institutional constraints and deforestation an application to mexico 1 introduction in many tropical regions a key factor influencing deforestation is thought to be the lack of effective property rights and other institutional structures controlling access to and use of forests 1 where such institutions exist they limit access to and conversion of forest land thus acting as a deterrent to deforestation in the absence of formal ownership rules traditional common property regimes in some forested regions have also proven to be effective in controlling the open access deforestation problem gibson 2001 larson and bromley 1990 richards 1997 in short formal and informal institutions can influence the process of forest loss by imposing increased costs of conversion on farmers who clear forest land this article is concerned with analyzing the role of formal and informal institutions as constraints on the conversion of forest land to agriculture in developing countries the perspective on institutions adopted here follows the approach of north 1990 who defines institutions as humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction and that affect the performance of the economy by their effect on the costs of exchange and production in analyzing the relation between institutional constraints and the amount of forest land converted for use by smallholders this article makes several contributions first it demonstrates that if institutions raise the costs of land conversion then it is possible to utilize an agricultural household model to formalize the resulting impacts on the amount of converted land used by all farming households moreover the equilibrium level of land cleared will differ under conditions of no institutional constraints that is the pure open access situation compared to c onditions where effective institutions exist to control land conversion because institutions raise the cost of land clearing more land should be converted under pure open access 2 this in turn implies that the existence of institutional constraints prevents the adjustment of the stock of converted land to the long run equilibrium desired by agricultural households which is the amount of land that could be cleared under open access a dynamic panel analysis is therefore employed to test the hypothesis that the presence of institutions to control agricultural conversion can significantly affect deforestation the model of land expansion is applied to the case of mexico in the pre nafta north american free trade agreement reform era 1960 85 during this period the existence of ejido or communal land ownership for the vast majority of forest land meant that strong institutional controls may have restricted the rate of adjustment in the amount of new land converted and thus limited agricultural expansion sarukhan and larson 2001 the analysis also has direct relevance for the post nafta period particularly because the 1992 land reforms sanction changes in the traditional ejido land ownership structure ii a pure open access model of forest land conversion the following model of forest conversion is based on an approach similar to that of cropper et al 1999 lopez 1997 1998a and panayotou and sungsuwan 1994 assume that the economic behavior of all j rural smallholder households in the agricultural sector of a developing country can be summarized by the behavior of a representative jth household although the representative household is utility maximizing it is a price taker in both input and output markets farm and off farm labor of the household are assumed to be perfect substitutes such that the opportunity cost of the household s time i e its wage rate is exogenously determined the household s behavior is therefore recursive in the sense that the production decisions are made first and then the consumption decisions singh et al 1986 in any time period t let the profit function of the representative agricultural household s production decisions be defined as 1 max pi p w w

property rights externalities and resource degradation locating the tragedy abstract resource degradation in the third world is largely driven by the demands of farm households for fuelwood and land for agriculture since resources are often controlled through indigenous systems of property the tragedy of the commons has been used to explain resource degradation as a result private property is suggested as a solution to resource degradation a dynamic model capable of examining household incentives for resource use under private and common property is developed results of the model reject the conventional wisdom that gives rise to the presumed optimality of private individual property in natural resources and the correlated indictment of group management regimes

assessing demand artifacts in consumer research an alternative perspective in a recent insightful article on demand artifacts in consumer research t a shimp e m hyatt and d j snyder using a 1989 article by j j kellaris and a d cox as backdrop provided an appraisal of demand artifacts in this article we critically evaluate some of the assumptions and conclusions of shimp et al s analysis of the extent to which demand artifacts might explain the 1982 results of g j gorn as analyzed by kellaris and cox in addition we offer some useful suggestions for minimizing demand problems

economic value as a functional unit for environmental labelling of food and other consumer products abstract the objective of this paper is to contribute to the debate on environmental labelling by exploring the potential of economic value as a functional unit fu for the environmental labelling of food and other consumer products we used life cycle inventory lci data for organic and conventional pigs and broiler chickens from the public french agribalyse lci database and the cml 2001 method to calculate impacts per ton of animal live weight at the farm gate per hectare ha of land occupied and per 1000 euro of animal live weight we also examined the relationship between carbon footprint cf and price for 24 food product groups representative of french food consumption when using the fu live weight organic animals had larger impacts than conventional animals per ha of land occupied organic animals had smaller impacts than conventional animals but production was lower per 1000 euro of value organic animals had similar or lower values for eutrophication lower values for climate change and higher or similar values for land occupation these results illustrate that the choice of fu is crucial when comparing products from highly efficient conventional systems to products from less intensive organic systems for the 24 food product groups cf per product mass was positively correlated with product price cf per product economic value was not correlated with product price this suggests that a rebound effect may occur consumers that choose foods with lower cfs per mass will tend to spend less money on food leaving them with more money to buy other products which may compensate the reduced food cf this type of correlation has not been observed for non food sectors of the economy nevertheless the fu economic value is attractive as it considers product quality through the product s price an economic value based fu will be more favourable to systems producing products of superior quality more generally an economic value based fu is well suited for environmental labelling of consumer products a consumer has a certain budget to spend an economic value based fu may guide the consumer towards reduced impacts per euro spent we recommend the use of an fu based on economic value for the environmental labelling of food and other consumer products this fu will be a complement to currently used fus it will guide consumers towards lower impacts for a given expenditure

optimal farm size in an uncertain land market the case of kyrgyz republic this article applies a real options model to the problem of land development making use of the 1998 2001 kyrgyz household budget survey we show that when the hypothesis of decreasing return to scale holds the relation between the threshold value of revenue per hectare and the amount of land cultivated is positive in addition the relation between the threshold and the amount of land owned is positive in the case of continuous supply of land and negative when there is discontinuous supply of land the direct consequence is that in the first case smaller farms will be more willing to rent land and exercise the option where in the second case larger farms will exercise first the results suggest three main conclusions i the combination of uncertainty and irreversibility is an important factor in land development decisions ii farmer behavior is consistent with the continuous profit maximization model and iii farming unit revenue tends to be positively related to farm size once uncertainty is properly accounted for

