316. Resources for agri-environmental schemes
I’ve been asked to present a talk in Ireland in two weeks, on the topic “The Design of Effective Agri-Environment Schemes”. In putting the talk together, it struck me that I (with help from colleagues) have developed quite a few resources in this space, so I’ve collected them on a new web site to make them easily accessible.
Agri-environmental schemes (or programs or policies) aim to reduce the adverse impacts of agriculture on the environment. There are many such schemes around the world, but often they are not very efficient or effective. We could often do a lot better if we did a smarter job of designing and implementing these schemes.
Not that it’s easy. There are so many aspects to consider: the effectiveness of different practices at reducing environmental damage, their attractiveness (or otherwise) to farmers, the mechanisms to be used to promote the best practices, the costs and risks of different approaches, which environmental issues are the priorities, and so on. In my view, most designers of agri-environmental schemes don’t appreciate what a difficult task they are trying to do, and make do with relatively quick and dirty approaches to the design.
The resources I’ve included on the web site address a wide range of relevant issues, including:
- Lessons from past agri-environmental schemes
- The selection of appropriate policy mechanisms
- Measuring environmental values
- Ranking projects, including the choice of an appropriate metric
- Additionality
- Understanding and predicting farmers’ adoption of new practices
- Dealing with uncertainty and including systems for learning from experience
- The need to pull off that together in a coherent framework
It includes journal articles, books, reports, frameworks, computer tools, web sites, and blog posts, plus links to my free online course on “Agriculture, Economics and Nature”.
Overall, if an organisation wanted to design and deliver an agri-environmental scheme that would really deliver outcomes, they could benefit greatly from the material on this site. The URL is www.resources4aes.net.
Further reading
Pannell, D.J. (2008). Public benefits, private benefits, and policy intervention for land-use change for environmental benefits, Land Economics 84(2): 225-240. Full paper (140K) * IDEAS page
Thoroughly agree with your assessment that most designers of agri-environmental schemes don’t appreciate what a difficult task they are trying to do, and make do with relatively quick and dirty approaches to the design.
One contributor to the general failings of such programs is a failure to identify who will be the beneficiaries of the outcomes sought. That, of course, assumes that the outcomes sought are actually identified and identified in terms that can be measured and reported (and recent history in Oz gives me no comfort on this score).
In most cases, the design beneficiaries will probably be the general public, yet the land manager will be expected to absorb most of the non-financial costs and indeed many of the financial costs…