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21. Drought-Management Considerations for Climate-Change Adaptation: Focus on the Mekong Region

Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
During recent years, drought has become a common occurrence in most areas in the Mekong River Delta of the Mekong region, including nine provinces in the Southern Central and Central Highland regions in Viet Nam. The Department of Water Resources, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), has estimated that between 1 and 1.3 million people (13–17 per cent of the total population) are affected by drought in these provinces and hence are in need of assistance. Ninh Thuan province is the worst affected of these provinces.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, and Environment
Political Geography:
China, Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar

22. Oxfam submission to the House of Commons International Development Committee inquiry 'Development Assistance in Insecure Environments: Afghanistan'

Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
This paper outlines urgent action necessary to address immediate challenges in Afghanistan and to avert humanitarian disaster. It does not see k to address all issues of concern but focuses on essential policy change in development and human itarian spheres.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, and Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Asia

23. Aiding Transparency: What We Can Learn About China Exim Bank's Concessional Loans

Author:
Paul Hubbard
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The Chinese government, through the China Exim Bank, is pledging billions of dollars worth of concessional lending to the developing world. More information on these lending practices can be gleaned from Chinese language sources than is readily available in English. However, this material is insufficient to draw more than tentative conclusions about the real nature and scope of China's concessional lending. Over 48 countries have agreements with China for concessional loans. An average loan of US$20-30 million is made available to Chinese exporting firms to develop infrastructure and facilities in developing countries. While these loan sizes are not huge when compared to other aid flows, China's status as the dominant lender of concessional loans amongst some recipients makes this program significant. Finally, it is still not clear if the loans could be considered Official Development Assistance according to the DAC definition.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China and Asia

24. Managing Pest Resistance in Fragmented Farms: An Analysis of the Risk of Bt Cotton in China and its Zero Refuge Strategy and Beyond

Author:
Fangbin Qiao, Jim Wilen, and Jikun Huang
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The goal of this study is to discuss why China and perhaps other developing countries may not need a refuge policy for Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton. We describe in detail the different elements that a nation—especially a developing one—should be considering when deciding if a refuge policy is needed. Drawing on a review of scientific data, economic analysis of other cases and a simulation exercise using a bio-economic model that we have produced to examine this question, we show that in the case of Bt cotton in China, the approach of not requiring special cotton refuges is defensible.
Topic:
Agriculture and Economics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

25. When Dragons and Kangaroos Trade: China's Rapid Economic Growth and Its Implications for China and Australia

Author:
Jikun Huang, Jun Yang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
China's economy has experienced remarkable growth since economic reforms were initiated in the late 1970s and pushed forward by a number of complementary policies. Since the mid-1980s, rural township and village-owned enterprises (TVEs) development; measures to provide a better market environment through domestic market reform; fiscal and financial expansions; the devaluation of exchange rate; trade liberalisation; the expansion of special economic zones to attract foreign direct investment (FDI); the state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform; agricultural market liberalisation, and many other reforms have all contributed to China's economic growth. In response, the annual growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) was about nearly 10% in 1979–2004 (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2005).
Topic:
Agriculture and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China, Asia, Australia, and Australia/Pacific

26. The Role of Agriculture in China's Development: Past Failures, Present Successes and Future Challenges

Author:
Jikun Huang, Keijiro Otsuka, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The view toward agricultural and rural development in the modern world has changed dramatically in the past several decades. Traditionally, agriculture was thought of an inferior partner in development. Since the size of the sector falls during development, it was logically considered that it could be ignored. Why is that leaders would ever want to invest in a sector that shrinking? Some academics urged policy makers to treat agriculture like a black box from which resources could be costlessly extracted (Lewis, 1954). All investment was supposed to be targeted at the industry and the cities. As a low productivity sector, it did not deserve investment.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

27. Irrigation Water Pricing Policy in China

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Richard Howitt, and Jinxia Wang
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
As water becomes scarcer in northern China, designing policies that can induce water users to save water has become one of the most important tasks facing China's leader. Past water policies may not be a solution for the water scarcity problem in the long run. This paper looks at a new water policy: increasing water prices so as to provide water users with direct incentives to save water. Using a methodology that allows us to incorporate the resource constraints, we are able to recover the true price of water with a set of plot level data. Our results show that farmers are quite responsive if the correct price signal is used, unlike estimates of price elasticities that are based on traditional methods. Our estimation results show that water is severely under priced in our sample areas in China. As a result, water users are not likely to respond to increases in water prices. Thus as the first step to establishing an effective water pricing policy, policy makers must increase water price to the level of VMP so that water price reflects the true value of water, the correct price signal. Increases in water prices once they are set at the level of VMP, however, can lead to significant water savings. However, our analysis also shows that higher water prices also affect other aspects of the rural sector. Higher irrigation costs will lower the production of all crops, in general, and that of grain crops, in particular. Furthermore, when facing higher irrigation costs, households suffer income losses. Crop income distribution also worsens with increases in water prices.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, and Environment
Political Geography:
China and Asia

28. Water User Associations and the Evolution and Determinants of Management Reform: A Representative Look at Northern China

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Increasing demand for China's limited water resources (across China, but mostly in northern China) from rapidly growing industry, urban populations and agriculture implies potentially dire consequences for the sustainability of water use and drastic changes in cultivation patterns (Zhang, 2001). Problems in the water sector also have significant implications for China's future trade position in key crops and may affect the income of the farming sector (Huang et al., 1999).
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

29. Why Did the Communist Party Reform in China, But Not in the Soviet Union? The Political Economy of Agricultural Transition

Author:
Johan Swinnen and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The dramatic transition from Communism to market economies across Asia and Europe started in the Chinese countryside in the 1970s. Since then more than a billion of people, many of them very poor, have been affected by radical reforms in agriculture. However, there are enormous differences in the reform strategies that countries have chosen. This paper presents a set of arguments to explain why countries have chosen different reform policies.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

30. Information, Incentives and Institutions: Experimenting with Private-Public Partnerships to Link the Poor with Modern Supply Chains

Author:
Jikun Huang, Johan Swinnen, Marcel Fafchamps, Tom Reardon, Bart Minten, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
To lift more than 10,000 farmers directly out of poverty by developing new Best-Practice Models for linking the poor to modern supply chains and after scaling up by our private and public partners to lift more than 1 million farmers out of poverty.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Non-Governmental Organization, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa, China, India, Asia, Senegal, and Madagascar