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In this paper we apply an agent-based modelling approach to improve our understanding of how government payments to enhance public values in social-ecological systems can contribute to the resilience of the system. As a system we take a rural area with high quality nature including farmers managing this area. These farmers make the decision either to produce milk for the world market or bring their land under the agri-environment scheme, which is supposed to enhance biodiversity at landscape level. We explore how farmers respond to introducing a flexible compensatory payment related to the degree to which AES parcels contribute to the spatial coherence of the local network of nature areas. We use this characteristic of the location of AES parcels as a proxy for higher species diversity. We also explore how farmers respond to increased volatility in output prices, which we consider as an example of a large scale disturbance with a potentially major implication on the spatial conditions of the network of nature areas. We find that if payments are spatially conditioned, farmers bring fewer parcels under the AES, but with a higher contribution to the spatial conditions for species diversity. We also find that if the payments are spatially restricted, the AES parcels are less sensitive to fluctuations in output prices. Assuming that it takes several years for a parcel with conventional farming to increase biodiversity, we conclude that if the government introduces a spatial condition into the AES payment system, the social-ecological system that we have considered would increase in resilience, because the condition for biodiversity would become less sensitive to large scale disturbances due to increased price fluctuation on the world market.

The spatial configuration of agricultural systems is continuously changing in response to changes in demand for agricultural goods, changes in the level of competition between different land use activities, and progress in agricultural technology. This may lead to a change in the location of agricultural systems and consequently to a change in their average environmental characteristics. This paper explores the change in environmental characteristics of cropland (horticulture and field crops) over the years 1950, 1990 and 2000, for Western and Eastern Europe, using basic descriptive statistics. Underlying mechanisms are explored with logistic (interaction) regression analysis. We find that in both Eastern and Western Europe, crop cultivation shifted away from cities. In Western Europe cropland became situated on shallower soils, steeper slopes, and drier and less accessible areas. Probable reasons are that technical progress reduced the importance of traditional constraints such as drought, poor soils, and distance from markets, so that crop farmers were allowed to move to warm and sunny areas where potential productivity is highest. In addition, cropland probably lost some of its competitive power to grassland and nature. In Eastern Europe cropland concentrated on deeper soils and flatter terrain from 1990 onward. Here, the abandonment of the central planning system and a more flexible land market must have allowed a shift of cropland towards more suitable locations.

In Western-Europe, agricultural practices have contributed to environmental problems such as eutrophication of surface and ground water, flooding, drought and desiccation of surrounding natural habitats. Solutions that reduce the impact of these problems are urgently needed. Common reed (Phragmites australis) is capable of sanitizing surface water and may function as green energy source because of its high productivity. Here, the results of an experiment in a constructed wetland in the Netherlands are presented where two different sanitation treatments were compared. Depending on the residence time and volume per unit area, reed is capable to reduce the total amount of nitrogen in the water with average efficiencies from 32 to 47% and the total amount of phosphorous with 27–45%. Although biomass production still varies largely between different parts of the constructed wetland, a rapid increase in biomass was observed since planting. Constructed wetlands with reed provide opportunities to improve water quality and reed produces enough biomass to serve as green energy source. Moreover, these wetlands also function as a flood water reservoir and are possibly advantageous for biodiversity. The optimal moment of reed harvesting depends on the goal of the owner. This moment should be chosen wisely, as it may have consequences for reed filter regeneration, biomass production, biodiversity, methane emission and water sanitation efficiency.

International audience; Environmental pollution, animal diseases, and food scandals have marked the agricultural sector in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the 1990s. The sector was high on the political and societal agenda and plans were developed to redesign the sector into a more sustainable direction. Generally, monitoring of the agricultural sector is done by means of quantitative indicators to measure social, ecological, and economic performance. To give more attention to the normative character of sustainable development, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality requested for a participatory approach to evaluate Dutch agriculture, which was characterized by stakeholder workshops, dialogue, and learning. This article describes and reflects on this approach, using the Fourth Generation Evaluation framework developed by Guba and Lincoln (Fourth generation evaluation, 1989). Although there are several improvements to be made, the evaluation approach was successful in the way that it gave insight into perceptions, visions, and ambitions of agricultural stakeholders with regard to sustainability. It also encouraged learning about ways to make the agricultural sector more sustainable. And it contributed to the development of a monitoring approach that is complementary to the quantitative, indicator-based, evaluation approach that is generally used and that can be used every few years to see how perceptions and ambitions of stakeholders have developed.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse land allocation between competing agri-environmental contracts, taking into account institutional issues, the characteristics of the farm and farm household. Three types of agri-environmental contract are considered: a Biodiversity Protection Contract, a Landscape Management Contract and a Restriction on Intensive Practices Contract. The paper demonstrates that it is important to study the choices made between the different agri-environmental contracts. The reasons for this are that a unit of land can only be allocated to one contract (although the farm itself can choose to hold more than one contract) and the perceived relative marginal cost of a contract can change if the institutional setting, the farm household or the farm characteristics alter. The model uses a two-stage method. As a first stage, the probability of contract choice is determined. In the second stage these probabilities are linked to costs and the optimal contract choice is determined.

