This paper explores the likely impact of emissions trading design on transaction costs. Transaction costs include both the costs for the private sector to comply with the scheme rules and the costs of scheme administration. In economic theory transaction costs are often assumed to be zero. But...

Marine protected areas have been advocated as a useful tool in fisheries management. However, as protected areas they are a ‘blunt’ tool to manage fishery operations; in the sense that they do not alter the incentives of individual fishers, the outcomes from protected area creation are...

Vietnam faces a number of important environmental and resource issues including deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and water and air pollution. In developing countries the conflict between growth and protecting the environment is particularly acute. This paper provides an overview of existing...

International agricultural research centres (IARCs) have a mission to reduce poverty, improve food security, human health and nutrition, and ensure sustainable management of natural resources. Their role in the research for development (R4D) continuum has long been a subject of discussion, often...

The potential for soil carbon sequestration to play a significant role in meeting Australia’s greenhouse reduction targets has attracted widespread interest. Despite this interest, the economic scope for soil carbon sequestration remains poorly understood and the practical approaches that...

Transaction costs are a large proportion of the cost structure along the value chains of most industries, especially the food and beverage industries. Competition forces industries to structure their value chains to minimise transaction costs but, in agriculture, this process is commonly impeded...

Adaptive management has become one of the catchphrases of the sustainable development literature, and is referred to increasingly in natural resource policy deliberations. Its advocates argue that natural resource sustainability issues are addressed more realistically and usefully as complex...

Regulatory regimes intended to enforce changes to land use or management impose costs on landholders and governments. Landholder costs comprise changes to capital equipment, changes to crop or enterprise management including direct compliance costs, opportunity costs of lost production, and...

Payment for carbon sequestration by agriculture and forestry can provide incentives for adoption of sustainable agricultural practices. However, a project involving contracts with farmers may face high transaction costs in showing that net emission reductions are real and attributable to the...