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

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.