The economics of adoption and management of alley cropping in Haiti

The Haitian people are facing serious problems of environmental degradation that threaten the economic livelihoods of many resource-poor farmers. Structures to retard the process of soil loss have been adopted reluctantly and, even when adopted, the management and maintenance have been less than desirable. We evaluate the factors that influence the adoption and management of alley cropping in Haiti. Results of the adoption model show that institutional factors, such as membership in a local peasant organization and training in soil conservation practices, favorably influence adoption. Socio-economic factors such as gender, per capita income, and interaction between education and per capita income also significantly influence adoption of alley cropping in Gaita and Bannate. The management of alley cropping is influenced by demographic, socio-economic, institutional, and physical factors. The relative importance of each factor on the probability of adoption and management of alley cropping varies from one variable to another. The study generates important information for resource allocation in the establishment of alley cropping as a soil conservation structure.     

林火管理经济学的研究与探讨——多种防火要素投入的最佳组合

用经济学的观点分析了多种防火要素投入时的等减灾效益与等成本曲线,研究了多种防火要素之间的相互替代与边际替代率问题,提出了多种防火要素投入时最佳组合的判据。     

西部生态环境现状的经济学分析

西部生态环境的恶化是一个人与自然叠加影响的历史过程，但人为对生态环境的影响却越来越大。本文试图从产权、、收入和寻租理论等方面来分析问题的根源，并提出了建立对策。     

The politics of disaster - Nicaragua

The occurrence of natural disasters, such as floods and earthquakes, are, in themselves, beyond oar control. However, careful preparation before such events, and the correct management of the problem once it occurs, can both lead to major redaction of the suffering involved.
Disaster preparation and emergency planning are both inextricably linked to politics and economics, both on a national and an international scale. Disasters themselves raise a number of issues of a political or economic nature, and die response to a natural disaster both in the short and the long term is largely determined by the political relations within a country, and between that country and the international community.
This paper examines these issues by taking the examples of the earthquake of Managua, Nicaragua in 1972 and the flooding that occurred in Nicaragua in 1982. These two natural disasters occurred under different administrations in Nicaragua, and tills allows some interesting comparisons.     

Neoliberal Style,the American Re-Generation,and Ecological Jeremiad in Thomas Friedman's “Code Green”

Emerging popular literature trumpeting the prospects for Manifest Destiny through a greener capitalism illustrates the re-emergence of American myth to explain chaotic times and uphold America's exceptional character. Today, this character is dominated ideologically by the rhetorical repertoire of neoliberal economics. In this essay, the author dissects neoliberal rhetorical style as articulated through national myth and ecological jeremiad in bestselling author Thomas Friedman's (2008) “Code Green” thesis. In Code Green, an American strategy for confronting the convergence of global warming, new economic competition abroad, and population growth, the author traces a mythic “evolution” in ecological jeremiad toward a sustainable free market frontier. Crafting a muscular yet ostensibly non-political rhetoric of individualist sacrifice and reward, Friedman refigures the dark side of Western-led globalization's past.     

A heuristic for setting effective standards to ensure global environmental sustainability

Most environmental professionals and decision-makers, and certainly the public at large, hold the view that the integrity of earth’s natural environment will be conserved for posterity and sustainable development achieved if all the nations rigorously enforced their environmental and emission standards. It is argued in this paper that this view, sincerely held by many as an “axiomatic truth,” is mistaken and misplaced. This is because as a biogeochemical entity the Earth has limited self-regenerative capacity (SRC) to cope with anthropogenic pollution, and all kinds of environmental problems ensue when that limit is exceeded. Indeed, mounting environmental problems now occurring on all fronts amply testify to the fact that the limit has already been exceeded. They also provide necessary and sufficient proof that environmental and emission standards have been woefully inadequate for protecting earth’s natural environment and life-support systems. It is argued that true global environmental sustainability will be achieved, paving the way to true global sustainable development, if and only if global environmental and emission standards are set so that global anthropogenic pollution does not exceed the limit of earth’s natural SRC to cope with such pollution. These and related issues are discussed in this paper. A simple mathematical model using basic mathematics is also presented to explain how the phenomenon of “positive feedback” works in some of the environmental problems to exacerbate environmental degradation and progressively to erode nature’s SRC.

Farm-level irrigation and the marginal cost of water use: evidence from Georgia

We create a proxy for the cost of irrigation water in Georgia from a sample of Georgia irrigators by investigating the marginal cost of pumping groundwater. We then combine this proxy with agronomic and climatic variables to estimate the response of agricultural water use to differences in the marginal cost of irrigation. The results show that pumping costs are a significant determinant of water use, and imply that agricultural water use would be moderately affected by institutional changes that would explicitly price water.     

Environmental & economic life cycle assessment of current & future sewage sludge to energy technologies

The UK Water Industry currently generates approximately 800 GW h pa of electrical energy from sewage sludge. Traditionally energy recovery from sewage sludge features Anaerobic Digestion (AD) with biogas utilisation in combined heat and power (CHP) systems. However, the industry is evolving and a number of developments that extract more energy from sludge are either being implemented or are nearing full scale demonstration. This study compared five technology configurations: 1 – conventional AD with CHP, 2 – Thermal Hydrolysis Process (THP) AD with CHP, 3 – THP AD with bio-methane grid injection, 4 – THP AD with CHP followed by drying of digested sludge for solid fuel production, 5 – THP AD followed by drying, pyrolysis of the digested sludge and use of the both the biogas and the pyrolysis gas in a CHP.The economic and environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) found that both the post AD drying options performed well but the option used to create a solid fuel to displace coal (configuration 4) was the most sustainable solution economically and environmentally, closely followed by the pyrolysis configuration (5). Application of THP improves the financial and environmental performance compared with conventional AD. Producing bio-methane for grid injection (configuration 3) is attractive financially but has the worst environmental impact of all the scenarios, suggesting that the current UK financial incentive policy for bio-methane is not driving best environmental practice. It is clear that new and improving processes and technologies are enabling significant opportunities for further energy recovery from sludge; LCA provides tools for determining the best overall options for particular situations and allows innovation resources and investment to be focused accordingly.     

The On-Ranch Economics of Riparian Zone Cattle Grazing Management

A simulation model of a cattle ranch based in southern Alberta, Canada was developed to evaluate the on-ranch economics of adopting different grazing management strategies to improve riparian grazing capacity in natural grass rangeland. Under low-cost scenarios, there are positive economic incentives to adopt strategies to maintain riparian zones that already have high grazing capacity. However, riparian zones that have declined to moderate or low grazing capacity may require additional economic incentives to encourage ranches to adopt more costly management strategies to improve the grazing capacity. The economic incentives to adopt costly management strategies are highly sensitive to the size and shape of the riparian zone and rates of grazing capacity decline or improvement.