land clearance and social capital in mountain agro ecosystems the case of opuntia scrubland in ayacucho peru abstract opuntia scrublands are important ecological economic systems in rural andean areas they provide goods for peasants diet and animal feed as well as cochineal insects a highly valued source of dyes land clearance on these scrublands promotes changes in land use from nonproductive wilderness to cochineal and fruit harvest areas grazing lands and fuel wood supply zones here we empirically explore the role of social capital on land clearance based on a case study of the humanga region of ayacucho peru the literature on social capital is showing evidence of the positive effect of social capital on development actions and on environmental conservation in rural areas of developing countries such as participatory forest management here the notion of social capital is captured by the idea that some features of social organization such as networks facilitate coordination and cooperation within the peasant communities that help in managing different economic activities both on and off farm the habilitation of the scrublands in the andean mountain environment could be generating negative externalities as a consequence of altering the vegetation cover such as soil erosion because the benefits arising from land clearance activities are obtained by cochineal collecting households and the negative environmental effects are costs imposed upon noncochineal collectors the social capital associated with scrubland habilitation could be perverse from an agro environmental viewpoint and a revision of some government policies and of some ngos actions for rural development through the promotion of various community networks in this deprived area could be needed

the future of food demand understanding differences in global economic models understanding the capacity of agricultural systems to feed the world population under climate change requires projecting future food demand this article reviews demand modeling approaches from 10 global economic models participating in the agricultural model intercomparison and improvement project agmip we compare food demand projections in 2050 for various regions and agricultural products under harmonized scenarios of socioeconomic development climate change and bioenergy expansion in the reference scenario ssp2 food demand increases by 59 98 between 2005 and 2050 slightly higher than the most recent fao projection of 54 from 2005 2007 the range of results is large in particular for animal calories between 61 and 144 caused by differences in demand systems specifications and in income and price elasticities the results are more sensitive to socioeconomic assumptions than to climate change or bioenergy scenarios when considering a world with higher population and lower economic growth ssp3 consumption per capita drops on average by 9 for crops and 18 for livestock the maximum effect of climate change on calorie availability is 6 at the global level and the effect of biofuel production on calorie availability is even smaller

policy technology and management strategies for achieving sustainable agricultural intensification considerable agreement exists among researchers development practitioners and policymakers regarding the goals of sustainable agricultural intensification sai they include achieving agricultural productivity growth household food security and improved rural livelihoods and employment while simultaneously mitigating environmental degradation however the multiplicity of these objectives as well as the choice of approaches to achieving them and the site and context specificity of specific technological and institutional interventions assures that the research and policy challenges to achieving sai will remain considerable this article summarizes the contributions of the articles in this special issue in four areas of the literature first labor market constraints the labor intensity of specific agricultural technologies and practices and labor s substitutability or complementarity with other inputs are shown to widely influence their viability and related input efficiencies second the articles identify specific tradeoffs and synergistic relationships that arise in the attainment of these multiple goals stemming from technologies management practices and policies introduced under specific agroclimatic market and institutional conditions third these papers contribute to the literature on agricultural technology adoption by furnishing additional empirical evidence on the determinants and effects of investment behavior and adoption of specific technologies and management practices finally the articles in this special issue emphasize that there is no single policy nor technological management or institutional innovation that unambiguously promotes sai preferred policies must be contextualized and sensitive to initial biophysical market and institutional conditions

deforestation and the rule of law in a cross section of countries relationships between deforestation and population pressure income growth and insecure property rights are examined with data from 120 countries insecure property rights are hypothesized to arise from two sources government instability or inability to enforce ownership and an absence of government accountability the former source is captured by measures of general lawlessness such as guerrilla warfare revolution and frequent constitutional change the latter is proxied by variables indicating the type of government executive frequency of political purges and the existence of an elected legislature general support is indicated for the property rights hypothesis and for the effects of population growth

the tragedy of the commons in cote d ivoire agriculture empirical evidence and implications for evaluating trade policies expansion of cultivated land diminishes the extent of forestlands or reduces the length of fallow periods and hence reduces the amount of natural vegetation the increase in land under cultivation has a direct output increasing effect at the cost of reducing natural capital and agricultural productivity the evidence for western cote d ivoire is consistent with and provides an explanation for the declining agricultural productivity observed in sub saharan africa during the past few decades this article uses a theoretical model to determine the level of land cultivation that maximizes village income using data from cote d ivoire for 1985 87 an important part of the land is under common property usually at the village level the results show that farmers do not internalize even a small fraction of the external cost of biomass in their land allocation decisions the lack of internalization of the social cost of the biomass resource leads to large income losses at the village level as much as 14 percent of village income these losses are many times larger than the usual estimates for conventional distortions

a critique of darley and lim s alternative perspective this reply challenges w k darley and j s lim s conclusions that an earlier article of ours misleads consumer researchers about the role and treatment of demand artifacts and that our analysis regarding g j gorn s experiments are flawed we also question darley and lim s proposals for minimizing demand artifacts

an economic model of soil conservation by introducing soil depth and soil loss into a simple model of agricultural production this paper seeks to determine when the private path of erosion differs from the socially optimal path considering the depletion of soil only and abstracting from the environmental disruption caused by erosion the paper argues that under most institutional arrangements the social and private rates of erosion are the same the paper concludes that public policy should be directed toward reducing erosion only when it leads to significant pollution externalities

risk risk aversion and on farm soil depletion abstract this paper studies the production and attendant soil depletion choices of a risk averse farmer in two related models the first is a two date model with uncertainty in both production and end of period land price the second is a three date model in which production and consumption choices are made in both periods but there is uncertainty only in the second period in both models the paper identifies plausible conditions under which a higher level of initial farmer wealth and or a lower level of production and land risk lead to a lower level of output and as a result a lower level of output induced soil depletion

the effect of labor market performance on deforestation in developing countries under open access an example from rural nepal abstract this research examines the deforestation behavior of smallholder agriculturalists as off farm labor market conditions change a model of a representative village is proposed which incorporates dependence on open access forests for fuelwood and animal raising dynamic simulations are then presented which compare time paths of forest stocks deforestation levels and household labor supply under a variety of conditions despite the open access regime assumed in the model with a perfect albeit low wage off farm labor market the agro forestry system in nepal is basically stable an alternative model where there is no off farm labor market eliminates the important features of adjustment to deforestation which generate forest stability suggesting that the availability of off farm opportunities is an important determinant of deforesting behavior and equilibrium forest stock levels

