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101. Stopping Deforestation: What Works and What Doesn't

Author:
Jonah Busch and Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
A new Center for Global Development meta-analysis of 117 studies has identified the key factors that drive or deter deforestation. Some findings confirm conventional wisdom. Building roads and expanding agriculture in forested areas, for example, worsen deforestation, whereas protected areas deter deforestation. Encouragingly, payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs that compensate people who live in or near forests for maintaining them are consistently associated with lower rates of deforestation. But contrary to popular belief, poverty is not associated with greater deforestation, and the rising incomes brought about by economic growth do not, in themselves, lead to less deforestation. Community forest management and strengthening land tenure, often thought to reduce deforestation while promoting development, have no consistent impact on deforestation.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Environment, and Poverty

102. CHINA’S GLOBAL AGRICULTURAL STRATEGY: AN OPEN SYSTEM TO SAFEGUARD THE COUNTRY’S FOOD SECURITY

Author:
Cheng Guoqiang and Zhang Hongzhou
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
Abstract:
National food security will continue to be the top strategic issue confronting Chinese policymakers. In the next two decades of rapid income growth, China‟s total demand for agricultural products will increase in the face of diminishing water and land resources, and the task of feeding the 1.3 billion Chinese people will be even more challenging. The authors suggest that a global agricultural strategy is the strategic choice for China because it enables China to safeguard national food security and at the same time, tackle its rising domestic demand for agricultural resources in the face of environmental pressures.
Topic:
Agriculture, Environment, Water, Food, and Food Security
Political Geography:
China and Asia

103. Impacto De La Roya Del Café

Author:
Alberto Vargas
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Muchas de las comunidades de El Salvador tienen una baja resiliencia (su capacidad de enfrentar y recuperarse de los efectos de los desastres es muy limitada). Existen comunidades que a causa del cambio climático están enfrentando diversos eventos cada uno o dos años.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Health, Human Welfare, and Food
Political Geography:
South America

104. Fertilizing Growth: Agricultural Inputs and Their Effects in Economic Development

Author:
John McArthur and Gordon C. McCord
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
This paper uses cross-country panel data to estimate the agronomic inputs that lead to cereal yield improvements and the consequences for developing countries' processes of structural change. The results suggest a clear role for fertilizer, modern seeds and water in boosting yields. It then estimates empirical links in developing economies between increased agricultural yields and economic growth; in particular, the spillover effect from yield growth to declines of labor share in agriculture and increases of non-agricultural value added per capita. The identification strategy for the effect of fertilizer includes a novel instrumental variable that exploits variation in global fertilizer price, interacted with the inverse distance between each country's agriculturally weighted centroid and the nearest nitrogen fertilizer production facility. Results suggest that a half ton increase in staple yields (equal to the within-country standard deviation) generates a 13 to 20 percent higher GDP per capita, a 3.3 to 3.9 percentage point lower labor share in agriculture five years later, and approximately 20 percent higher non-agricultural value added per worker a decade later. The results suggest a strong role for agricultural productivity as a driver of structural change.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, and Labor Issues

105. Understanding Mandis: Market Towns and the Dynamics of India's Rural and Urban Transformations

Author:
Devesh Kapur and Mekhala Krishnamurthy
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
Mandis or physical, primary agricultural markets are old and ubiquitous institutions of economic life in many parts of India. Wherever they form, they are usually dense sites of economic, social and political activity, connecting and shaping the relations between town and countryside, and between local markets for commodities and larger, national and global circuits of capital and commerce. According to available estimates, there are over 7500 regulated agricultural markets in India today, operating under different state level acts covering a huge variety of notified agricultural produce.
Topic:
Agriculture, Emerging Markets, and Food
Political Geography:
India and Asia

