Browsing by Author "Zelek, C."

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    Assessing local and national policy options to promote sustainable upland farming in Southeast Asia: Insights from an economy-environment model of the Manupali Watershed
    Shively, Gerald E.; Zelek, C. (2001)
    Do the most promising policies to promote sustainable upland farming originate at the local or national level? Will coordination of local and national efforts produce better outcomes? Using a optimization-simulation model of the Manupali watershed in the Philippines we address these issues by comparing the economic and environmental effects of four sets of stylized policy changes: (1) local policies that restrict some forms of land use; (2) local attempts to subsidize environment-friendly technologies; (3) a crop-specific tax levied on vegetable producers; and (4) a hybrid approach that seeks to coordinate local technology initiatives with broader-based incentives rooted in pricing policy. We study the economic and environmental impacts of these stylized policy changes over a 10- year time horizon.
  • Carbon sequestration in a tropical landscape: An economic model to measure its incremental cost
    Shively, Gerald E.; Zelek, C.; Midmore, David J.; Nissen, Todd M. (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004)
    This article reports on the incremental cost of carbon sequestration in forestry and agroforestry systems, calculating the potential and cost of carbon storage with the tropical tree species Paraserianthes falcataria. The authors use an economic model in the Manupali Watershed of the Bukidnon Province in the Philippines that takes into account the opportunity cost of converting land from annual cropping systems to tree-based systems. They find that the cost of storing carbon through reforestation ranges from $3.30 / ton for conversion of fallowed land to $62.50 / ton for conversion of highly productive crop land. They suggest that the lower marginal cost of conversion to agroforesty supports a preference towards agroforestry systems rather than pure forestry.
  • Linking economic policies and environmental outcomes at a watershed scale
    Shively, Gerald E.; Zelek, C. (2005)
    In this chapter, the authors reported the results from an optimization-simulation model used to illustrate potential impacts of local and national policies to encourage sustainable land use. The model was based on a set of four representative house-holds occupying four distinct agroecological zones. Households in the model were assumed to choose crop shares, defined over a portfolio of subsistence food crops, annual and perennial cash crops, to maximize a mean-variance utility function.
  • Linking economic policy and environmental outcomes at a watershed scale
    Shively, Gerald E.; Zelek, C. (Makati City, Philippines: Philippine Institute for Development Studies, 2002)
    This paper evaluates the economic and environmental impacts of four types of policy changes that aim to enhance sustainability of upland farming. The policies assessed are either local, national or a coordinated national and local effort. Using an optimization-simulation model, the authors assess and compare policies that (1) change land use by placing local restrictions on vegetable growing, (2) require soil conservation measures to be installed and provide lump subsidy payment (local policy), (3) place a national 20 % tax on vegetable production, and (4) incorporate national and local levels, using the tax revenue to subsidize soil conservation structures.
  • Measuring the opportunity cost of carbon sequestration in tropical agriculture
    Zelek, C.; Shively, Gerald E. (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003)
    The authors calculate rates of carbon sequestration from forestry and agroforestry systems in the tropics to derive measurements of the opportunity cost and suggest incentive-based payment schedules for carbon sequestration by small holder farmers. Using this method, they estimate total costs for carbon sequestration in the Manupali watershed in the Philippines, accounting for land quality and area factors in their measurements. They find that the marginal cost sequestering carbon sequestration through afforestation is between $3.30 and $62.50 per ton, with converting land to agroforestry accruing a lower opportunity cost than pure forestry.