predicting consumer demand responses to carbon labels abstract providing carbon footprint labels for all food products is a daunting and potentially infeasible project knowing how consumers substitute away from high carbon goods and what they choose as substitutes is essential for understanding which goods are likely to result in meaningful reductions in carbon emissions this paper proposes a model to systematically estimate how consumers will respond to information from a carbon footprint label our model uses consumers value of their individual carbon footprint with own and cross price elasticities of demand data on carbon emissions from life cycle analysis to simulate shifts in consumer demand for 42 food products and a non food composite and subsequent changes in carbon emissions from different labeling schemes our simulation results have several findings including 1 carbon labels can reduce emissions but labeling only some items could lead to perverse impacts where consumers substitute away from labeled goods to unlabeled goods with a higher carbon footprint 2 carbon labels can inform consumers such that their previous beliefs about carbon footprints matter and 3 carbon labels on alcohol and meat would achieve the largest decreases in carbon emissions among the 42 food products studied

environmental externalities in traditional agriculture and the impact of trade liberalization the case of ghana abstract this paper provides a framework for the evaluation of trade policies that explicitly considers the effects of such policies on the environmental resources biomass in doing this we estimate the effects of biomass as a factor of agricultural production and test the hypothesis that farmers efficiently exploit biomass a resource held in common property the main findings are i biomass is an important factor of production in ghanian agriculture ii the biomass resource is exploited beyond the socially optimal level iii a deepening of trade liberalization is likely to induce further losses of biomass and deforestation and iv national income is likely to fall in response to further trade liberalization

environmental impacts of changes to healthier diets in europe food consumption causes together with mobility shelter and the use of electrical products most life cycle impacts of consumption meat and dairy are among the highest contributors to environmental impacts from food consumption a healthier diet might have less environmental impacts using the e3iot environmentally extended input output database developed in an eu study on environmental impacts of products eipro this paper estimates the difference in impacts between the european status quo and three simulated diet baskets i e a pattern according to universal dietary recommendations the same pattern with reduced meat consumption and a mediterranean pattern with reduced meat consumption production technologies protein and energy intake were kept constant though this implies just moderate dietary shifts impact reductions of up to 8 were possible in reduced meat scenarios the slightly changed food costs do not lead to significant first order rebound effects second order rebounds were estimated by applying the capri partial equilibrium model this analysis showed that european meat production sector will most likely respond by higher exports to compensate for losses on the domestic meat market higher impact reductions probably would need more drastic diet changes 2011 elsevier b v

an optimal path to extinction poverty and resource degradation in the open agrarian economy this paper constructs a model of the open agrarian economy in order to explore the tendency of many such economies to evolve along paths characterised by severe environmental degradation it pays special attention to the importance of commodity prices and the transfer system in determining agricultural activity levels in ecologically delicate systems

links between economic liberalization and rural resource degradation in the developing regions this paper examines evidence of the effects of economic liberalization and globalization on rural resource degradation in developing countries the principal resource effects of concern are processes of land use change leading to forestland conversion degradation and deforestation the main trends in globalization of interest are trade liberalization and economy wide reforms in developing countries that have opened up the agroindustrial sectors thus increasing their export orientation such reforms have clearly spurred agroindustrialization rural development and economic growth but there is also concern that there may be direct and indirect impacts on rural resource degradation the direct impacts may occur as increased agricultural activity leads to conversion of forests and increased land degradation from unsustainable production methods however there may also be indirect effects if agroindustrial development displaces landless near landless and rural poor generally who then migrate to marginal agricultural lands and forest frontier regions this paper explores these direct and indirect effects of globalization and agroindustrialization on rural resource degradation both generally plus through examining case study evidence the paper focuses in particular on the examples of structural adjustment trade liberalization and agricultural development in ghana and maize sector liberalization in mexico under north american free trade agreement nafta

agricultural development with rainforest conservation methods for seeking best bet alternatives to slash and burn with applications to brazil and indonesia abstract forests continue to fall for agricultural purposes throughout the humid tropics with immediate and potentially large consequences for climate change and biodiversity loss issues of key interest to the international community some of the actors directly responsible for forest conversion fell trees to meet food security needs and alleviate poverty issues of urgent interest to them and also to national policymakers this multiplicity of groups with differing often conflicting interests in the multifarious goods and services produced by tropical forests complicates the search for alternative agricultural activities for forest margins since these alternatives must satisfy such divergent objectives this paper sets out a conceptual framework for comparing the impacts of different land use systems and agricultural practices at the margins of tropical rainforests in terms of the concerns and objectives of two key interest groups small scale farmers seeking livelihoods at the forest margins and the international interests in the global public goods and services supplied by tropical rainforests this framework should be useful to a third key group the national and regional policymakers who must consider these and other policy objectives and then decide on courses of action the paper identifies data needs and analytical methods capable of supplying an empirical base for this conceptual framework based on quantifiable indicators it then presents preliminary results of the application of this conceptual framework in indonesia and brazil in association with a global collaborative multidisciplinary research program even using preliminary order of magnitude estimates to be replaced by more precise measurements as they become available this conceptual framework presents results in ways that allow researchers and policymakers to select clear best bets for development when they exist and to assess tradeoffs and options for complementary policy action and research efforts when they do not

what if consumers decided to all go green environmental rebound effects from consumption decisions shifting consumer preferences towards green consumption is promoted by many governments and environmental groups rebound effects which reduce the effectiveness of such actions are estimated for cost saving green consumption choices using australian data cases examined are reduced vehicle use reduced electricity use changing to smaller passenger vehicles and utilising fluorescent lighting it is found that if rebound effects are ignored when evaluating green consumption environmental benefits will be overstated by around 20 for reduced vehicle use and 7 for reduced electricity use rebound effects are higher and environmental benefits lower when more efficient vehicles or lighting are utilised rather than simple conservation actions of forgoing use in addition lower income households have higher rebound effects suggesting that environmental policy directed at changing consumer behaviour is most effective when targeted at high income households an inherent trade off between economic and environmental benefits of green consumption choices is demonstrated the size of the rebound effect and the observed variation with household income is attributed to life cycle analysis lca methodologies associated with the calculation of embodied ghg emissions of consumption goods these results should be therefore be interpreted as the minimum rebound effect to include in policy evaluation

deforestation and development in a small open economy abstract our economy faces world prices and starts with a large endowment of land in forest and a small endowment of land in agriculture clearing of forested land yields marketable timber and a unit of land for agriculture early the high price of agricultural land drives the clearing process later the profit from marketing timber from the cleared land drives the process dates of phase transitions are endogenous we also set out a submodel of perpetual cyclic clearing and reforesting and show that it when cyclical harvesting regrowing is optimal the extent of clearing can be relatively large

