Government and non-government conservation agencies have long-term goals and objectives to provid... more Government and non-government conservation agencies have long-term goals and objectives to provide environmental services, such as conserving the biodiversity of Australian native vegetation. In addition to national parks and reserves, private lands are often included in conservation programs to achieve these objectives. Formal contracts are entered into between the private landholder and the conservation agency to provide environmental services, or more commonly to provide inputs that are likely to lead to environmental services. The paper examines the costs and benefits of monitoring these conservation contracts when biodiversity change is stochastic.
Contracting with private landholders for labor towards production of environmental services (paym... more Contracting with private landholders for labor towards production of environmental services (payment for actions) or the environmental services themselves (payment for outcomes) is reliant on the environmental organization's ability to monitor and assess the environmental outcomes provided. Inaccurate and costly assessment reduces the cost effectiveness of the contract. Different assessment technologies will have different impacts on the cost effectiveness and optimal contracting choice of the environmental organization. The paper compares the influence of field assessment by a local expert, and remote assessment via satellite imagery, on the optimal contracting decision for the Western Australian wheat belt.
Conservation and restoration of native vegetation is often a gradual process which may require ma... more Conservation and restoration of native vegetation is often a gradual process which may require many years to transform an ecosystem from one vegetative state to a target ecosystem. This process is stochastic, with some changes potentially irreversible. In contrast, contracts with landholders to undertake conservation measures on their property are typically for less than ten years and often make no contingencies for re-contracting at the end of the contract period. The risk to land holders and conservation agencies of contracts not being renewed and the consequent potential loss of previous investment means including covenants in conservation contracts may be attractive to both parties. A model is developed to empirically examine the optimal dynamic conservation contract and the possible role of covenants in the costs and benefits of contracts.
Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 1998
NELUP was a five-year academic research project into interdisciplinary river catchment modelling.... more NELUP was a five-year academic research project into interdisciplinary river catchment modelling. The experience of staff involved offers useful insights into the intellectual and practical problems associated with interdisciplinary catchment management research and the ...
Nitrate pollution is of importance in catchment planning from both a hydrological and ecological ... more Nitrate pollution is of importance in catchment planning from both a hydrological and ecological standpoint, but is, by its nature, difficult to monitor. Yet the design of "optimal" nitrate control policies requires knowledge of both the location of pollutant sources and the transport of ...
... This work was undertaken as part of the NERCESRC Land Use Pro amme. We acknowledge the assist... more ... This work was undertaken as part of the NERCESRC Land Use Pro amme. We acknowledge the assistance of Paul Allanson and Colin McClean on this paper. ... From (1) a benefit function can be defined (Xepapadeas, 1992) Bii(eij) = max Tij(qij,eij) = max [p qij - cij(qij,eii)] (2) ...
The paper analyses the differences of technical, allocative, cost and scale efficiencies of irrig... more The paper analyses the differences of technical, allocative, cost and scale efficiencies of irrigated and rain-fed rice farmers in Sri Lanka in two different perspectives; first, relative to a common metafrontier, defined as the boundary of an unrestricted technology set and second relative to group frontiers defined to be the boundaries of restricted technology sets in each group. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) metafrontier and group frontier approaches are used for cross section survey data of 90 farms. Rain-fed farms perform comparably with the irrigated farms based on the group frontier results. Rain-fed farmers may be operating as technically efficient as they could, given the existing production technology. However rain-fed farms move significantly towards inefficiency compared to the irrigated farms under the metafrontier technology. Results indicate that the irrigation shifts the rice sector production frontier to a higher level. In addition, a second stage bootstrapped tru...
Industrialization and urbanization, as a result of rapid economic development, have led to the de... more Industrialization and urbanization, as a result of rapid economic development, have led to the deterioration of water quality in many rivers in developing countries. The Kelani River in Sri Lanka provides drinking water to Colombo and a range of market and non-market ecosystem services; but these services are threatened by deteriorating water quality. We apply a hydro-economic model that accounts for spatial patterns of water quality and abatement cost variability between firms in the catchment. The hydro-economic model combines a hydrological model of water quality with an economic optimization model to determine a cost-effective policy under alternate policy regimes. These include: the existing policy based on effluent concentration standards, effluent trading and effluent trading with multiple zones and an effluent tax. Tradeable permits with multiple zones are the least cost policy option that accounts for both spatial externalities and abatement costs. However, given current in...
