Suchergebnisse

By the expansion of oil palm plantations, Indonesia has become a world leading producer of crude palm oil. However, Indonesia has also been largely criticized due to issues of land use change and deforestation. The country now promotes the use of palm oil for biodiesel production as part of policies to achieve renewable energy targets. Currently yields on palm oil plantations are far from optimal. Do new policies promoting biodiesel production address the issue of yields properly? This study analyses the driving forces for the expansion of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and the palm oil yields obtained in the country. Data is collected through a multi-disciplinary structured literature review of relevant palm oil publications from the last 15 years. We identify the policies that have been put in place and the strategies used to establish palm oil plantations in the past years. We look at the newly defined policies of the Indonesian government towards renewables and climate mitigation, in particular, targets for biodiesel production and fuel substitution. The idea is to verify whether the new policy will address the low yield issue. Presently, palm oil yields are much lower in Indonesia than in neighbouring Malaysia, also a major producer. Particularly, smallholders have lower yields than private and government estate plantations. Expanding production has been focused on covering new areas with palm oil plantations and less on developing farming methods. In earlier stages, the establishment of plantations included proper education of farmers and incentives to maintain production. Smallholders nowadays start palm oil production with little or no previous experience; still they favour oil palm over traditional crops. New policies have to address farming improvements to guarantee sustainable feedstock for biodiesel. ; QC 20160523 ; STEMBIOENERGI INDONESIEN

This paper estimates maximum sustainable yield and maximum economic yield from Schaefer and Fox surplus production bioeconomic models to find evidence of biological and economic overfishing, and their consequences in Gulf of Thailand demersal fisheries. The paper examines alternative policy instruments to reduce overfishing. The discussion emphasizes strengthening fishery management for implementing limited access, and a combination of co-management, and decentralization of fisheries management. The use of license fees that serves as a double dividend tax to reduce fishing effort and fund monitoring and enforcement has been proposed as one of the possible economic instruments.

We use regression analysis on data from 208 districts over the period 1981–2009 to examine the impact of temperature and solar radiation (affected by pollution from aerosols) on wheat yields in India. We find that a 1 °C increase in average daily maximum and minimum temperatures tends to lower yields by 2–4% each. A 1% increase in solar radiation increases yields by nearly 1%. Yields are estimated to be about 5.2% lower than they would have been if temperatures had not increased during the study period. We combine the estimated impacts of weather on yield with the estimated impacts of aerosol pollution (measured by moderate resolution imaging spectro radio meter sensor in terms of aerosol optical depth, aerosol optical depth (AOD) in 2001–2013) on weather to compute the net impact of reducing aerosol pollution on wheat yields. A one-standard-deviation decrease in AOD is estimated to increase yields by about 4.8%. Our results imply reducing regional pollution and curbing global warming in the coming decades can counter wheat yield losses.