population growth soil fertility and agricultural intensification abstract this paper presents a renewable resource model of soil fertility with a nonconvexity in the net benefit function in this setting recurring cycles of cropping and fallow can be the optimal soil management strategy the model is used to illuminate the boserup discussion of agricultural development in which population growth leads to agricultural intensification defined as an increase in cropping frequency previous formal models of the boserup hypothesis focus on the land labor ratio rather than cropping frequency and have not directly incorporated soil fertility dynamics these models assume a convex production technology and are not optimistic about the prospect for agricultural development without technological progress this paper explicitly models soil fertility dynamics and demonstrates that nonconvexities in the production technology are an important feature of the use of long fallow periods for soil management as population grows and the demand for food increases the importance of the nonconvexity diminishes and more frequent cropping becomes economical given a nonconvexity in the production technology it is possible though not necessary that average labor productivity increases with agricultural intensification thus it is possible to reconcile the greater labor requirement of intensive farming with an increase in average labor productivity in addition boserup argued that a larger and denser population facilitates the development of economic and social infrastructures which improve agricultural productivity

agricultural expansion and deforestation modelling the impact of population market forces and property rights abstract this paper compares four different modelling approaches to agricultural expansion and deforestation and explores the implications of assumptions about the household objectives the labour market and the property rights regime a major distinction is made between population and market based explanations many of the popular policy prescriptions are based on the population approach assuming subsistence behaviour and limited market integration within a more realistic particularly for the long term effects market approach well intentioned policies such as agricultural intensification programmes may boost deforestation many forest frontier contexts are also characterized by forest clearing giving farmers land rights deforestation becomes an investment to the farmer and a title establishment strategy land titling and credit programmes may therefore increase deforestation

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

the interaction of population growth and environmental quality an important question for policy is whether holding constant per capita income and other relevant factors population pressures have a significant effect upon environmental degradation the authors examine the effect of population pressures upon deforestation in 64 developing countries in an attempt to provide relevant empirical findings data on deforestation were drawn from the food and agriculture organizations production yearbook results suggest that a relationship exists between per capita income and deforestation and that for africa rural population density shifts the relationship upward the increase in the rate of deforestation levels off as income increases the rate of growth in per capita income also has a significant negative impact upon deforestation although the magnitude of the effect is small the authors close in stressing that reducing the rate of population growth is not necessarily the best way to reduce the rate of deforestation deforestation in developing countries is really a problem of market failure since property rights are often neither defined nor enforced there is essentially no private cost of deforestation with no long term stake in the land people have no incentive to use land efficiently this situation must be addressed in conjunction with the problems of poverty and population growth

optimal soil conservation and the reform of agricultural pricing policies abstract soil degradation is often blamed for the poor performance of agriculture in developing economies so too are policies which keep the prices of both outputs and inputs artificially low some economists have argued that pricing reforms will encourage soil depletion others say that such reforms will encourage soil conservation to evaluate these claims this paper develops models of the optimal control of soil erosion and soil fertility it is shown that the effect could go either way but that there are strong reasons for suspecting that pricing reforms will not affect soil conservation dramatically

links between rural poverty and the environment in developing countries asset categories and investment poverty abstract this paper presents a framework for analyzing the links between poverty and the environment in rural areas of developing countries it introduces the concept of investment poverty and relates it to other measures of poverty in analysis of these links the notion of poverty is examined in the context of categories of assets and categories of environment change with particular focus on farm household income generation and investment strategies as determinants of the links the strength and direction of the poverty environment links are shown to differ even invert depending on the composition of the assets held by the rural poor and the types of environmental problems they face policy strategies need to focus on conditioning variables that affect market development community wealth infrastructure household asset distribution and the affordability and appropriateness of natural resource conservation technologies

the rebound effects of switching to vegetarianism a microeconomic analysis of swedish consumption behavior sustainable diets in particular vegetarianism are often promoted as effective measures to reduce our environmental footprint yet few conclusions take full scale behavioral changes into consideration this can be achieved by calculating the indirect environmental rebound effect related to the re spending of expenditure saved during the initial behavioral shift this study aims to quantify the potential energy use and greenhouse gas emission savings and most likely rebound effects related to an average swedish consumer s shift to vegetarianism using household budget survey data it estimates engel curves of 117 consumption goods derives marginal expenditure shares and links these values to environmental intensity indicators results indicate that switching to vegetarianism could save consumers 16 of the energy use and 20 of the greenhouse gas emissions related to their dietary consumption however if they re spend the saved income according to their current preferences they would forego 96 of potential energy savings and 49 of greenhouse gas emission savings these rebound effects are even higher for lower income consumers who tend to re spend on more environmentally intensive goods yet the adverse effect could be tempered by purchasing organic goods or re spending the money on services in order to reduce the environmental impact of consumption it could thus be recommended to not only focus on dietary shifts but rather on the full range of consumer expenditure

changing political regimes and tropical deforestation expansion of agriculture is a main cause of tropical deforestation government policies and weak property rights contribute to this process by encouraging landowners and landless to accelerate land clearing using panel data common to previous studies we add the dimension of new political regimes democratic and non democratic and investigate how the rate of agricultural land expansion in tropical countries depends on the nature and persistence of each regime we find that both new autocratic and democratic regimes have accelerated the expansion of agricultural land thus yielding support to some of the findings in the earlier literature interesting differences emerge between regions with the impact being most pronounced in latin america we interpret these results mainly in the context of increasing tenure and ownership insecurity which in turn is driven by the tendency of new regimes to implement land reforms as a form of social and economic policy or voter payback the argument is developed more formally using a simple competitive land use model that incorporates political regime dependent confiscation risk and agricultural subsidy policy

the economics of tropical forest land use options tropical deforestation is generally characterized as conversion of forest land to alternative uses notably agriculture this would suggest the need for rational decision making concerning the optimal allocation of tropical forest land between competing uses the following paper explores this problem by devising rules for determining optimal land use allocation between timber and agriculture at the stand and forest levels a complementary intertemporal model for optimal allocation of forest land to agricultural conversion at the forest level is also developed and used to derive a demand relationship for agricultural conversion which is then approximated through empirical estimation

