Suchergebnisse

Expansion of cropland in tropical countries is one of the principal causes of biodiversity loss, and threatens to undermine progress towards meeting the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. To understand this threat better, we analysed data on crop distribution and expansion in 128 tropical countries, assessed changes in area of the main crops and mapped overlaps between conservation priorities and cultivation potential. Rice was the single crop grown over the largest area, especially in tropical forest biomes. Cropland in tropical countries expanded by c. 48,000 km2 per year from 1999–2008. The countries which added the greatest area of new cropland were Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Brazil. Soybeans and maize are the crops which expanded most in absolute area. Other crops with large increases included rice, sorghum, oil palm, beans, sugar cane, cow peas, wheat and cassava. Areas of high cultivation potential—while bearing in mind that political and socio-economic conditions can be as influential as biophysical ones—may be vulnerable to conversion in the future. These include some priority areas for biodiversity conservation in tropical countries (e.g., Frontier Forests and High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas), which have previously been identified as having 'low vulnerability', in particular in central Africa and northern Australia. There are also many other smaller areas which are important for biodiversity and which have high cultivation potential (e.g., in the fringes of the Amazon basin, in the Paraguayan Chaco, and in the savanna woodlands of the Sahel and East Africa). We highlight the urgent need for more effective sustainability standards and policies addressing both production and consumption of tropical commodities, including robust land-use planning in agricultural frontiers, establishment of new protected areas or REDD+ projects in places agriculture has not yet reached, and reduction or elimination of incentives for land-demanding bioenergy feedstocks

Commodity crop expansion, for both global and domestic urban markets, follows multiple land change pathways entailing direct and indirect deforestation, and results in various social and environmental impacts. Here we compare six published case studies of rapid commodity crop expansion within forested tropical regions. Across cases, between 1.7% and 89.5% of new commodity cropland was sourced from forestlands. Four main factors controlled pathways of commodity crop expansion: (i) the availability of suitable forestland, which is determined by forest area, agroecological or accessibility constraints, and land use policies, (ii) economic and technical characteristics of agricultural systems, (iii) differences in constraints and strategies between small-scale and large-scale actors, and (iv) variable costs and benefits of forest clearing. When remaining forests were unsuitable for agriculture and/or policies restricted forest encroachment, a larger share of commodity crop expansion occurred by conversion of existing agricultural lands, and land use displacement was smaller. Expansion strategies of large-scale actors emerge from context-specific balances between the search for suitable lands; transaction costs or conflicts associated with expanding into forests or other state-owned lands versus smallholder lands; net benefits of forest clearing; and greater access to infrastructure in already-cleared lands. We propose five hypotheses to be tested in further studies: (i) land availability mediates expansion pathways and the likelihood that land use is displaced to distant, rather than to local places; (ii) use of already-cleared lands is favored when commodity crops require access to infrastructure; (iii) in proportion to total agricultural expansion, large-scale actors generate more clearing of mature forests than smallholders; (iv) property rights and land tenure security influence the actors participating in commodity crop expansion, the form of land use displacement, and livelihood outcomes; (v) intensive commodity crops may fail to spare land when inducing displacement. We conclude that understanding pathways of commodity crop expansion is essential to improve land use governance.

This discussion paper aims to speak both about what the public discourse is with regard to the real estate sector of Bangladesh, and what it could be, that is, highlight issues that are distal enough to escape sufficient attention. These issues might even appear disjoint. Systemic or systems thinking is invoked since dynamic complexity is everyday reality and is best equipped to inform discourses in order to bring about change of norms across all stakeholders participating in the sector. Leadership is not a leader-follower dichotomy, all stakeholders must strive to know when to lead, and it invariably is about adapting to situations that are not necessarily static. The real estate sector of Bangladesh requires robust leadership that can invoke the relevance of complexity thinking and interdisciplinarity in adapting to challenges of today and tomorrow.

Crop foraging or crop raiding concerns wildlife foraging and farmers' reactions and responses to it. To understand crop foraging and its value to wildlife or its implications for humans requires a cross-disciplinary approach that considers the behavior and ecology of wild animals engaging in this behavior; the types and levels of competition for resources between people and wildlife; people's perceptions of and attitudes toward wildlife, including animals that forage on crops; and discourse about animals and their behaviors and how these discourses can be used for expressing dissent and distress about other social conflicts. So, to understand and respond to conflicts about crop damage, we need to look beyond what people lose, i.e., crop loss and economic equivalence, and focus more on what people say about wildlife and why they say it.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the credit expansion in 2009 and 2010 in China on the capital structure of listed real estate companies.Design/methodology/approach– Chinese listed real estate companies are divided into two groups, state-owned and non-state-owned, because their access to credit markets have different priority to state-owned banks that dominate bank lending. The difference-in-differences approach is employed to test the impact of changes in leverage ratios and loan ratios before and after the credit expansion period in state-owned firms and non-state-owned firms.Findings– Using quarterly panel regressions, the authors find that during the credit expansion period, state-owned companies exhibit a relatively greater increase in leverage ratios than non-state-owned firms. State-owned firms have greater increases in book leverage ratios, market leverage ratios and long-term debt ratios by 5.2, 4.9 and 1.1 per cent, respectively. It is also shown that loan ratios have increased more in state-owned firms than non-state-owned firms during the credit expansion period.Research limitations/implications– The paper explores only the impacts of credit expansion on capital structure of listed real estate firms in China. Further studies can be conducted to investigate the impact of credit supply on corporate investment decisions of real estate firms and on real estate markets.Practical implications– The findings can help explain the surge in land and housing prices after 2008 in China. Denget al.(2015) find that state-owned real estate firms paid more for land price than non-state-owned firms, which contributed to upward pressure on housing prices. This paper shows that such "over-investment" may be due to the increase of debt financing and availability of bank loans to real estate firms. Thus the credit market can affect real estate markets through debt financing at company level.Originality/value– This paper is the first to investigate the impact of credit supply on capital structure of real estate companies, and presents evidence of the importance of credit supply as a determinant of capital structure.