In many countries around the world impacts of climate change are assessed and adaptation options identified. We describe an approach for a qualitative and quantitative assessment of adaptation options to respond to climate change in the Netherlands. The study introduces an inventory and ranking of adaptation options based on stakeholder analysis and expert judgement, and presents some estimates of incremental costs and benefits. The qualitative assessment focuses on ranking and prioritisation of adaptation options. Options are selected and identified and discussed by stakeholders on the basis of a sectoral approach, and assessed with respect to their importance, urgency and other characteristics by experts. The preliminary quantitative assessment identifies incremental costs and benefits of adaptation options. Priority ranking based on a weighted sum of criteria reveals that in the Netherlands integrated nature and water management and risk based policies rank high, followed by policies aiming at ‘climate proof’ housing and infrastructure.

World wide, policymakers are looking for ways to use education and communication strategies to create a world that is more sustainable than the one currently in prospect. They often find themselves trapped between instrumental (behavior change) and emancipatory (human development) uses of such strategies. This study sheds light on this apparent divide by investigating four exemplary cases representing both orientations and mixes thereof. One outcome of the study is that EE policymakers but also EE professionals first need to reflect on the kind of change challenge that is at stake. Only then are they able to determine what kind of education, participation, communication, or mix thereof is most appropriate, what kinds of results can best be pursued, and what monitoring and evaluation system can best be employed.

We examine the impact of providing a 'no-choice' option in attribute-based valuation experiments. The aim of the experiment was to assess monetary values of cockle fishery management practices in the Dutch Wadden Sea for different stakeholder groups, namely Dutch citizens, local residents and tourists. The current policy debate about the management of the Wadden Sea stresses the fact that individual preferences with respect to cockle-fishery differ. The aim of this article is to analyse the individual preferences in a objective way. Special attention is given to the influence of including a 'no-choice option', which is analysed using a nested logit model. We test whether the full set of options can be considered as close substitutes. The estimation results show that the influence of including the no-choice option differs among the stakeholders considered.

This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to investigate the possibilities for improving the technical, economic and environmental performance of Dutch pig farms relative to currently applied technologies and relative to currently available but not yet applied technologies. First, the efficiency is computed relating observed pig farms to the current best practice frontier. This frontier is computed from a sample of observed pig farms, using DEA based on linear programming. Second, potential technological change is computed as the change of the frontier due to addition of virtual farms (based on technologies that are available but not applied in practice yet) to the dataset. It is found that the mean technical efficiency of farms is rather high relative to the currently available technologies. Overall technical performance increases slightly when new technologies are introduced. Environmental performance increases importantly when applying new technologies. In particular, the ammonia emissions can be reduced largely by utilising the up-to-date housing techniques.

Man-made wetlands are defined as commercial wetlands created by man and managed by profit-maximizing entrepreneurs. In the eastern part of the Netherlands near Haaksbergen a wetland of about 3 ha has been constructed by an entrepreneur. This wetland, called Waterpark het Lankheet, is constructed as a research project (Meerburg et al., 2010). It provides at least five different ecosystem services: (1) biomass production of reed (including capturing CO2), (2) water quality improvement of surface water by growing reed, (3) improvement of biodiversity in the surrounding area by preventing desiccation problems, (4) water storage in times of flood risk, and (5) recreation. Also, the Dutch government recognizes that wetlands form a promising innovative option to improve water quality in combination with other functions and prefers voluntary types of governance structures (Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, 2008). The main objective of this chapter is to investigate the economic potential of manmade wetlands. In the ecological economics literature, most wetland valuation studies refer to natural wetlands, managed by non-profit organizations or governments. In the case of commercial (man-made) wetlands, the entrepreneur focuses on ecosystem services that generate the highest private revenues. Ecosystem services such as biomass production and recreation can be characterized as private services that potentially can be sold on a market. If a market exists, these private services will have a market price that coordinates supply and demand. The revenues of these private services are included in the profit-maximization function of the entrepreneur.