missing carbon reductions exploring rebound and backfire effects in uk households households are expected to play a pivotal role in reducing the uk s greenhouse gas ghg emissions and the uk government is encouraging specific household actions to help meet its targets however due to the rebound effect only a portion of the ghg emission reductions estimated by simple engineering calculations are generally achieved in practice for example replacing short car journeys by walking or cycling reduces consumption of motor fuels but this frees up money that may be spent on for example purchasing extra clothes or flying on vacation alternatively the money may be put into savings since all of these options lead to ghg emissions total ghg savings may be less than anticipated indeed in some instances emissions may increase a phenomenon known as backfire we estimate that the rebound effect for a combination of three abatement actions by uk households is approximately 34 targeting re spending on goods and services with a low ghg intensity reduces this to a minimum of around 12 while re spending on goods and services with a high ghg intensity leads to backfire our study highlights the importance of shifting consumption to lower ghg intensive categories and investing in low carbon investments

ecosystem service value and agricultural conversion in the amazon implications for policy intervention we explore the welfare implications of agricultural expansion in the brazilian amazon by comparing spatially explicit estimates of soybean rents and the value of ecosystem services although these estimates are generated from different datasets models and estimation techniques the values are comparable such that the value of ecosystem services is greater than soybean rents for about 61 of the total area and 24 of the area where soybean rents are positive if protected areas are well enforced based on the balance between the benefits and costs of conversion failure to value ecosystem services reduces total social welfare by 7 13 billion dollars annually relative to an optimum policy instruments that internalize the value of ecosystem services via protected lands land conversion taxes conservation subsidies or excise taxes can avoid much of this loss regardless of intervention regime policy makers should be cognizant of the diminishing net benefits of converting natural ecosystems to agriculture realizing the final 3 8 requires the conversion of an additional 15 natural ecosystems to soybean production

land use intensification potential in slash and burn farming through improvements in technical efficiency abstract much attention is being paid to find alternative land use options in slash and burn sab farming or forest fallow based shifting cultivation systems the conservation objective is often twofold that is to discourage farmers from expanding into the forest frontier and to reduce the ecological damage from burning plots options include the total abandonment of forest plots the adoption of productivity increasing green revolution type technologies and the application of modern evergreen agroforestry knowledge this paper evaluates another alternative the intensification of land use by improving technical efficiency in farming this involves the reduction of land clearing while at the same time maintaining crop output levels and the local and traditional low input technology the potential for such land use intensification is empirically assessed with ecological and socioeconomic household data from yucatan mexico the methodology is based on both parametric and nonparametric output and input distance functions in addition the sources of inefficiency are addressed the results of the analysis suggest that on and off farm labour diversification can play a key role to help shifting cultivating households to improve their technical efficiency in farming and thus to help to intensify land use furthermore while the empirical results point towards the positive effect of soil fertility mainly determined by the length of forest fallows on crop output levels farmers appear to overcome the ecological constraint of farming in less fertile soils by being more technically efficient

economic energy and greenhouse emissions impacts of some consumer choice technology and government outlay options abstract the impacts of selected spending options in the australian economy are determined in terms of energy consumption greenhouse gas emissions and a range of economic parameters six case studies of one current practice and one alternative environmentally motivated spending option are carried out describing consumer choices technologies and government outlays the assessment method is based on input output theory and as such enables both the direct and indirect effects of spending to be quantified in general the results indicate that pro environmental objectives such as reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are compatible with broad socio economic benefits such as increases in employment and income and reductions in imports

public open access and private timber harvests theory and application to the effects of trade liberalization in mexico a common popular assertion is that trade liberalization encourages deforestation but whether this is true depends on how trade policies affect the allocation of land among competing uses and how they influence illegal cutting of public forests a model is presented that allows for forests to be either public or private and public forests are divided into protected or managed and threatened categories effects of price changes are shown on each part of the forest an empirical version of the model is applied to the case of mexico with nafta most scenarios considered show that nafta will have positive long run effects on forest cover in mexico but that this is net of losses on private lands

climate change and dietary choices how can emissions of greenhouse gases from food consumption be reduced abstract results from an analysis of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption during the life cycle of carrots tomatoes potatoes pork rice and dry peas consumed in sweden are presented and discussed the life cycle is delineated to the part of the production chain prior to purchase by the consumer the study shows that emissions expressed in g co2 equivalents are highest for pork and rice and lowest for potatoes carrots and dry peas the most important stages of emissions in the life cycle are identified for each of the different food items crop farming is the most important stage for rice and tomatoes while rearing of animals is the most important stage for pork and storage is the most important stage for carrots comparison with an energy analysis shows that important stages in the life cycle of food may be under evaluated when energy only is accounted for this may lead to a sub optimisation of pollution control exemplified by the case of transportation also it is shown that the choice of functional unit has a decisive influence on the outcome of the study the recommendation is to compare whole meals or diets with the same nutritional qualities a comparison of four meals composed of the food items under analysis shows that a meal with tomatoes rice and pork has nine times higher emissions than a meal made from potatoes carrots and dry peas emissions of greenhouse gases from consumption patterns based on the food items analysed are compared with an assumed sustainable limit of greenhouse gas emissions the conclusion is that current food consumption patterns in the developed countries exceed the level of sustainability by at least a factor of 4 prospects for achieving sustainable food consumption patterns are questionable in view of current trends in food demand

economic growth sustainable development and food consumption evidence across different income groups of countries abstract considering that high population and income growths will lead the coming decades an increase in global food demand is expected livestock products such as meat are closely related to this trend but also associated with impacts on the environment and public health from land and water depletion to greenhouse gases emissions and higher risks of non communicable diseases this trend raises doubts about the sustainability of the food industry and thus a solution is needed for the problem how to feed the world population without compromising present and future generations the literature suggests that meat consumption should be reduced for the sake of the environment and global population however without considering the effects that such reduction would have on the economy inspired by these facts this paper empirically analyses the interactions between food consumption economic growth and sustainable development measured by the index of sustainable economic welfare more specifically the paper assesses the effect that food consumption has on the economy the econometric analysis applies the autoregressive distributed lag model for 77 countries further distinguished by their income group from 1995 to 2013 the findings support that meat consumption has different impacts on economic growth and sustainable development considering different income groups however there is an evident dilemma between economic growth and sustainable development since meat consumption has contradictory effects on each thus it is crucial to understand how to promote sustainability i e reducing the environmental externalities and chronic health diseases without compromising economic growth

