Assessing local and national policy options to promote sustainable upland farming in Southeast Asia: Insights from an economy-environment model of the Manupali Watershed

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2001

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Abstract

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.

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Keywords

Economic policy, Environmental impacts, Soil conservation, Local policy, Government policy, Land use management, Modeling, Sustainable agriculture, Economic impacts, Optimization-simulation model, Vegetable production tax, Upland agriculture, Pricing policy, Land degradation, Watershed modeling, Economy-environment tradeoffs, Governance Watershed

Citation

Paper presented at Sustaining Upland Development in Southeast Asia: Issues, Tools, and Institutions for Local Natural Resources Management Conference, ACCEED, Makati City, Philippines, 27-30 May 2001