Sensitivity to scales is one of the key challenges in environmental governance. Climate change, food production, energy supply, and natural resource management are examples of environmental challenges that stretch across scales and require action at multiple levels. Governance systems are typically ill-equipped for this task due to organisational and jurisdictional specialisation and short-term planning horizons. Further to this, scientific knowledge is fragmented along disciplinary lines and research traditions in academia and research institutions. State-of-the-art, Scale-Sensitive Governance of the Environment addresses these challenges by establishing the foundation for a new, trans-disciplinary research field. It brings together and reframes a variety of disciplinary approaches, using the idea of scales to create a conceptual and methodological basis for scale-sensitive governance of the environment from both a natural and social science perspective. This volume presents new visions, methods and innovative applications of thinking and decision making across scales in space and time to develop a holistic view on the subject. It is unique in providing: analysis on how spatial, temporal, and governance scales are constructed, politically and scientifically defined, institutionalized in governance practices, and strategically used in policy discourses details on how current environmental governance practices can be enriched by the use of theory on scale, with specific research themes to show the benefits of recognizing scales in empirical research, insightful case studies drawn from countries in the Americas, Eastern and Southern Africa, Europe, and South and Southeastern Asia, covering a wide range of environmental topics including biodiversity, climate change, commodities (tea and palm oil), cultural landscapes, energy, forestry, natural resource management, pesticides, urban development, and water management. With its comprehensive coverage of scale and scaling issues and convergence of widely different scientific approaches, this book is essential for environmental scientists, policy makers and planners, also conservation biologists and ecologists who are involved in modeling climate change impacts and sustainability. This reference will also benefit students of environmental studies, and all those who seek a response to the urgent environmental governance challenges for the decades ahead.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effects of weight-based pricing in the collection of household waste. Using a comprehensive panel data set on all households in a Dutch municipality we estimate short-run as well as long-run price effects for the amounts of both compostable and non-recyclable household waste. We find significant and sizeable price effects, with the elasticity for compostable waste being four times as large as the elasticity for non-recyclable waste. Long-run elasticities are about 30% larger than short-run elasticities. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

In this paper, we develop a method for spatial decision support that combines economic efficiency â¿¿ measured by the concept op willingness to pay â¿¿ with a participatory planning tool, that allows for an active collaboration among the actors involved, in such a way that decision makers can draw on the outcomes in their spatial planning and design process. The method is called RITAM, a Dutch acronym for spatially explicit, participatory and interdisciplinary trade-off method, and combines features of three different approaches to achieve an â¿¿optimalâ¿¿ landscape. These three approaches are (i) choice experiment approach; (ii) consumer versus citizen approach; and (iii) participatory approach. As such, RITAM can be seen as a valuation technique that makes explicit use of a participatory approach, in which people managing the landscape â¿¿ in particular the representatives of the different stakeholder groups that use the landscape for different purposes â¿¿ are engaged. We applied this new method to a case study in the Frisian Lake District (the Netherlands). The result give an indication of the spatial preferences of the population living in and around the area. Although future works is required, RITAM appears to be a suitable method for landscape planning and design processes, taken into account the preferences of the different organised interest groups in an area

International audience; Governance of the EU’s dairy sector changes will change as a result of the 2008 CAP reform. This chapter focuses on governance structures between dairy farms and milk processors and the role of the exchange of information. Information costs are an important category of transaction costs. To get insight in regional differences within the EU, literature research and interviews are conducted in three case study areas, namely: the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and France. Results show that in these countries both farmers and processors have incentives to form hybrid governance structures with a higher level of control compared to the current structures. Asymmetric information and the exchange of information play an important role in this contractual relation. Most dairy cooperatives have no additional advantage in managing milk quality and milk supply compared to investor owned firms. Chain integration could go a step further in Bulgaria compared to the Netherlands and France given the institutional environment that is not expected to guarantee milk quality and the focus on the export of milk.