permanent and temporary policy incentives for conservation under stochastic returns from competing land uses rapid conversion of private land for agricultural and urban use has raised concern worldwide over the loss of ecological services to inform conservation policy we model privately optimal land use decisions using a real options framework that assumes both the ecological and commercial values of land are stochastic and that land conversion is irreversible we analyze permanent and temporary land conservation policy incentives using this dynamic framework to guide policy makers interested in designing efficient payment mechanisms to achieve ecological preservation goals we find that while the financial cost of temporary policy incentives is generally much lower than permanent policy incentives this difference is very small in scenarios with high discount rates and lower uncertainties in conversion returns and lower expected trend in conservation returns alternately the financial cost of temporary conservation is substantially lower than that of permanent conservation when the expected trend in conservation returns and uncertainties in conservation and conversion returns is high and the discount rate is low comparison with net present value and single source uncertainty models indicates that the presence of a second uncertainty increases the option value of delaying conversion and shows that permanent and temporary policy incentives based on either of the two simpler models can be seriously misguided if multiple uncertainties are present we illustrate the analytical results with a case study of tropical deforestation in indonesia where private landowners can either conserve forests and earn carbon credits or convert to palm oil agriculture and earn profits from the sale of palm oil

a general equilibrium view of global rebound effects abstract how do energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption the effects are generally called rebound effects in the literature previous studies have extensively focused on only part of the global economy to study rebound effects e g energy consumption by households one industry or one country however since the global economy is highly connected among countries these studies may lead to misleading conclusions if the rebound effects in the rest of the economy are significant recently saunders 2008 analyzes the demand side by taking the global economy as a whole wei 2007 also provides a general analysis by using cobb douglas production functions for the global economy the present article expands wei 2007 general analysis to explore the rebound effects from an economist s viewpoint by taking the global economy as a whole and applying general forms of production functions the analysis provides new insights related to rebound effects we highlight the role of energy supply as a determinant of rebound we show that the substitution between energy resources and other productive resources is more relevant to long term rebound we predict that long term rebound may be lower than short term rebound and we also discover that super conservation can happen in both the short term and the long term

peasant household modelling farming systems evolution and sustainability in northern zambia chitemene slash and burn cultivation continues to be a dominating cropping system in northern zambia even after the introduction of modern technologies such as hybrid maize and fertilizer the rationale of farming systems evolution in northern zambia where labour markets have been absent or highly imperfect has been analyzed by goal programming based on the theories of chayanov 1966 and nakajima 1986 carrying capacity estimation is incorporated in the models and discussed in relation to the sustainability of land use systems in the area the major changes in agricultural technologies in northern zambia during this century has been the introduction of cassava maize and fertilizer technologies cassava has had the most significant impact since the land could support much higher population densities and since the dependence on the chitemene system no longer was critical for the survival of peasants by switching from finger millet to cassava as the main staple the peasants could reduce their total labour requirement to meet their basic food needs by as much as 40 the results also show that the maize fertilizer technology has been unable to replace the chitemene system because economic incentives to continue the system exist as long as there is suitable woodland available nevertheless the introduction of the maize fertilizer technology may have resulted in reduced chitemene cultivation the rapid expansion of maize production in northern zambia from the late 70s to the late 80s depended critically on the government policy of equity pricing and input subsidisation the models predicted that the removal of fertilizer subsidies would result in a dramatic reduction in maize production

land use and income diversification comparing traditional and colonist populations in the brazilian amazon this article compares and analyzes land use and income diversification among two distinct groups of farmers in the brazilian amazon recent colonists in ouro preto do oeste rondonia and traditional long term residents along the tapajos river para we investigate the hypothesis that farmers who diversify their cash income sources clear less forest on an annual basis and we compare these livelihood choices across colonist and traditional populations in particular we develop a conceptual model based on the household production framework and use econometric models to identify determinants of diversification and forest clearing we find that diversification of agricultural cash crops is negatively correlated with forest clearing by colonists providing limited evidence for the hypothesis other significant covariates of diversification and forest clearing include cash income levels stage in family life cycle cattle ownership and chemical inputs differences in these variables and differences in household response to these variables explain variation in diversification and forest clearing across the two populations

trade policies economic growth and the direct causes of deforestation by ramon lopez gregmar i galinato please send correspondence to ramon lopez 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email rlopez arec umd edu tel 301 405 1281 fax 301 314 9091 gregmar i galinato 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email ggalinato arec umd edu tel 301 405 0477 fax 301 314 9091

virtual land use and agricultural trade estimating environmental and socio economic impacts abstract liberalization has caused an increase in the global trade of goods and services in particular the value and physical volume of agricultural goods traded have largely increased as the environmental and social consequences of trade are complex they are rarely included in the national and international agricultural policies one reason is that there is a lack of concepts and methods for assessing the environmental and social impacts of trade policies in this paper we develop a method for quantifying and assessing the land use hidden in the export and import of agricultural goods for the case of switzerland for our analysis we focus on arable crops the first methodological step of our research illustrates the spatial relationship of switzerland with countries all over the world through the import and export of land use for arable crops the second step links this spatial dimension with a qualitative assessment of the environmental and socio economic impacts of agricultural land use we applied the method to the case of wheat cultivation within switzerland and import to switzerland the major problem we were confronted with was the availability of data which had both to be reliable and available for the countries wheat is imported from the results show that the calculation of land use is credible in spite of the problems related with data availability the assessment results for each indicator are in agreement with the current situation in the respective countries in addition the aggregation seems to accurately reflect the countries agricultural polices the developed method is used to estimate the overall environmental and socio economic impacts of an increase in wheat imports to switzerland we argue that this method could be applied for anticipating potential impacts of trade agreements still further research is required for fine tuning of the utility functions including a weighting procedure in the aggregation procedure for practical applications important aspects like water shortage should enlarge our limited set of indicators in addition the average impact on a country level was assessed to refine that different agricultural systems ranging from intensive to extensive to organic should be considered beyond our scope was to analyze impacts due to other life cycle stages than the agricultural production for informed decision however information on the whole life cycle of agricultural products is required