106. Climate and Environmental Change: Views from Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility

Author:
Alexandra Wanjiku Kelbert
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
How are rapid recent food price changes linked to climate and environmental change? How do people who are vulnerable to these changes view these links? This note explores the views of people living on low and precarious incomes on these connections, based on research designed to explore experiences of food price volatility in 2012, through qualitative research in 23 research sites in 10 countries. The research was not specifically designed to study perceptions of climate and environmental change; these views are collected here because they offer interesting, relatively unmediated insights into how people perceive the causal connections between their food security and environment across varied social and ecological settings.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Economics, and Food

107. Gender equality and land administration: the case of Zambia

Author:
Rachel Spichiger and Edna Kabala
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Land, and in particular agricultural land, is central to livelhoods in rural Zambia. Zambia is characterised by a dual legal system of customary and statutory law and by dual land tenure, with state land and customary land. A first wave of socialist-oriented reforms took place after independence in 1964, which abolished previously existing freehold land in favour of leasehold. Subsequent changes in government policies under the influence of structural adjustment programmes and a new government in 1991 paved the way for a market-driven land reform. The 1995 Lands Act introduced the privatization of land in Zambia and provided for the conversion of customary into state land, with the hope of attracting investors. However, the Act has been unevenly implemented, at least in rural areas, in part due to problems plaguing the land administration institutions and their work, in part due to opposition to the main tenets of the Act from chiefs, the population and civil society. Civil society, with donor support, calls for more attention towards women's precarious situations with regard to access to and ownership of land under customary tenure, but it still expresses a desire for customary tenure to remain. However, civil society also recognizes that customary practices are often also discriminatory towards women who depend on male relatives for access to land.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Gender Issues, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Africa

108. Gender Equality Concerns in Ghana's Land Reform: Current challenges and the role of donors

Author:
Rachel Spichiger and Paul Stacey
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Ghana has been implementing a land administration reform since 1999. The Land Administration Project (LAP), an ambitious programme supported by donors, aims to strenghten land administration institutions and increase land holders' security of tenure on both state and customary land. This working paper reviews the literature on this land reform process, with a focus on issues related to gender. At first absent from the 1999 Land Policy, gender concerns were later incorporated into the project and a gender strategy was developed in 2009, with the goal to mainstream gender in land-related agencies and activities. Although donors have contributed to the gender strategy, the inclusion of gender equality has not been at the forefront of their priorities.
Topic:
Agriculture, Gender Issues, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa

109. Water Pressures in Central Asia

Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Water has long been a major cause of conflict in Central Asia. Two states – Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – have a surplus; the other three say they do not get their share from the region's great rivers, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya, which slice across it from the Tien Shan, Pamir Mountains, and the Hindu Kush to the Aral Sea's remains. Pressures are mounting, especially in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The population in Central Asia has increased by almost ten million since 2000, and limited arable land is being depleted by over-use and outdated farming methods. Extensive corruption and failing infrastructure take further toll, while climate change is likely to have long-term negative consequences. As economies become weaker and states more fragile, heightened nationalism, border disputes, and regional tensions complicate the search for a mutually acceptable solution to the region's water needs. A new approach that addresses water and related issues through an interlocking set of individually more modest bilateral agreements instead of the chimera of a single comprehensive one is urgently needed.
Topic:
Agriculture, Treaties and Agreements, Bilateral Relations, Natural Resources, and Water
Political Geography:
Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan

110. Self-Selection into Credit Markets: Evidence from Agriculture in Mali

Author:
Dean Karlan, Bram Thuysbaert, Christopher Udry, and Lori Beaman
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
We partnered with a micro-lender in Mali to randomize credit offers at the village level. Then, in no-loan control villages, we gave cash grants to randomly selected households. These grants led to higher agricultural investments and profits, thus showing that liquidity constraints bind with respect to agricultural investment. In loan-villages, we gave grants to a random subset of farmers who (endogenously) did not borrow. These farmers have lower – in fact zero – marginal returns to the grants. Thus we find important heterogeneity in returns to investment and strong evidence that farmers with higher marginal returns to investment self-select into lending programs.
Topic:
Agriculture and Economics
Political Geography:
Africa