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Abstract The viability of climate adaptation strategies adopted by agrifood companies rely heavily on how well consumers understand, accept and/or select commodities and their willingness to bare some of the cost of adaptation. To understand this issue in more detail, a survey was undertaken of 1532 Australian consumers to investigate how they respond to adaptation strategies in terms of acceptance and willingness to pay. The survey results contained in this paper focus on three product categories – mango, potato chips and wine. The survey revealed that when faced with climate-adapted mango, potato chips or wine products, respondents were most likely to substitute or purchase less often rather than purchasing a more expensive ‘adapted’ product or a cheaper ‘non-adapted’ product. Across the three commodities, the level of acceptance also varied little with socio-demographic factors and the respondent's perceptions of climate change. The study highlights the importance of communicating the climate adaptation initiatives of agrifood companies and the challenges faced by these companies in raising the awareness associated with climate-adapted product. Highlights • Consumer value for climate-adapted food products is multi-dimensional • Consumers' willingness to pay varies across product categories • Consumers are not yet ready to pay extra for a more expensive ‘adapted’ product • Consumer place more value on being informed of adaptation strategies • Information could act as a catalyst in changing consumer behaviour [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental issues are becoming more urgent. Biodiversity loss, climate change, extreme events and global pressures on resources place increasing importance on decision making about how natural resources should be managed. Natural capital accounting (NCA) is gaining popularity as a systematic approach to recognise the full value of natural resources such as soil, vegetation, animals, water, and biodiversity. To understand perceptions and opportunities for awareness and behaviour change relating to the use of NCA, we conducted a discourse analysis of 57 interviews with stakeholders across Australia. Our aim is to promote discussion and reflection about perceptions of natural resources as forms of capital, and the role of NCA to underpin management practice change and support sustainability. We identify four key areas of contestation that relate to values, complexity, digital technology, and the desired future vision of NCA in society. Findings include conflicting views around whether NCA should have a diversity of tailored approaches or a consistent approach for all and that digital technology has and will continue to shape the way NCA is conducted. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to take a discourse analysis approach to perceptions of natural capital accounting. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments worldwide have implemented climate change mitigation policies that aim to encourage abatement by changing agricultural practices. In Australia, farmers can gain carbon credits for sequestering carbon or reducing emissions. In addition to mitigation, these ‘carbon farming’ activities often generate ancillary (co-)benefits, such as creating native habitat or preventing erosion. This paper presents results of an Australia-wide choice experiment, conducted to estimate community values for climate change mitigation and the cobenefits of carbon farming. Values for carbon farming benefits are shown to depend on respondent's opinions about climate change. Respondents who do not believe that climate change is happening have a lower willingness to pay for reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions than people who believe climate change is (at least partly) caused by human actions. On average, respondents were willing to pay $1.13/Mt of CO 2 -e reduction. Respondents were willing to pay around $19/ha increase in the area of native vegetation on farmland. Value estimates for reducing soil erosion were not significant. Our results demonstrate that the community benefits from carbon farming extend beyond their effects on climate change mitigation. Future policies should take these positive values for cobenefits into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key challenge for biosecurity decision-making is how best to allocate scarce resources across multiple environmental assets. The allocation of funds for the best return from investment requires a careful assessment of expected return and uncertainty. In this paper, we applied a portfolio theory-based decision support tool that helps determine resource allocation in a way that maximizes expected return and minimizes uncertainty. Our framework offers three advancements to the literature. First, it helps in making resource allocation decisions across multiple pests that affect multiple environmental assets. Second, it incorporates multiple sources of uncertainty in the decision analysis including economic value uncertainty. Finally, it demonstrates a generic approach to design a choice experiment study to estimate monetary values of a broad group of environmental assets. We find that a portfolio-based framework applied in conjunction with a choice experiment study can be a useful tool to guide biosecurity resource allocation decisions. Our results show that disregarding value uncertainty may cause bias by underestimating true uncertainty in the opportunity set. The choice experiment study revealed substantial positive non-market values generated by environmental biosecurity in Australia. However, significant preference heterogeneity across respondents with regards to different biosecurity outcomes was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]