rebound effects in agricultural land and soil management review and analytical framework abstract increasing the efficiency of production is the basis for decoupling economic growth from resource consumption in agriculture more efficient use of natural resources is at the heart of sustainable intensification however technical improvements do not directly translate into resource savings because producers and consumers adapt their behaviour to such improvements often resulting in a rebound effect where part or all of the potential resource savings are offset in extreme cases increases in efficiency may even result in higher instead of lower resource consumption the jevons paradox rebound effects are particularly complex in agricultural land and soil management where multiple resources are used simultaneously and efficiency gains aim to lower the need for farmland water energy nutrients pesticides and greenhouse gas emissions in this context quantification of rebound effects is a prerequisite for generating realistic scenarios of global food provision and for advancing the debate on land sparing versus land sharing however studies that provide an overview of rebound effects related to the resources used in agriculture or guidelines for assessing potential rebound effects from future innovations are lacking this paper contributes to closing this gap by reviewing the current state of knowledge and developing a framework for a structured appraisal of rebound effects as a test case the proposed framework is applied to emerging technologies and practices in agricultural soil management in germany the literature review revealed substantial evidence of rebound effects or even jevons paradox with regard to efficiency increases in land productivity and irrigation water use by contrast there were few studies addressing rebound effects from efficiency increases in fertilizer use pesticide application agricultural energy use and greenhouse gas emissions while rebound effects are by definition caused by behavioural adaptations of humans in agriculture also natural adaptations occur such as resistance of pests to certain pesticides future studies should consider extending the definition of rebound effects to such natural adaptations the test case revealed the potential for direct and indirect economic rebound effects of a number of emerging technologies and practices such as improved irrigation technologies which increase water productivity and may thereby contribute to increases in irrigated areas and total water use the results of this study indicated that rebound effects must be assessed to achieve realistic estimates of resource savings from efficiency improvements and to enable informed policy choices the framework developed in this paper is the first to facilitate such assessments

climate change mitigation potential of norwegian households and the rebound effect abstract an increasing number of studies show that efficiency improvements alone will not be sufficient to attain the substantial emission reductions needed to mitigate global warming to a target of 2 c consumption side changes are likely to be needed to achieve sufficient emission reductions the united nations emphasize the importance of developed countries taking the lead in lowering emissions to achieve the sustainable development goals this paper assess to what extent norwegian households can lower their carbon footprint consistent with territorial emission reductions towards the 2 c target of global warming through implementing a set of behavioral actions we evaluate the efficacy of the set of actions both initially and after considering rebound effects a multiregional environmentally extended input output database is linked with the norwegian consumer expenditure survey to analyze both average and marginal expenditure per unit of increased income further linear programming is applied to examine the changes needed by households to reach different emission reduction targets we find that households implementing the full set of actions without re spending can obtain a 58 decrease in their carbon footprint when accounting for the effect of re spending this reduction drops to 24 35 which is not within the requirements of the 2 c target the optimization analysis suggests households can achieve reductions up to 45 by restricting re spending to specific goods and services this indicates that curbing the rebound effect is key to achieving real reductions in household carbon footprints we show that changing consumption patterns can significantly contribute to lowering anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions without compromising the level of economic activity

how technological efficiency improvements change consumer preferences towards a psychological theory of rebound effects abstract the use of technologies can influence consumer preferences and demand and hence impact on environmental sustainability this article contributes to research on rebound effects which focus on how energy efficiency improvements eei increase energy service demand most of 35 years of rebound research has been analyzed from micro and macro economic perspectives yet micro economic rebound research has so far investigated human behavior only on grounds of simple rational choice models and static assumptions about consumer preferences this article exposes the existing rebound discourse to psychological theories building on considerations of how eei can interfere with processes of decision making it develops a model of how eei via psychological processes may lead to motivational rebound effects as well as to beneficial effects which countervail rebounds the article then advances a typology of such rebound and beneficial effects that not only integrates the typology currently used in the micro economic rebound literature but goes beyond it model and typology explain how economic rebound research could benefit from psychological theory provide the basis for empirically investigating rebound effects on more solid theoretical grounds and empower a comprehensive discussion about policies and measures that aim at a sustainable use of technologies

who rebounds most estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for different uk socioeconomic groups this study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from various types of energy efficiency improvement and behavioural change by uk households and explores how these effects vary with total expenditure the methodology is based upon estimates of the expenditure elasticity and ghg intensity of 16 categories of goods and services and allows for the capital cost and embodied emissions of the energy efficiency measures themselves the study finds that rebound effects in ghg terms are modest 0 32 for measures affecting domestic energy use larger 25 65 for measures affecting vehicle fuel use and very large 66 106 for measures that reduce food waste furthermore measures undertaken by low income households are associated with the largest rebound effects with direct emissions forming a larger proportion of the total rebound effect for those households measures that are subsidised or affect highly taxed energy commodities may be less effective in reducing aggregate emissions these findings highlight the importance of allowing for rebound effects within policy appraisals as well as reinforcing the case for economy wide carbon pricing

amenity benefits and the optimal allocation of land agricultural land often yields sig nificant amenity benefits that may not be re flected in the prevailing allocation of land be tween agricultural and nonagricultural uses this paper introduces a simple supply demand model that incorporates these benefits in the de termination of optimal land allocation three stage least squares and county level data are used to estimate the supply and demand param eters these estimates confirm the plausibility of the conceptual model results from the con tingent valuation literature illustrate the extent of underallocation of land to agriculture due to existing institutional conditions some correc tive measures and their distributional effects are discussed and quantified jel q24

deprived land use intensification in shifting cultivation the population pressure hypothesis revisited this article provides a theoretical framework based on optimal control theory to analyze farm households land use intensification decisions in forest based shifting cultivation slash and burn agroecosystems the main results from the analysis generally coincide with the population pressure hypothesis pph as an important driver of soil degradation due to the so called fallow crisis or deprived land use intensification in shifting cultivation however the model also shows from a supply perspective that such a vicious circle of lower yields and greater forest land clearing may be avoided when the production elasticity of on farm labor outweighs the elasticity of substitution between farm labor and soil fertility furthermore using data from shifting cultivating households from yucatan mexico we calibrate the effect of changes in population density the numerical analysis suggests that by contrast to better off households when population density increases poorer shifting cultivating households optimal labor allocation strategy is to further extensify land use by clearing more forest in the village common property land or ejido land

choice modelling and its potential application to tropical rainforest preservation abstract loss of rainforest occurs in part because of a global market failure problem markets routinely transmit signals about international demands for forest products such as timber but fail to transmit signals about demands for preservation to make efficient resource allocation choices decision makers need some framework to estimate the non use values that might be held by an international community for rainforest preservation non market valuation techniques can be used for this purpose but framing and other problems limit the application of the contingent valuation method cvm an alternative technique choice modelling cm appears to hold some promise because it can be used to model complex situations and to frame choices consistent with real life choices in this paper a cm experiment to assess the values that australians hold for rainforest conservation in vanuatu is reported the experiment disguises effectively the issue of interest rainforest conservation in vanuatu within a pool of other conservation locations also the experiment demonstrates that choice tradeoffs may involve a variety of environmental and socio economic factors rather than be concentrated on some monetary tradeoff the results demonstrate that a variety of predictive and valuation tools can be gained from a cm experiment and suggest that further development is warranted

