SPATIALLY TARGETED AND COORDINATED REGULATION OF AGRICULTURAL EXTERNALITIES: AN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
Lead Research Organisation:
Durham University
Department Name: Business School
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Aftab A
(2017)
Transferability of Policies to Control Agricultural Nonpoint Pollution in Relatively Similar Catchments
in Ecological Economics
| Description | This interdisciplinary research investigated novel cost-effective approaches to controlling diffuse water pollution (DP) from agriculture. We used recent advances in surveillance science and risk profiling to identifying land, which is more likely to contribute to agricultural pollution. Our research quantified the economic and environmental benefits of using spatially targeted regulation on high-risk land, i.e. land that is pollution prone and hydrologically connected to rivers. We investigated this by constructing large bio-physical economic models of two English river catchments (River Eden and River Wensum) and by conducting structured farm surveys. Overall, we found that a spatially micro-targeted approach reduced the cost of complying with environmental standards - thus benefiting regulators, farmers and the environment. Thus, if farmers mainly undertake pollution mitigation measures, and regulators mostly inspect practices, on targeted high-risk land, the cost of complying with water quality standards is reduced. More specifically, the study: 1) Quantified the cost-effectiveness of adopting spatially targeted policies to reduce diffuse pollution over a range of conventional uniform policies including cover crops, minimum tillage, land retirement and stocking density reduction; 2) Determined the sensitivity of cost-effectiveness based policy ranking to the regulatory target, i.e. probability of compliance with water quality metric; 3) Determined how the cost-effective ranking of policies changes in two different very different agricultural catchments. 4) Estimated the 'transaction costs' of spatially targeted policies based on their attributes from a choice experiment surveys of 144 farmers in two catchments; 5) Investigated the use of novel economic incentives that encourage the spatial coordination to increase farmland biodiversity between neighbouring farms; 6) Estimated the cost-effectiveness of a tradable land retirement scheme based on hydrological connectivity and pollution risk profiling of land; 7) Quantified agricultural multi-pollutant 'pollution swapping' under numerous simulated policies. Our main finding is that spatially targeted policies are generally cost-effective at reducing diffuse pollution and should be considered within the suite of regulatory control policies. We investigated the cost-effectiveness of a range of spatially targeted policies from extensive applications of spatially targeted pollution mitigation measures to localised micro targeted ones. Preliminary results indicate that the improvement in cost-effectiveness over conventional uniform policies is dependent on the agricultural system, spatial characteristics of the landscape and assumed transaction costs. Transaction costs estimates vary greatly and incorporating this uncertainty in the analysis changes the absolute cost-effectiveness of policies. We found instances of perverse or unanticipated outcomes, for example, implementing one policy to control nitrogen pollution inadvertently caused an increase in phosphorus and sediment pollution; or situations where policies aimed at reducing diffuse water pollutants actually results in sight increases in greenhouse gas emissions - largely due to reallocations of land use under uniform policies. Notably, such pollution swapping is less likely under spatially targeted policies, especially micro targeted ones. |
| Exploitation Route | The main beneficiaries of our interdisciplinary research are UK agri-environmental/water policy makers, regulators (DEFRA, EA, SEPA, NIEA, NRW) and a broad spectrum of environmental stakeholders (Rivers Trusts, Wildlife Trusts). This project's aim is to inform and influence diffuse water pollution regulatory policy in the UK by engaging and involving agri-environmental/water pollution regulators. Other stakeholder beneficiaries include the: RSPB, WWF, FoE, Rivers Trusts and National Farmers Union. We secured £25K of funding from Durham University's Impact Acceleration Fund to build on and significantly strengthen our outreach, collaboration and knowledge exchange with practioners and end-users. We intend to achieve this through three direct policy maker engagement activities, two large end-user/ stakeholder workshops, two formal impact surveys (quantify research benefit), circulating non-technical summaries, producing and promoting a short online video for the wider public on our well-used project website (http://www.scimap.org.uk/) over a five year period. We linked our project with DEFRA's Demonstration Test Catchment Programme and secured further funding from DEFRA (£19.6K) to increase the sample size of our farm surveys. We initiated follow on research extensions with new academic collaborators that involved bring faecal indicator organisms, pesticides and pollinators into our spatially targeted risk based approach. Three new large follow on research proposals were submitted for EU Horizon 2020 and BBSRC-NERC-ESRC funding. Moreover we are currently collaborating with the British Geological Survey to consider linking a ground water model to make our research findings more useful. |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment,Other |