Energy security has become a priority as the world’s population increases and its standard of living improves, thus increasing energy consumption. As the demand for energy increases, there is growing concern about the possible exhaustion of finite supplies of fossil fuels in the not-too-distant future. In addition to the problem of availability, combustion of fossil fuels also has negative environmental effects: air pollution (e.g. particulates, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide) produced through the combustion of fossil fuels, threatens human health as well as plant and animal life. Furthermore, the combustion of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, thus contributing to an increase in global temperature. These considerations lead to a search for alternative, renewable sources of energy, one of which is bioenergy.

This paper investigates the impact of tenure security and other factors on investment in soil and water conservation (SWC) in Kenya. Factor analysis, step-wise regression and reduced form model approaches are used to explain the willingness, likelihood and intensity of adoption of SWC investments. The results confirm the importance of tenure security and development domain dimensions in determining the likelihood and intensity of adoption and suggest that to ensure land tenure policy is pro-SWC/environment, it is important to consider whether household plots are owned, rented out or rented in. The impact of household assets implies a poverty environment link. Similar factors affect the decision whether or not to invest in SWC and also the level of investment. The results suggest the need for region specific SWC practices and for broad policies that provide incentives for environmental conservation and poverty reduction.

The area of leased land in The Netherlands has decreased from roughly50% of all agricultural land in 1966 to about 27% in 2005. In 1995, the Dutchgovernment introduced two new types of lease contracts in order to prevent the decline from continuing. The new types of lease contracts implied the possibility of transferring a smaller part of the bundle of property rights from landowner to tenant. However, the trend towards decreasing lease area did not stop. In 2007, a new reform was introduced implying, again, less restrictions on formal leasing (the so-called liberalised lease). According to contract theory, transferring fewer property rights from a landowner to a tenant-farmer will lead to an institutional change for land leasing. For policies regulating land leasing, it is therefore important to recognise the characteristics of contractual arrangements and the parties involved. In this paper we analyse contract choice using a Trivariate probit model and taking into account the type of landowner and farmer characteristics. Results show that an official contract is more likely to be chosen if public organisations are involved. In contrast, when farmers exchange land among themselves, they are more likely to use less explicit contracts in which trust and reputation play an important role for coordination.

Land use includes those human activities that exhibit a spatial dimension and that change the bio-geophysical conditions of land. Land use policy making at European level aims at fostering sustainability pathways of natural resource use and rural development through the decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation while supporting social cohesion in rural areas. Targeted policy making requires tools for the ex ante assessment of impacts of policy driven land use changes on sustainable development opportunities in European regions. These tools have to cover all relevant land use sectors and impact issues including their interrelations. They have to be spatially explicit, allow scenario analysis of possible future developments, be based on reproducible analyses, and be transparent and easy to use. The European Commission funded Integrated Project SENSOR is dedicated to develop such ex-ante Sustainability Impact Assessment Tools (SIAT) for land use in European regions. SIAT is designed as a meta modelling toolkit, in which global economic trend and policy scenarios are translated into land use changes at 1km2 grid resolution for the area of Europe. Based on qualitative and quantitative indicator analyses, impacts of simulated land use changes on social, environmental and economic sustainability issues are assessed at regional (NUTS2/3) scale. Valuation of these impacts is based on the concept of multifunctionality of land use. It is conducted through expert and stakeholder valuations leading to the determination of sustainability choice spaces for European regions. This paper presents the analytical approach in SENSOR and describes the impact assessment framework.

This paper presents a new method to assess the distribution of values of time, and values of statistical life, over participants to a stated choice experiment. The method does not require the researcher to make an a priori assumption on the type of distribution, as is required for example for mixed logit models. It requires a few assumptions to hold true, namely that the valuations to be determined are constant for each individual, and that respondents make choices according to their preferences. These assumptions allow the derivation of lower and upper bounds on the (cumulative) distribution of the values of interest over respondents, by deriving for each choice set the value(s) for which the respondent would be indifferent between the alternatives offered, and next deriving from the choice actually made the respondent's implied minimum or maximum value(s). We also provide an extension of the method that incorporates the possibility that errors are made. The method is illustrated using data from an experiment investigating the value of time and the value of statistical life. We discuss the possibility to improve the information content of stated choice experiments by optimizing the attribute levels shown to respondents, which is especially relevant because it would help in selecting the appropriate distribution for mixed logit estimates for the same data. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Developing nature areas generates various benefits for the economy. The main benefits concern growing incomes for the recreation sector (hotels, camping, restaurants, etc.), higher prices of houses, etc. In this study the costs and benefits of developing nature in a rural area in the south-east of the Netherlands have been analyzed.Our study revealed that effects for the regional economy are considerable. On the national level, however, these effects appear to be negligible. This is due to the fact that on an interregional level the effects largely balance each other out. Thus, nature development in a certain region will increase the number of visitors to that region, but at the expense of other regions. In other words, due to substitution effects the net interregional effect of nature development on recreational spending is negligible. This raises the question whether the national government should finance regional nature development