Environmental monitoring and assessment, Jan 19, 2017
Water quality of the Kelani River has become a critical issue in Sri Lanka due to the high cost o... more Water quality of the Kelani River has become a critical issue in Sri Lanka due to the high cost of maintaining drinking water standards and the market and non-market costs of deteriorating river ecosystem services. By integrating a catchment model with a river model of water quality, we developed a method to estimate the effect of pollution sources on ambient water quality. Using integrated model simulations, we estimate (1) the relative contribution from point (industrial and domestic) and non-point sources (river catchment) to river water quality and (2) pollutant transfer coefficients for zones along the lower section of the river. Transfer coefficients provide the basis for policy analyses in relation to the location of new industries and the setting of priorities for industrial pollution control. They also offer valuable information to design socially optimal economic policy to manage industrialized river catchments.
ABSTRACT Optimal dynamic regulation of mineral extraction and environmental rehabilitation across... more ABSTRACT Optimal dynamic regulation of mineral extraction and environmental rehabilitation across diverse land assets is studied using discrete-time, distributed optimal control. An extension of Hotelling's Rule is derived that indicates the need to manage both processes over space and time to maximise social welfare. Key empirical insights are drawn from a case study involving the Western Australian mineral sands industry. The incorporation of temporal and spatial dimensions allows for greater precision in the analysis of alternative management strategies. However, numerical analysis shows that optimal regulation may not require information-intensive tax instruments if abatement occurs in the year that land is damaged. Rather, a tax that is constant across time or space that provides a sufficient incentive for firms to rehabilitate degraded land can suffice. Bond instruments are shown unequivocally to provide too weak an incentive for timely rehabilitation by mining firms.
... Maligaya, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, 3119, Philippines 3Centre for Environmental Eco... more ... Maligaya, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, 3119, Philippines 3Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia 4Department of Economics, Waikato University, Private Bag 3109, Hamilton, New Zealand. ...
Government and non-government conservation agencies have long-term goals and objectives to provid... more Government and non-government conservation agencies have long-term goals and objectives to provide environmental services, such as conserving the biodiversity of Australian native vegetation. In addition to national parks and reserves, private lands are often included in conservation programs to achieve these objectives. Formal contracts are entered into between the private landholder and the conservation agency to provide environmental services, or more commonly to provide inputs that are likely to lead to environmental services. The paper examines the costs and benefits of monitoring these conservation contracts when biodiversity change is stochastic.
Contracting with private landholders for labor towards production of environmental services (paym... more Contracting with private landholders for labor towards production of environmental services (payment for actions) or the environmental services themselves (payment for outcomes) is reliant on the environmental organization's ability to monitor and assess the environmental outcomes provided. Inaccurate and costly assessment reduces the cost effectiveness of the contract. Different assessment technologies will have different impacts on the cost effectiveness and optimal contracting choice of the environmental organization. The paper compares the influence of field assessment by a local expert, and remote assessment via satellite imagery, on the optimal contracting decision for the Western Australian wheat belt.
Conservation and restoration of native vegetation is often a gradual process which may require ma... more Conservation and restoration of native vegetation is often a gradual process which may require many years to transform an ecosystem from one vegetative state to a target ecosystem. This process is stochastic, with some changes potentially irreversible. In contrast, contracts with landholders to undertake conservation measures on their property are typically for less than ten years and often make no contingencies for re-contracting at the end of the contract period. The risk to land holders and conservation agencies of contracts not being renewed and the consequent potential loss of previous investment means including covenants in conservation contracts may be attractive to both parties. A model is developed to empirically examine the optimal dynamic conservation contract and the possible role of covenants in the costs and benefits of contracts.
Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 1998
NELUP was a five-year academic research project into interdisciplinary river catchment modelling.... more NELUP was a five-year academic research project into interdisciplinary river catchment modelling. The experience of staff involved offers useful insights into the intellectual and practical problems associated with interdisciplinary catchment management research and the ...
