricultural productivity remains largely invisible to markets, and has been systematically depleted over time. Therefore, farms have been made less resilient to drought, pests and disease, more exposed to pressure from a changing climate, and more vulnerable to financial pressures that undermine farmers\u27 ability to invest for the long-term. It is argued that these trends are eroding the foundations for agricultural productivity, and will compromise the sectors\u27 ability to grasp the opportunities on offer in the Asian Century. The discussion paper, From vicious to virtuous cycles, envisions an alternate future; that is a strategic future for Australian agriculture that embraces a virtuous cycle.&nbsp

Squandering Australia's food security-The environmental and economic costs of our unhealthy diet and the policy Path We're On

While historically Australia has been a major exporter of food commodities and is generally considered to be "food secure", our inter-disciplinary modelling of Australia's food system and contemporary diet demonstrates that Australia is likely to become a net importer of key nutritious foods such as nuts and dairy if it continues along its current policy path. Furthermore, this occurs in the context of accelerating international debt, complete dependence on imported oil and declines in Gross Domestic Product per capita. Coupled with no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing water deficits around many capital cities, these factors indicate increasing threats to Australia's food security. These strategic challenges arise from past and current policy choices and trends, including continued consumption of an unhealthy diet. Their effects are modelled for the coming decades using an innovative scenario simulation based on comprehensive accounts of physical processes in Australia's economy simulated in the Australian Stocks and Flows Framework. Our analysis further employed health and economic cost modelling based on burden of disease data, conservatively demonstrating that productivity and health costs of unhealthy diets would be at least three billion Australian dollars for the 2025 Australian population if we were to continue on this trajectory.Lawrence, Ryan, Friel, Turner, Larsen, Ogilvy, Moodie, Candy, James and Ananthapavan are researchers within an Australian Research Council Linkage Project, ‘Modelling policy interventions to protect Australia’s food security in the face of environmental sustainability challenges’ (LP120100168). Lawrence, Moodie and Ananthapavan are researchers within a NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Obesity Policy and Food Systems (APP1041020)

Toward an Integrated Ecology and Economics of Land Degradation and Restoration: Methods, Data, and Models

This report assesses existing data, models, and knowledge methods and recommends a way forward for the ELD Initiative. It draws from existing research, publications, and case studies to summarize current practices and identify knowledge gaps. This report begins with a review of the methods to value land-use and management options. It emphasizes the overall development goal of sustainable human well-being, not merely growth of the market economy. To obtain sustainable well-being through improved land management depends on the interaction of four basic types of capital assets: built, human, social, and natural. For example, the value of ecosystem services is the relative contribution of natural capital in combination with the other three types of assets to produce sustainable well-being. Although this report focuses on natural capital and ecosystem services, it recognizes that the understanding, modelling, and valuing of ecosystem services requires an integrated, transdisciplinary approach which includes all four types of capital and their complex interactions. Another central part of this report is a review of computer models that could be useful for analyzing and valuing land management options. This includes farm and site scale models, watershed and regional scale models, climate change models, integrated global models, and ecosystem services models. A major conclusion of this report is that truly integrated models (i.e., models that include all four types of capital and their interactions at multiple scales) are required to meet the goals of the Initiative. Examples of these types of models do exist, but further development is necessary to make them accessible to stakeholders and used in decision-making. For further development and integration of the models themselves, a more participatory approach to model development is recommended along with the possibility of adding advanced gaming interfaces to the models to allow them to be "played" by a large number of interested parties and their trade-off decisions (and the valuations they imply) to be accumulated and compared. This report concludes with a vision of what these integrated assessment and valuation tools might look like and how they would help solve the problems of land degradation, restoration, and sustainable management.This report was commisioned by Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiativ

Simulation games that integrate research, entertainment, and learning around ecosystem services

Humans currently spend over 3 billion person-hours per week playing computer games. Most of these games are purely for entertainment, but use of computer games for education has also expanded dramatically. At the same time, experimental games have become a staple of social science research but have depended on relatively small sample sizes and simple, abstract situations, limiting their range and applicability. If only a fraction of the time spent playing computer games could be harnessed for research, it would open up a huge range of new opportunities. We review the use of games in research, education, and entertainment and develop ideas for integrating these three functions around the idea of ecosystem services valuation. This approach to valuation can be seen as a version of choice modeling that allows players to generate their own scenarios taking account of the trade-offs embedded in the game, rather than simply ranking pre-formed scenarios. We outline a prototype game called “Lagom Island” to test the proposition that gaming can be used to reveal the value of ecosystem services. Our prototype provides a potential pathway and functional building blocks for approaching the relatively untapped potential of games in the context of ecosystem services research

A review of methods, data, and models to assess changes in the value of ecosystem services from land degradation and restoration

This review assesses existing data, models, and other knowledge-based methods for valuing the effects of sustainable land management including the cost of land degradation on a global scale. The overall development goal of sustainable human well-being should be to obtain social, ecologic, and economic viability, not merely growth of the market economy. Therefore new and more integrated methods to value sustainable development are needed. There is a huge amount of data and methods currently available to model and analyze land management practices. However, it is scattered and requires consolidation and reformatting to be useful. In this review we collected and evaluated databases and computer models that could be useful for analyzing and valuing land management options for sustaining natural capital and maximizing ecosystem services. The current methods and models are not well equipped to handle large scale transdisciplinary analyses and a major conclusion of this synthesis paper is that there is a need for further development of the integrated approaches, which considers all four types of capital (human, built, natural, and social), and their interaction at spatially explicit, multiple scales. This should be facilitated by adapting existing models and make them and their outcomes more accessible to stakeholders. Other shortcomings and caveats of models should be addressed by adding the ‘human factor’, for instance, in participatory decision-making and scenario testing. For integration of the models themselves, a more participatory approach to model development is also recommended, along with the possibility of adding advanced gaming interfaces to the models to allow them to be “played” by a large number of interested parties and their trade-off decisions to be accumulated and compared