查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdAgri-environment schemes (AESs) have been developed by governments to improve biodiversity, reduce pollution from farming and encourage the provision of agriculture's non-market benefits. Despite the substantial amount of money spent on designing, implementing and monitoring AESs, their environmental effectiveness is ambiguous. The objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between farmer participation in an AES and the quantity and quality of semi-natural habitats found on farms. This study combines socio-economic survey data from Irish farms in 2012 with farmland habitat data collected in 2015–16 from a subset of participating farms in the original 2012 socio-economic survey. Given the voluntary nature of AESs, a matching technique is applied to control for self-selection bias and test whether farmer participation in an AES is related to the quantity and quality of habitats found on Irish farms. Although farmer participation in an AES is found to be positively related to habitat quantity and quality, we are unable to reject the null hypothesis of no statistically significant differences between habitat quantity and quality of participants in an AES and non-participants. However, results highlight that the share of habitat area (proxy variable for habitat quantity) varies significantly across farm households with different socio-economic characteristics, soil type, farm structures and location. Future policies could scale up the implementation of outcome-based payments or market-based instruments to incentivize farmers in improving their environmental performance. However, such policy improvements would still require the development of robust and transparent monitoring mechanisms.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdLocalization is one of the main critical factors that influence the value creation process and performance of a business. Choosing a location to start a business often influences the consequent access to a series of resources and services essential to its development, becoming a key element for its survival. This is even more evident in mountain areas, which are conditioned by key factors such as low population density, the large extension of the territories, the constraints of the infrastructure and transport systems, the presence of protected areas, as well as the attractiveness exercised by larger neighboring centers. This research aims to demonstrate how geographic context and altitude influence the distribution of businesses, revealing entrepreneurial clusters that have the characteristics of mountainousness. Following the Kernel density method for geolocation, the study proposes an original geospatial analysis to characterize the distribution of the enterprises and context of the central Apennines, considering the relationship between the altimetric location and the macro classification by product category, expressed by Nace Section. The study shows articulated areas of concentration and aggregation of mountain enterprises, five primary clusters and six secondary clusters. The former are characterized by a greater density of aggregation influenced by morphological characteristics of the area; the latter better explain the entrepreneurial dynamics and the distribution of the enterprises within the Nace sections, linked to the concept of altitude.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdMany smallholder tree growers in developing countries and those advising them, hold a view that if they plant trees a market will materialize when the time is right. However, despite strong international demand for timber and potential for smallholders to supply this demand, this ‘Field of Dreams’ approach, i.e. if you grow it, buyers will come, is not generally a sound strategy. In this study, we aimed to identify the conditions that enable the development of viable timber value chains around smallholder tree growers in developing countries. We reviewed literature on the integration of small-scale producers into value chains, smallholder tree growing, and smallholder commercial forestry to identify conditions, and used four case studies in the Asia-Pacific Region to understand how these influence outcomes for smallholder tree growers in different settings. This analysis provided a basis for recommendations for policymakers and advising agencies on how to support timber value chains for smallholder tree growers. These included deeper understanding of biophysical suitability of locations for tree growing, smallholder capabilities and interests, and provision of clear land tenure, infrastructure, and streamlined regulations sympathetic to smallscale timber operations. Tree growing can generate financial value for smallholders in regions with high human population density, quality road networks and proximity to processing markets and ports. Careful policy design is required to make it ‘fit for purpose’ at local levels, as conditions vary widely even within a single country. This can identify catalytic interventions and work with existing or near-term market drivers and simplified regulations in the value chain to generate benefits for smallholders.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdInformed by Coasian transaction cost reasoning from a neo-institutional economic perspective, this literature review identifies and examines 225 available research works involving 188 sets of author entries spanning from 1919 to 2019. All are on or connected with land readjustment, with a focus on lot boundaries as rigidly delineated. Over the years researchers and practitioners have considered and reconsidered land readjustment under various names in different forms (whether consensual or non-consensual among land owners affected) but almost invariably involving replotting of proprietary boundaries and reallocation of rights to realigned lots in a new layout as an alternative to state taking of land (eminent domain) or developer purchase of all properties. This literature review, connected with the adoption of a policy proposal, is unique in three ways as far as land readjustment is concerned. First, it has a time span of just over a century from 1919 to 2019 and traces works on Japan from the 1920s. Second, it cross-references the works reviewed. Third, it has a theoretical interest in property rights with a specific focus on boundaries as a dimension of those rights, and articulates land readjustment as a subset of the transfer of development rights. Fourth, it employs ‘culturomics’ (Michel et al. 2011, Roth 2014) in fathoming the context of the concept land readjustment and associated terms.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdAll walks of life have been affected by COVID-19 but smallholders from developing countries have been impacted more than others as they are heavily reliant on forest and agriculture for their livelihoods and have limited capacity to deal with COVID-19. Scholars are heavily engaged in assessing the impacts of COVID-19 on health and wellbeing, gender, food production and supply, stock market and the overall economy but not on the forestry sector. Using questionnaire surveys and key informant interviews—informed by grey literature and published articles— representing Division Forest Offices, Provincial Forest Directorates, and the Ministry of Forests and Environment in Nepal, this study assessed the impact of COVID-19 on the forestry sector of Nepal. Our analysis suggests that: (1) nature-based tourism is more severely affected than other sectors; (2) private, religious and leasehold forests faced minimal impacts of COVID-19 than that of community and government-managed forests; (3) wild boar (Sus scrofa), different species of deer, and birds have been more impacted than other wild animals; (4) the price of the timber has increased significantly whereas the price of non-timber forests products (NTFPs) has decreased; and (5) illegal logging and poaching have increased but the incidence of forest encroachment has been reduced. Our study further reveals that agroforestry practices in home gardens, borrowing money from neighbors/banks/landlords and liquidating livestock remained key alternatives for smallholders during COVID-19. Many studies reported that reverse migration could create chaos in Nepal, but our study suggests that it may enhance rural innovation and productivity, as returnees may use their acquired knowledge and skills to develop new opportunities. As COVID-19 has created a war-like situation worldwide, Nepal should come up with a forward-looking fiscal response with alternative income generation packages to local living to counter the impacts of COVID-19 on the forestry sector. One of the options could be implementing similar programs to that of India's US$ 800 Compensatory Afforestation Program and Pakistan's 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Program, which will create a win-win situation, i.e., generate employment for reverse migrants and promotes forest restoration.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022Land-use competition between forest conservation and agricultural food production poses major threats to climate change mitigation and food security. Land sparing policies aim at reconciling this conundrum by intensifying agriculture while conserving forests, but scientific debates prevail about their effectiveness. To contribute to this debate, we analyze the discursive dimension of land sparing efforts and their biophysical implications for Lao PDR. Applying an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach, we examine how Lao land-use policies legitimize land sparing at the cost of shifting cultivation and how land use changed between 2000 and 2019. We quantify ecosystem carbon fluxes and agricultural emissions and investigate trends in agricultural production and food security. We find that policy documents use both socio-economic and environmental arguments to substantiate land sparing at the expense of shifting cultivation. In biophysical terms, the stabilization of shifting cultivation enhanced the recovery of some forest areas resulting in gross carbon sequestration while ecosystems in total remained a net source of emissions. Concomitant agricultural intensification improved dietary energy supply, reduced the prevalence of undernourishment, and increased agricultural exports. However, cropland expansion and the intensification of agriculture entailed greenhouse gas emissions of similar extent as the continuing shifting cultivation, and could not prevent the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the total population until today. We conclude that the narrow focus of land-use policies on land sparing falls short in effectively balancing societal needs and ecosystem functions.
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