Nitrate pollution is of importance in catchment planning from both a hydrological and ecological ... more Nitrate pollution is of importance in catchment planning from both a hydrological and ecological standpoint, but is, by its nature, difficult to monitor. Yet the design of "optimal" nitrate control policies requires knowledge of both the location of pollutant sources and the transport of ...
... This work was undertaken as part of the NERCESRC Land Use Pro amme. We acknowledge the assist... more ... This work was undertaken as part of the NERCESRC Land Use Pro amme. We acknowledge the assistance of Paul Allanson and Colin McClean on this paper. ... From (1) a benefit function can be defined (Xepapadeas, 1992) Bii(eij) = max Tij(qij,eij) = max [p qij - cij(qij,eii)] (2) ...
The paper analyses the differences of technical, allocative, cost and scale efficiencies of irrig... more The paper analyses the differences of technical, allocative, cost and scale efficiencies of irrigated and rain-fed rice farmers in Sri Lanka in two different perspectives; first, relative to a common metafrontier, defined as the boundary of an unrestricted technology set and second relative to group frontiers defined to be the boundaries of restricted technology sets in each group. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) metafrontier and group frontier approaches are used for cross section survey data of 90 farms. Rain-fed farms perform comparably with the irrigated farms based on the group frontier results. Rain-fed farmers may be operating as technically efficient as they could, given the existing production technology. However rain-fed farms move significantly towards inefficiency compared to the irrigated farms under the metafrontier technology. Results indicate that the irrigation shifts the rice sector production frontier to a higher level. In addition, a second stage bootstrapped tru...
Industrialization and urbanization, as a result of rapid economic development, have led to the de... more Industrialization and urbanization, as a result of rapid economic development, have led to the deterioration of water quality in many rivers in developing countries. The Kelani River in Sri Lanka provides drinking water to Colombo and a range of market and non-market ecosystem services; but these services are threatened by deteriorating water quality. We apply a hydro-economic model that accounts for spatial patterns of water quality and abatement cost variability between firms in the catchment. The hydro-economic model combines a hydrological model of water quality with an economic optimization model to determine a cost-effective policy under alternate policy regimes. These include: the existing policy based on effluent concentration standards, effluent trading and effluent trading with multiple zones and an effluent tax. Tradeable permits with multiple zones are the least cost policy option that accounts for both spatial externalities and abatement costs. However, given current in...
Environmental monitoring and assessment, Jan 19, 2017
Water quality of the Kelani River has become a critical issue in Sri Lanka due to the high cost o... more Water quality of the Kelani River has become a critical issue in Sri Lanka due to the high cost of maintaining drinking water standards and the market and non-market costs of deteriorating river ecosystem services. By integrating a catchment model with a river model of water quality, we developed a method to estimate the effect of pollution sources on ambient water quality. Using integrated model simulations, we estimate (1) the relative contribution from point (industrial and domestic) and non-point sources (river catchment) to river water quality and (2) pollutant transfer coefficients for zones along the lower section of the river. Transfer coefficients provide the basis for policy analyses in relation to the location of new industries and the setting of priorities for industrial pollution control. They also offer valuable information to design socially optimal economic policy to manage industrialized river catchments.
ABSTRACT Optimal dynamic regulation of mineral extraction and environmental rehabilitation across... more ABSTRACT Optimal dynamic regulation of mineral extraction and environmental rehabilitation across diverse land assets is studied using discrete-time, distributed optimal control. An extension of Hotelling's Rule is derived that indicates the need to manage both processes over space and time to maximise social welfare. Key empirical insights are drawn from a case study involving the Western Australian mineral sands industry. The incorporation of temporal and spatial dimensions allows for greater precision in the analysis of alternative management strategies. However, numerical analysis shows that optimal regulation may not require information-intensive tax instruments if abatement occurs in the year that land is damaged. Rather, a tax that is constant across time or space that provides a sufficient incentive for firms to rehabilitate degraded land can suffice. Bond instruments are shown unequivocally to provide too weak an incentive for timely rehabilitation by mining firms.
... Maligaya, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, 3119, Philippines 3Centre for Environmental Eco... more ... Maligaya, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, 3119, Philippines 3Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia 4Department of Economics, Waikato University, Private Bag 3109, Hamilton, New Zealand. ...
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