This study combines census, survey and bio-physical data to generate spatially disaggregated poverty/biomass information for rural Uganda. It makes a methodological contribution to small area welfare estimation by exploring how the inclusion of bio-physical information improves small area welfare estimates. By combining the generated poverty estimates with national bio-physical data, this study explores the contemporaneous correlation between poverty (welfare) and natural resource degradation at a level of geographic detail that has not been feasible previously. The resulting estimates of poverty measures were improved by the inclusion of bio-physical information and the poverty estimates appear to be more robust, as the standard errors show a decline of up to 40 percent in some cases. The coefficients of variation (i.e., the ratio of the standard error and the point estimate) decline in general as well. Overall, we conclude that the estimates of the poverty measures are more robust when bio-physical information is taken into account. One of the outputs of this study is a series of maps showing poverty and biomass overlays for Uganda. These maps can be used as a planning tool and for targeting purposes.

One of the main unresolved problems in policy making is the step from scale issues to effective governance. What is appropriate for a lower level, such as a region or location, might be considered undesirable at a global scale. Linking scaling to governance is an important issue for the improvement of current environmental management and policies. Whereas social-ecological science tends to focus on adaptive behavior and aspects of spatial ecological data, new institutional economics focuses more on levels in institutional scales and temporal dimensions. Consequently, both disciplines perceive different scaling challenges while aiming at a similar improvement of effective governance. We propose that future research needs to focus on four themes: (1) How to combine spatial properties such as extent and grain with the economic units of market and agent; (2) How to combine the different governance instruments proposed by both perspectives; (3) How to communicate the different scaling perspectives (hierarchy vs. no hierarchy) and meanings to policy makers and other stakeholders; and (4) How to deal with the non- equilibrium conditions in the real world and the disciplinary perspectives. Here, we hypothesize that a combined system perspective of both disciplines will improve our understanding of the missing link between scaling and governance.

"Commercial wetlands are defined as wetlands directed by an entrepreneur with the intention of making a profit. The combination of ecosystem services that commercial wetlands can provide seems to be an attractive societal perspective. Nevertheless, these wetlands are not developed on a large scale in the Netherlands. This paper discusses different types of economic governance that could facilitate the development of new commercial wetlands and addresses challenges that have to be overcome. We conclude that developing governance solutions that address ecosystem services with different scales is crucial for the introduction of commercial wetlands. Also, distinct and autonomous property rights of entrepreneurs need to be addressed."

Objective: Estimate levels of and identify factors contributing to child malnutrition in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: Rural communities from four zones of Tigray. Subjects: Three hundred and eighteen under five children representing 587 randomly selected households were included. Results: Among the children surveyed, 46.9%, 33.0% and 11.6% were stunted, underweight and wasted, respectively. Older children were more likely to be undernourished. Stunting increases from 16% in the second half of the first year to 53% in children 24 months and older. Similarly, underweight increases from 10% in the first six months to 36.5% in children aged 24 months and older. A very high proportion of the mothers (80%) initiated feeding of newborns with pre-lacteal feeds primarily butter or water. Family foods and cereal-based porridge were the main complementary foods after six months. Child age, maternal anthropometric characteristics, inadequate complementary foods, the use of prelacteal feeds and area of residence were the main contributing factors to child undernutrition. Conclusion: Undernutrition gets worse as the children grow older. The energy and nutrient density of the complementary foods are low as the foods were prepared from a limited number of local staple cereals without the addition of sugar, fat/oil or animal products. More importantly, these foods are diluted with water to reduce their viscosity. This makes the quality and quantity of the foods insufficient to prevent stunting and underweight. Promotion of traditional household technologies such as germination and fermentation may be affordable measures to improve the quality of the complementary foods. Thus, sustained nutrition education programmes focusing on appropriate complementary feeding practices are recommended.