Forest cover change in space and time : combining the von Thunen and forest transition theories

This paper presents a framework for analyzing tropical deforestation and reforestation using the von Thunen model as its starting point: land is allocated to the use which yields the highest rent, and the rents of various land uses are determined by location. Forest cover change therefore becomes a question of changes in rent of forest versus non-forest use. While this is a simple and powerful starting point, more intriguing issues arise when this is applied to analyze real cases. An initial shift in the rent of one particular land use generates feedbacks which affect the rent of all land uses. For example, a new technology in extensive agriculture should make this land use more profitable and lead to more forest clearing, but general equilibrium effects (changes in prices and local wages) can modify or even reverse this conclusion. Another issue is how a policy change or a shift in broader market, technological, and institutional forces will affect various land use rents. The paper deals with three such areas: technological progress in agriculture, land tenure regimes, and community forest management. The second part of the paper links the von Thunen framework to the forest transition theory. The forest transition theory describes a sequence over time where a forested region goes through a period of deforestation before the forest cover eventually stabilizes and starts to increase. This sequence can be seen as a systematic pattern of change in the agricultural and forest land rents over time. Increasing agricultural rent leads to high rates of deforestation. The slow-down of deforestation and eventual reforestation is due to lower agricultural rents (the economic development path) and higher forest rent (the forest scarcity path). Various forces leading to these changes are discussed and supported by empirical evidence from different tropical regions.Environmental Economics&Policies,Forestry,Common Property Resource Development,Economic Theory&Research,Markets and Market Access

Household's Choice of Fuelwood Source in Malawi: A Multinomial Probit Analysis

This paper addresses the following question: What determines household's choice of fuelwood collection source? We address this question by estimating the multinomial probit model using survey data for households surrounding Chimaliro and Liwonde forest reserves in Malawi. After controlling for heterogeneity among households, we find strong substitution across fuelwood sources. Attributes of the fuelwood sources (size and species composition) and distance to them are the most important determinants of fuelwood choice. Further results show that customary forests generate environmental benefits by reducing pressure on both plantation forests and forest reserves. These findings support the need to focus more on community forests in national forest policies, and to strengthen community-based institutions to manage these forests.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, C25, Q42,

Comparison between Irrigation Payment Systems and Probability of Using Water Saving Technology

This study attempts to answer two questions: Why have different payment systems for high yielding variety of Boro paddy irrigation emerged in Bangladesh? Why do some farmers apply water saving technology? Thirty shallow tubewell owner farmers and 180 user farmers were selected from two areas in Bangladesh to get representative samples of this study. Descriptive statistics and coefficient of variation analysis were used to address the first question, while an econometric probit model is used to determine the factors, which influenced the adoption of water saving technology. The results show that users in the poor and high-risk area prefer crop share. The average pay for irrigation is higher in the crop share system, thus the water selling business is more profitable in crop share system. The water saving technology is used more in the cash payment system. The probit model's results show that the adoption of this technology increases with an increase in the number of users, owners' education, cash payment system, farm size and households' income, which is logical. Likewise shallow tubewell's (STW) income, area under STW, involvement of other occupation except agriculture and irrigated area of own farm exert a negative effect on use of water saving technology. There is no universally accepted optimal payment system because systems develop and change due to mainly economic circumstances, in addition to long run localized social factors which should not to be ignored. But, the crop share system is under attack due to rising output prices and the fact that it does not provide strong incentives for water saving. Keywords: Boro paddy, irrigation, crop share and cash payment systems, water saving technolog

Understanding Adoption and Impacts of Conservation Agriculture in Eastern and Southern Africa: A Review

Conservation Agriculture (CA) aims to concurrently promote agricultural productivity, local livelihoods, climate resilience and other environmental objectives. We review the emerging evidence base in Eastern and Southern Africa to address whether CA is climate smart and why adoption rates by smallholders remain generally very low. We first develop an adoption framework that can be used to assess when and where the different components of CA are expected to be adopted under different conditioning factors and consider options to make CA climate smart. Our results suggest that CA can contribute positively to productivity and adaptation/resilience objectives, although the degree of success varies considerably by farm, household and regional characteristics. Overall, we find that capital-intensive (mechanized) CA is more likely to be adopted in areas of economic dynamism where capital is cheap relative to labor. Labor-intensive CA practices are more likely to be adopted in regions of economic stagnation where capital is expensive, and labor is abundant and cheap. A subnational focus is needed to identify economic conditions of different regions and agro-ecological zones and to test hypotheses derived from the framework in this paper and to propose the most appropriate CA packages for promotion. Our findings suggest that labor using variants of CA such as planting basins are more likely to be adopted than are capital using mechanized options in densely populated parts of Malawi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe where labor is abundant, and presumably cheap, but capital is expensive. However, rising land scarcity (prices) and wages in the region present an opportunity for capital intensive, mechanized CA operations to be adopted if the cost of capital can be kept low and if there is a supportive environment for mechanization. We conclude that CA is climate smart and if adopted widely, it has the potential to help build resilience in smallholder farming systems. CA can be more climate smart, and its uptake can be enhanced by reframing, better targeting, adapting CA to location-specific economic and biophysical, and through greater and more effective public spending on agricultural research and development