explaining forest transitions the role of governance abstract we analyze how governance may influence competing land uses for forests and thus the occurrence of forest transitions across different low and middle income countries we develop a model of competing land uses that allows for governance to impact the risk of future versus current agricultural and forested land allocations the resulting hypothesis on the relationship between governance and the likelihood of a forest transition is then tested using cross country data the empirical analysis offers strong support for the competing land use framework and indicates that rule of law forest policy and regulatory quality influence forest transitions these findings inform not only the ongoing debate on forest transitions but also policy options for managing such transitions in developing economies

a critical appraisal of demand artifacts in consumer research especially since the publication of sawyer s instructive article on the topic consumer researchers have been concerned that demand artifacts significantly compromise the validity and generalizability of experimental findings in this article we provide an overview of the issues surrounding the demand artifacts controversy evaluate the preconditions for demand artifacts and offer a critique of suppositions about the consequences and appropriate control of demand artifacts kellaris and cox s critique of gorn s well known classical conditioning experiments provides the backdrop for much of the discussion

planning timber production with evolving prices and costs the traditional faustmann solution to the timber harvesting problem was developed for an environment in which prices costs and technology were constant recent contributions recognizing the evolution of economic institutions have developed solutions to optimal harvesting problems under a variety of more realistic assumptions nautiyal and fowler 1980 show that the socially desirable rotation in a monopolistic situation is longer than that which maximizes the monopolist s present worth but is shorter than the atomistic rotation p 213 heaps and neher 1979 derive the optimal rotation when the rate of harvest is constrained bare and waggener 1980 investigate the value of timberland when timber prices change using a traditional faustmann model murphy fortson and bethune 1977 deal with an imperfect capital market one problem not addressed by recent contributions concerns the violation of the assumption of constant price and cost functions for timber production this assumption clearly does not hold stumpage prices exhibit substantial short run fluctuations and systematic long run trends for southern pine and douglas fir two species that are potential crops for timber plantations historical evidence demonstrates that stumpage prices relative to other price have grown steadily for the period 1913 1978 the ratio of southern pine stumpage price to prices paid by farmers increased at a 4 annual rate while the same ratio for douglas fir increased at an annual rate of 5 7 1 for douglas fir and southern pine forecasts of prices and costs based on his

technology and preferences in the boserup model of agricultural growth abstract this paper is an attempt to formalize the model of intensification of land use by boserup 1965 boserup has argued that population density is a precondition for adoption of intensive techniques of land use unless population pressure is high subsistence cultivators are not motivated to give up entensive but highly productive techniques for more intensive but less productive techniques this paper argues that contrary to what has been implied by some recent papers on the subject the crux of boserup s model is a description of technology rather than behavior the first part of the paper shows that the proper formalization of boserup s description of technology is a convex but not strictly convex production set the second part considers a complete model in which utility maximizing cultivators faced with this technology choose optimal consumption and labor supply for given levels of population density it is shown that when two techniques coexist a quasi concave utility function always results in intensification and when only a single technique is in use the necessary and sufficient condition for intensification is that the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure be elastic with respect to consumption

population tenure and natural resource management the case of customary land area in malawi abstract this paper analyzes the factors determining conversion of woodlands to agricultural land changes in tree cover and maize yield for the last two and a half decades by using aerial photos and field survey data in 57 communities in malawi the econometric analysis revealed that population pressure led to greater land conversion but had no effect on yield or tree cover changes areas where greater changes in traditional tenure systems have occurred are associated with reduction in tree cover and expansion of agricultural land these results suggest the importance of strengthening institutions to manage natural resources

a model of shifting cultivation can soil conservation reduce deforestation shifting cultivators manage soil not only by adjusting soil use on already cleared lands as in continuous cultivation but also by clearing forests to obtain new fertile soils this study examines the crucial link between on farm soil conservation and deforestation in shifting cultivation by modeling forest clearing as an investment in soil for a private farmer more generally by doing so the study attempts to integrate deforestation and soil conservation models which have been separately developed in the literature our policy goal is to arrest tropical deforestation as destruction of global commons caused by land degradation in shifting cultivation while improving the well being of poor shifting cultivators our integrated approach enables joint policy analyses of deforestation and land degradation three welfare enhancing policies are considered the first is agricultural and nonagricultural subsidies affecting farm and nonfarm income opportunities the second is fiscal and tenure policies affecting discount rates our question is whether the link between forest clearing and soil fertility alters the outcomes of these two standard macroeconomic policies commonly found in the literature the third policy or program is various soil conservation measures affecting soil regeneration and erosivity on already cleared lands this article examines a very important question which has received little attention in previous theoretical works can soil conservation reduce deforestation this study confirms anti deforestation effects of the promotion of nonfarming activities a common and often emphasized finding in previous works among shifting cultivators more importantly it also demonstrates that improving various soil conservation measures not only discourages forest clearing among shifting cultivators but also tends to have greater effects on forest protection than promoting nonfarming activities contrarily agricultural price subsidy or technological progress gives rise to the opposite outcome and lowering the farmer s discount rate or improving tenure security encourages him her to clear more forests just to accumulate soil

the causes of tropical deforestation in ecuador a statistical analysis abstract this paper reports a statistical analysis of the causes of agricultural colonization and land clearing in eastern ecuador the results bolster many of the arguments that have been made about the social forces driving tropical deforestation in general the prospect of capturing agricultural rents stimulates settlement of tree covered hinterlands accordingly the presence of roads and urban centers attracts rural settlement colonists also prefer to go where soils are suitable for crop or livestock production all else remaining the same in addition to being a function of population pressure the extent of land clearing is shown to be a consequence of tenure insecurity these results suggest that institutional reform is needed to encourage conservation of tropical forests

deforestation and agricultural productivity in the cote d ivoire an optimal control model is used to determine the optimal steady state forest stock in the cote d ivoire this stock is shown to increase with increases in the forestry returns relative to those in agriculture technological progress in agriculture and increases in the social discount rate serve to lower the optimal steady state forest stock based on an estimated aggregate yield function the optimal forest stock is shown to be most sensitive to changes in the social rate of discount assuming current 1985 technology deforestation appears socially optimal only for values of the discount rate greater than 8