AbstractThis paper is an attempt to analyse the impact of a credit‐linked crop insurance scheme—the Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme (CCIS) of India—on crop credit or short‐term agricultural credit, especially to small fanners. A dominant view on rural credit institutions is that they are unwilling to extend adequate credit to small farmers on account of the problems of information and enforcement, and that a crop insurance scheme—because it faces similar problems—would make little difference. A common device used in rural credit markets with a view to limiting the consequences arising out of agricultural risk, information asymmetries and enforcement problems is collateral. Small farmers in developing countries do not own adequate land and other assets which can be used as collateral, and consequently face a situation of inadequate availability of credit. The question is whether crop insurance can serve as a substitute (perhaps partial) for collateral. In view of the above facts, this paper addresses the issues whether the CCIS led to a significantly higher flow of institutional credit to farmers, especially small farmers, and whether there was any improvement in the repayment of loan—in other words, whether there was any collateral effect. The analysis is based on empirical data from Gujarat (India). The findings show that there is a significant increase in the flow of credit to insured farmers after the introduction of the CCIS. The expansion is in both coverage and size—there was an increase in the number of borrowers, and also in credit per borrower as well as per hectare. The share of small farmers (with land holdings of 2 ha or less) in the total loan increased from 19 per cent to 27 per cent. There was a significant increase in the repayment of loan in absolute terms—repayment per farmer and repayment per hectare. But it is not clear if the propensity to repay improved. The expansion of credit appears to be what one may call a collateral effect.

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies ; As the largest agricultural country in South East Asia, Indonesia possesses enormous agriculture resources. In the last decade, the Government of Indonesia has focused on the production development of 4F crops, meaning crops for the production of Food, Feed, Fiber, and Fuel. In 2014, Indonesia had about 101 million hectares agricultural land which comprised of approximately 47 million hectares cultivated area and the remaining 54 million hectares were expandable agriculture lands. However, the expansion has to consider Indonesia Law No. 44 in Year 2009 (Undang – Undang No 4 Tahun 2009) regarding the security of sustainable food cropland that restricts the conversion of food cropland into timber forest, industry or settlements. In fact, unwanted land use land cover (LULC) change happened due to the excessive expansion of oil palm, rubber, pulpwood and mining industries particularly in East Kalimantan. Two districts that exhibit significant LULC change are Kutai Barat and Mahakam Ulu. An additional 78.5 thousand ha of rubber, 31 thousand ha of oil palm and 23.6 thousand ha of pulpwood plantations have dominated the LULC change in Kutai Barat and Mahakam Ulu districts from 1990 to 2009. Although in general, the agricultural expansion has become the main cause of unwanted LULC change and forest cover loss, these have also contributed to positive economic benefit. In order to evaluate the economic benefit of historic agricultural expansion as well as to estimate the economic benefit of future agricultural expansion, it is necessary to look thoroughly at the geographic distribution of crop yields within the districts because we would like to understand the crop yield for every agriculture production area. The issue on the existing crop statistic data is that the crop statistics are conveyed as tabular-based data and reported at the national, provincial or district level of detail. Thus, examining crop distribution in district level is certainly challenging. Hence, a spatial crop yield allocation model was applied to generate pixel-level crop yield representation of Kutai Barat and Mahakam Ulu districts in 2000 and 2009 based upon available the regional crop statistics data and the existing LULC maps and further analyze its spatial-temporal pattern within this period of time. Furthermore, an evaluation of crop yield production and the agriculture 2 expansion trend from 2000 to 2009 were applied to a 2030 land use projection from a land use change model to project the pixel level crop yield in 2030. Between 2000 and 2009, rubber plantation exhibits land expansion and followed by the increase of yield. While the expansion of oil palm in 2009 is followed by the degradation of yield. We presume this due to the oil palm plantation in 2009 is still in early harvesting stage. The accuracy of disaggregation model is highly depending on the quality of data particularly crop statistic data and LULC map. The deviation between these two data leads to the occurrence of a high error in disaggregation results. By estimating oil palm and rubber yield based on projected LULC maps in 2030, the future expansion is suggested to follow the Limited Unrestricted scenario since this scenario is able to provide highest average yield with relatively small area among other scenarios. In this manner, either government or people in Kutai Barat and Mahakam Ulu are able to gain optimal agricultural benefit without sacrificing an excessive number of land resources.