Krismon, Farmers and Forests: The Effects of the Economic Crisis on Farmers

Abstract: This report presents some preliminary results on the impact of the economic crisis on farmers' livelihood and forest use, based on fieldwork in four provinces in Indonesia (Riau, West and East Kalimantan, Central Sulawesi). We stress the great variation throughout the country, and the volatility of the situation. Price data reveal that some groups of export crops-oriented farmers enjoyed a short-term gain during the first 2-3 quarters of 1998. Soaring food prices and a stronger rupiah since October 1998 have, however, gradually made real prices move towards their pre-crisis levels. Indeed, we found that the crisis has had a larger negative impact on farmers than initially hypothesised, whereas the short-term impact on forest might have been smaller than some feared. Most poor farmers lack the means to take advantage of higher crop prices. Better-off farmers, immigrants and urban dwellers with capital are more likely to utilise the opportunities created by the crisis and convert forests to high profitability crops. We found limited evidence in the survey area of return migration from the cities. An underestimated effect of the present situation might be the lack of law enforcement and a power vacuum, which have made illegal logging and encroachment of protected areas more likely. Angelsen and Resosudarmo: 'Krismon, farmers and forests&apos

Environmental incomes and rural livelihoods : a global-comparative assessment

Various case studies have suggested that environmental incomes from forests and other vegetation types are important for rural households in developing countries. However, in most large-scale household surveys these income sources are either underreported or ignored, hence there has been a lack of evidence to support the wider applicability of that claim. This paper reports data from the Poverty Environment Network (PEN), which has gathered comparable income data from about 8,000 households in 360 villages and 58 sites, spread over 24 developing countries. The data collection involved a careful, quarterly recording of all forest and environmental uses, as well as other major income sources over one full year. We find that forest income on average constitutes about one fifth of total household income, while adding other environmental income brings the share to more than one fourth – about the same as incomes from growing crops. Environmental resources and agricultural crops are the two main sources of livelihoods in the survey sites. As expected, forest reliance (share of forest income in total household income) is higher for the poorer income quintiles, but the differences are less pronounced than what was found in most previous studies. We also find that safety net and seasonal gap-filling functions may be less important that often assumed. Ignoring environmental incomes in income surveys and in rural development planning would in quantitative terms amount to ignoring that farmers grow crops. Agricultural area expansion into forests and other vegetation types may well come to increase household incomes, but corresponding income losses from losing forest cover and forest degradation could be larger than previously assumed. Depriving poor people of access to forest product extraction, for instance through highly exclusionary conservation policies, could jeopardize the livelihoods of people depending on these resources

Challenging perceptions about men, women, and forest product use : a global comparative study

This study uses a multi-case dataset to question current assumptions about the gender differentiation of forest product use. We test some of the commonly held ideas on how men and women access, manage, and use different forest products. Overall, we found significant gender differentiation in the collection of forest products, which seems to support the claim that there are distinctive "male" and "female" roles associated with the collection of forest products. However, we also found that men play a much more important and diverse role in the contribution of forest products to rural livelihoods than previously reported, with strong differences across tropical Asia, Africa, and Latin America

Learning from REDD + : a response to Fletcher et al.

Learning from REDD plus : a response to Fletcher et al.Non peer reviewe

REDD+: Lessons from National and Subnational Implementation : Ending Tropical Deforestation: a stock-take of progress and challenges

REDD+—which stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries—debuted on the global stage more than a decade ago. The idea prompted high expectations that an approach that featured results-based incentives for reducing tropical deforestation and degradation could rapidly succeed where other approaches had failed. Since then, over 50 countries have initiated REDD+ strategies; subnational governments have experimented with jurisdictional REDD+ programs; and more than 350 REDD+ projects have been implemented globally. What are the lessons learned from REDD+ initiatives so far? How can these lessons support future forest-based climate change mitigation