| Description | 1) The research output is being used by DEFRA in the Demonstration Test Catchment Programme. 2) We signed a formal collaboration agreement with DEFRA in 2016 in which we agreed to tailor our research output to run diffuse pollution policy simulations. 3) Aspects of our research was presented at the SCIMAP User Group Meeting 2016 will was held at CIWEM in central London on the 18th of October 2016. This meeting was aimed at catchment stakeholder practitioners who are using the spatially targeted SCIMAP tools to map diffuse pollution source areas as well as those stakeholders who are considering adopting the tool on the ground. 4) The research has informed policy makers in DEFRA and has contributed to the following DEFRA report: LM 0304: Demonstration Test Catchments Phase 2 Work Package 2: Planning and Implementing Mitigation Interventions, WQ 0225: Implementing component 2 of Demonstration Test Catchments - to test integrated diffuse pollution mitigation measures for arable cropping, livestock, dairy and other farming systems, Final Report, January 2018. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2017 |
| Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment |
| Impact Types | Economic,Policy & public services |
| Description | Policy impact |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Citation in other policy documents |
| Description | Paper Presentation at the Land Use and Water Quality: Reducing Effects of Agriculture Conference 2013 (Hague) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Lots of practioners and policy makers attended the talk, which was well received. Collaborative links with policy makers in the UK (DEFRA). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://www.luwq2013.nl/ |
| Description | Paper Presentation at the Land Use and Water Quality: Reducing Effects of Agriculture Conference 2017 (Hague) on the Economics of Spatial Targetting. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Presented our research to agri-environmental policy makers from Europe. The research was very well received and resulted in numerous discussions about applying our research to other EU countries, particularly Denmark. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.luwq2017.nl/ |
| Description | Paper presentation at the Agricultural Economics Society Conference 2014 (Paris) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Academics, researchers and policy makers from the EU were made aware of our research and the potential effectiveness of our approach. Generated a lot of interest and potential collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.aes.ac.uk/page.asp?ID=3 |
| Description | Paper presentation at the World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics 2014 (Istanbul) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Talk was very well received and the novelty of our approach was appreciated by other academics in the field. Attending academics sought more information on our ESRC funded project |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.wcere2014.org/en/ |
| Description | SCIMAP User Group Meeting 2012 (London) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | The talks sparked questions and discussion afterwards among the participants which included representatives from DEFRA, EA, various Rivers Trusts and numerous Universities. It seems SCIMAP risked based approach is being widely used by practioners in the field. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| URL | http://www.scimap.org.uk/2013/04/economic-of-spatial-targeting/ |
| Description | SCIMAP User Group Meeting 2016 will was held at CIWEM in central London on the 18th of October 2016 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | Aspects of our research was presented at the SCIMAP User Group Meeting 2016 will was held at CIWEM in central London on the 18th of October 2016. This meeting was aimed at catchment stakeholder practitioners who are using the spatially targeted SCIMAP tools to map diffuse pollution source areas as well as those stakeholders who are considering adopting the tool on the ground. http://www.scimap.org.uk/2016/09/scimap-user-group-meeting-2016-programme/ |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | https://twitter.com/SCIMAP/status/788662497125470208 |
| Description | SCIMAP User Group Meeting 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The SCIMAP 2018 User Group Meeting was held in Birmingham on the 26 September 2018. This meeting included the launch of the new SCIMAP-FIO for mapping the potential sources of microbial pollution in catchments. There was a combination of longer and shorter talks with the opportunity to ask questions of current SCIMAP users and the development team. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017,2018 |
| URL | http://www.scimap.org.uk/2018/07/scimap-user-group-meeting-2018/ |