Issue 14, November 2003

In This Issue

Editorial

In brief

* Economic evaluation of salinity management options * Water rights in Australia and overseas * Spring 2003 edition of Connections available * WA Landcare awards * Economist position available

Articles

* Rethinking community-based integrated catchment management

* Farm forestry, carbon sequestration credits and discount rates

* Effectively communicating economics to policy makers (part 1)

* Economic evaluation of phase-farming with lucerne on the Esperance sandplain

Coming events

Regular items

* Overview of SEA News

* Overview of the Economic and Social Assessment Subprogram of the CRC

* Publications available

Editorial

Welcome to issue 14 of SEA News. During its absence in the past year SEA News has undergone a few changes. Firstly, as the GRDC Sustainability and Economics (SEA) Project has come to an end, SEA News has been adopted by the Economic and Social Assessment subprogram of the CRC for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity. Secondly, after creating and doing a fabulous job as editor of SEA News, Dave Pannell has retired from the position. The editor's position has been jointly taken up by Felicity Flugge and Robyn Hean. And thirdly, as you will have already noticed, the SEA News website has had a facelift! Despite these changes, the content and concept of SEA News will remain the same. We will continue to cover a broad range of sustainability and economics issues for agriculture. Despite being sponsored by the Salinity CRC the scope of SEA News is not limited to salinity issues. More information about SEA News can be found here.

This issue of SEA News contains three articles presented at the 2003 AARES conference earlier this year, including the paper from David Pannell's keynote address, "Effectively communicating economics to policy makers". This paper will be presented in two parts; stay tuned for part two in the next issue of SEA News. Issue 14 also contains a paper by Michael O'Connell, which was presented at the International Farm Management Congress in August this year.

We hope you continue to enjoy SEA News. If you have any news or views, or any material you would like considered for inclusion in SEA News, please contact either of us at seanews@agric.wa.gov.au.

Felicity Flugge and Robyn Hean

In brief

A GRDC funded project "Economic evaluation of salinity management options for cropping regions of Australia" was completed in June. An overview of the report is available here (48KB). For a copy of the full report contact Ione Cooray icooray@agric.wa.gov.au

***

The Productivity Commission has recently released a report titled "Water rights arrangements in Australia and overseas". Further information and a copy of the report is available from the Productivity Commission website: http://www.pc.gov.au/research/crp/waterrights/index.html

***

The Spring 2003 edition of "Connections: food, farm and resource issues", produced by the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, is available on their website:

http://www.agric.uwa.edu.au/ARE/AARES/News/News.html

Congratulations to Associate Professor David Pannell, who recently received a WA Landcare Award at the State Landcare Conference held in Katanning, Western Australia during October. Dave received an individual award in the National Landcare Research category.

Geoscience Australia has an economist position vacant. Applications close 21st November. Details here

Articles

Rethinking community-based integrated catchment management by David Bennet "The direct effect  is that efficient, smaller interventions will be overlooked and more funds will be spent on schemes that will actually be less effective"

Government run Integrated Catchment Management (ICM) has been practised for a long time in harnessed catchments to supply fresh water to cities, to control nutrient accession by regulation in these and other catchments and to control floods in some catchments. But the ability of non-statutory or quasi-government organisations to resolve less tractable catchment problems, such as reductions in stream salinity or some forms of land degradation, is questioned. This is because the catchment is the wrong scale to solve some problems and the community is not always the right organisation to solve them. Involvement of catchment communities rapidly increases the costs of catchment planning, is likely to be a constraint on optimal catchment plans and may well retard catchment remediation measures and increase their cost. The catchment community is likely to be neither the main beneficiary nor the main funding agency. Nevertheless, involving the catchment community in resolving catchment problems reduces the likelihood of political backlash and can lead to better solutions due to local knowledge.

This paper discusses the limitations of community-based ICM and some examples of better-focussed ICM in Australia are offered. The full paper is available here (68KB).

Farm forestry, carbon sequestration credits and discount rates by Robyn Hean, Oscar Cacho and Ken Menz "There may only be a narrow band of discount rates for which carbon-sequestration credits provide landholders with an incentive to plant trees"

Carbon sequestration is an ancillary benefit of farm forestry, for which payments may provide landholders with an incentive to plant trees. Several approaches have been proposed for accounting for temporary carbon sequestration. This paper investigates the "ideal" accounting system, where the forest owner would be paid for carbon sequestration as the service is provided and redeem payments when the forest is harvested and carbon is released back into the atmosphere. The analysis demonstrates how discounting affects the net present value of the forest when carbon sequestration is taken into account under this ideal system. Since all carbon is not necessarily released back into the atmosphere at harvest, the analysis compares the profitability of the forest under full redemption of credits at harvest, with the profitability under partial redemption of credits at harvest followed by annual redemption post-harvest as the carbon in durable forest products decays. The full paper is available here (150KB).

Effectively communicating economics to policy makers (part 1) by David Pannell "The process of policy choice involves information, uncertainty, persuasion, disagreement, and networks of disparate individuals and groups"

Many economists are concerned with communicating the results of economic analysis or the implications of economic theory to policy makers. Our effectiveness in doing this varies widely for different individuals and different issues. This paper is an attempt to provide practical advice to enhance this effectiveness. It considers policy "adoption" in the light of literature about the adoption of innovations by farmers and evidence from social psychology about factors that enhance persuasiveness in communication. A small survey of policy makers and policy advisors was conducted. Results provide a number of practical tips and insights.

This paper will be presented in two parts. Part 1 is available here (79KB). Part 2 will be available in the next issue of SEA News

Economic evaluation of phase-farming with lucerne on the Esperance sandplain by Michael O'Connell "Lucerne appears promising within niches in the farming system"

Regular items

Overview of SEA News

SEA News is a newsletter on bioeconomic and social research on Sustainability and Economics in Agriculture. SEA News contains unpublished and working papers which focus on a wide range of sustainability and economic issues for agriculture. Issues covered include salinity, market-based instruments, adoption of innovations, greenhouse, ethics, policy and more. Through SEA News, we hope to introduce you to a large and diverse area of research which might otherwise escape your notice.

Overview of the Economic and Social Assessment Subprogram of the CRC

The Economic and Social Assessment subprogram of the CRC for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity aims to provide economic and social assessment of actual or potential plant-based systems for management of dryland salinity and of policies intended to promote salinity management. Research involves computer modelling, surveys, experimental economics, and analysis of a range of economic, social and bio-physical data. More information about the projects of the subprogram can be found on the CRC website:  http://www1.crcsalinity.com/pages/program05.asp.

Publications available

A full list of articles featured in this and previous issues of SEA News as well as articles not featured can be found using either the topic index or author index.

Copyright note: Some articles in SEA News have subsequently been submitted for publication in journals or books. SEA News contains pre-publication versions of these articles. They have not been subject to peer review, and copyright rests with the authors. When an article is formally published, the version on the SEA News web site is not updated to the published version, as this would violate copyright. However, the citation shown on the web page is updated to allow readers to identify the published version. Readers are encouraged to make use of the material present on the web site, provided that its source is acknowledged. Readers who wish to make direct quotes from an article in SEA News should not attribute the quote to a more formal (e.g. journal) published version of the paper without checking the published version, since the quote may have been altered or even omitted from the published version.