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Agriculture, with its growing contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and opportunities to mitigate emissions, can help close the gap between existing global mitigation efforts and those that are needed to keep global warming to between 1.5 °C and 2 °C by the end of the century. Global scale and farm scale analyses are used to evaluate both the effectiveness of different policy options to reduce agricultural emissions, and the impact on competitiveness, farm income, food security, and government finances. In order to contribute to global mitigation efforts, countries will need to design agricultural policy measures that can navigate these trade-offs within the context of their national policy priorities and objectives. As most countries have not yet implemented policies to reduce emissions from agriculture, the analyses provided here come at an opportune time to inform this policy development.
Prolonged civil wars can have long-lasting adverse effects on food systems, leading to poverty and food insecurity. Overcoming food insecurity and land inequality is particularly difficult because of the highly politicized nature of conflict. This paper builds on the existing literature on food sovereignty to ensure sustainable livelihoods and community ownership of a resilient food system. We identify components of community food security to be strengthened in a post war reconstruction context. We study the impacts of the civil war on food and land administration systems, farmer struggles and current transitional justice process in relation to community food security in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in Sri Lanka and identify the technological, institutional, organizational, and infrastructural setbacks caused by conflict. It explores how such setbacks could be rectified and a resilient food system could be built in the postwar scenario.
This report offers specific policy and investment options articulated around two broad areas: (1) stimulating growth in agriculture and sustainable management of fisheries and (2) providing public infrastructure and services that strengthen the enabling environment. A plan to stimulate growth in agriculture and fisheries, the first broad area, could be centered around the following set of goals: revitalize the rubber sector, develop high-value fresh products, improve rice productivity, modernize land and input markets, expand access to loans for machinery and seasonal input purchases, strengthen agricultural extension services to ensure dynamism in Mon State’s farm sector, improve manageme...
The paper uses a food systems approach to analyze the bidirectional relationships between climate change and food and nutrition along the entire food value chain. It then identifies adaptation and mitigation interventions for each step of the food value chain to move toward a more climate-smart, nutrition-sensitive food system. The study focuses on poor rural farmers, a population especially vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change on nutrition, although we recognize that there are other vulnerable populations, including urban poor and rural populations working outside of agriculture. Although this report does not explicitly exclude overweight and obesity, it focuses primarily on undernutrition because this nutritional status is currently more prevalent than overnutrition among our target population.
This volume explores, both in theory and in practice, what “social coordination” is and how public policies can help or hinder the processes of social coordination. In particular, these chapters examine the institutional incentives that motivate public policy decisions and their implementation to achieve specific individual and social goals. Some chapters in this volume are more theoretical, applying insights from the Austrian, Virginia, and Bloomington schools of political economy to public policy issues. Other chapters are more practical, exploring the broader implications of these theories to real-world public policy puzzles. Authored by individuals from a variety of disciplines with ...
Policy making in food security is at a crossroads in India, particularly for the rice crop. Whereas India has emerged has a leading rice exporter over the last two years, the government has also introduced a large food subsidy program called the National Food Security Act. The program requires that 33.6 million metric tons of rice per year be distributed to the marginalized rural and urban populations of the country. In this study, we analyze the long-term impact of India’s Food Security Act on its domestic rice market and the international market for rice. We specify and apply a structural demand-and-supply model to India’s rice market and link it with the world rice market, as part of ...
This book provides a detailed coverage of how the circular economy aims to change the paradigm in relation to the linear economy, by limiting the environmental impact and waste of resources, as well as increasing efficiency at all stages of the product economy. It serves as the sole comprehensive overview of the role of biofuels in the circular economy. It contains updated information on the latest trends of techno-economic analysis of biofuels, economic transitions, low-carbon economies, green circular societies, and life cycle assessment of biofuels. This book delves deep into the economic security of the poor as well as the nexus between biofuel industry and global trade bodies, making it...
Since the inception of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, member countries have been heavily relying on the organization's dispute settlement procedure (DSP). Exploiting a new database on WTO litigations between 1995 and 2014, this paper describes disputes initiated over this period and identifies potential sources of bias concerning the participation of developing countries. The analysis builds on three different models to determine country i's probability of initiating a dispute against country j. Either it depends only on the two countries' structure of trade, that is the number of products exported by i to j (a situation we refer to as the rules-based model), or it is also affec...
Biofuels, Bioenergy and Food Security: Technology, Institutions and Policies explores the popular 'Food versus Fuel' debates, discussing the complex relationship between the biofuel and agricultural markets. From the importance of bioenergy in the context of climate change, to the potentially positive environmental consequences of growing second generation biofuels crops, this book provides important insights into the impact of policy, the technical implementation and the resulting impact of biofuels. The discussion of existing issues hindering the growth of the cellulosic biofuel industry and their remedies are particularly relevant for policy makers and others associated with the biofuel i...
Recognition of take-up and transaction cost challenges in individual microinsurance has led to a surge of interest in group microinsurance. Yet few studies have considered the effect of group insurance on the investment decisions of the insured. In the case of weather index insurance, this is an important omission. Analogous to group microcredit, group weather insurance may exacerbate two key challenges depending on the information environment: moral hazard and group pressure. Experimental results from a framed field experiment in Gujarat, India, confirm that group pressure leads to an 8 percent reduction in risk taking in contexts with perfect information and group insurance (relative to individual insurance). The effects of moral hazard are more limited, however. As higher risk taking is associated with higher average agricultural productivity—and thus, development—these findings put a premium on greater attention to group selection, the information environment, and the regulation of payout distribution.