Rural-Urban Migration (RUM) has increasingly become a key adaptation strategy to climate and weather- related shocks in rural communities. Through rural-urban migration (RUM, households gain access to remittances, which are often reinvested in climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices. However, the outcomes of such invest- ments are not straightforward, as RUM can lead to either a loss or a gain in labor productivity depending on accompa- nying interventions. This study examines the impact of RUM on technical efficiency and productivity among maize smallholder farmers using panel data constructed from nationally representative Integrated Household Surveys (2010-2017). The findings show that RUM, when not accompanied by CSA practices such as soil and water conser- vation, agroforestry, and conservation agriculture, leads to a significant reduction in technical efficiency, averaging 9%, with sharper declines in 2010 and 2013 (18%) and a more moderate effect in 2016/2017 (7%). Conversely, when RUM is combined with CSA adoption, it has a positive effect on technical efficiency, carrying important policy implications. They thus highlight the need for policymakers to carefully monitor labor outmigration while avoiding restrictive migration policies that overlook the economic pressures driving RUM. Instead, policies should focus on balanced strategies that retain part of the rural labor force and enhance households' ability to convert remittances into productive agricultural investments. Key interventions include strengthening rural labor markets, promoting mechanization and labor-saving technologies, as well as enabling the effective use of remittances through financial literacy, improved extension services, and targeted support for CSA adoption.

Much of the research on behavioural preferences as predictors of compliance with regulations aimed at reducing the transmission of COVID-19 has focused on developed countries, with very little consideration of African countries. We conduct an online survey (n = 1503) considering beliefs, and individual and social preferences as predictors of compliance with prophylactic measures and lockdown regulations in South Africa. We use incentivized experimental measures of individual (risk and time) preferences and social preferences (cooperativeness and altruism). We also consider survey measures of risk tolerance, patience and trust. We find that beliefs about others' behaviour are highly predictive of reported behaviour. We also find that greater patience and cooperativeness are predictive of high compliance with prophylactic measures and lockdown regulations. Encouragingly, respondents report higher compliance at higher lockdown levels, suggesting responsiveness of behaviour to the level of risk of infection.

Preserving water quality, which has at least four of the ten characteristics of a “wicked problem”, is fundamental for economic development, ecosystems function, and human wellbeing. Consequently, identifying suitable public policies or technological solutions that can maintain or restore affected ecosystems, especially in river catchments, is a huge challenge. Understanding diverse stakeholder perspectives on important aquatic ecosystem services is critical to improving water governance and quality. This study uses the Q-methodology to identify and analyze perspectives about aquatic ecosystem services in the Olifants River catchment, one of the most important and polluted in South Africa, across six diverse stakeholder groups competing for its limited water resources. The Q methodology is a semi-qualitative methodology that can systematically recover detailed views of the subjective perceptions diverse stakeholder groups hold on a given topic. Our results suggest existence of three significant and conflicting perspectives. The “conservationists” prioritize regulation and supporting services, the “water users” give highest priority to water for domestic and other private uses, while the “planners” rank mastering the environment for societal benefits highest. Equally importantly, our results suggest the possibility of solutions that can deliver services ranked highly by some stakeholders without compromising the welfare of others who hold neutral perspectives towards them.

This study uses an online laboratory experiment and a post-experimental survey to test whether the Mastercard Foundation (MCF) scholarship programme causally influences the creation of cognitive social capital among University of Pretoria recipients. Cognitive social capital, which is based on commonly shared norms among subjects, leads to honest and cooperative behaviour. It is necessary for ease of information flow, a reduction in transaction costs, and allowing communities to deal with social dilemmas like common-pool resource management. The study used incentivised economic experiments on randomly selected subjects drawn from a control group (non-MCF students) and a treated group (MCF students). The experimental results from the two groups were compared to check the differences in terms of levels of trust, reciprocity, altruism, cooperation, in-group favouritism and out-group discrimination. Our results show that the scholarship programme has a significant impact only on levels of in-group favouritism and out-group discrimination. The post-experimental survey showed that MCF and non-MCF subjects were similar in terms of stated pro-social behaviour perceptions and in-group social capital creation.

Using data collected from 217 respondents living near the Kafue National Park in Zambia, we assess how households value alternative policy interventions aimed at minimizing poaching. Building on the current debate on community-based wildlife conservation policy, we presented households with different combinations of agro-inputs packs donation, access to a micro-credit facility and donation of dairy cows for milking. These were proposed as alternative policy interventions to compliment the traditional command and control policy framework, implemented through a rise in frequency of game patrols and increase in minimum jail sentences for poaching offenses. We use a discrete choice experiment to estimate policy preferences and potential trade-offs between poaching and proposed alternative policy instruments. Our findings show that increase in each of the proposed interventions could significantly contribute to the well-being of respondents, potentially reducing the number of hunting trips a poacher would make per month. Similarly, a rise in the deterrent interventions have significant, but weak effect on respondents' choice to poach. The above carrot and stick instruments could be deferentially applied based on cost and effectiveness of each combination to achieve desired goals.

This article identifies the determinants, crop productivity, and household welfare impacts of adopting certified seeds of improved cassava varieties (c-ICVs) in Uganda. The determinants were identified using the two-part model while the crop productivity and household welfare impacts were assessed using the endogenous switching regression model. The data came from 609 farm households in Uganda’s three major cassava-growing regions (Eastern, Northern, and mid-Western). The results showed that adopters of c-ICVs experienced a considerable increase in productivity (stem and root yields) and improvement in welfare outcomes (cash income and consumption expenditure). The results provide evidence of the effectiveness of the country’s seed certification and genetic improvement efforts over recent years and justify increased investments in genetic improvement and seed certification.

Contract Farming Arrangements (CFA) can be viewed as a pro-active response to lack of reliable markets and steeply rising input prices. CFA proponents argue that CFA can enhance technical efficiency of tobacco farming and productivity. Thus, in this study, the paper interrogates the effect of CFA on tobacco productivity in southern Africa: Hurungwe district of Zimbabwe. The study controls for both observable and unobservable factors, like age, education, and ability to use information-unknown to the researchers, explaining farmers decision to participate in CFA. The study uses the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model, which also acts as a robust check for the Propensity Score Matching techniques as it studies both observable and unobservable factors influencing CFA participation. Based on the ESR model, this study finds that CFA improves tobacco productivity by 39%. Nonetheless, CFA is labour-intensive. Hence, women and the elderly are less likely to participate in CFA, suggesting the need to develop gender-sensitive labour-saving technologies. Even though tobacco products kill their users, we would like to explore whether CFA can make farming more productive or not. We hypothesize that if tobacco farming would be more productive, then perhaps farmers will have enough money to buy food so they can be healthier even if the tobacco leaves, they grow can kill people elsewhere. Thus, these results inform CFA-related policies that improve smallholder tobacco productivity in Southern Africa. With existing tobacco controls, these results are equally valid to other cash crops where most developing economies anticipate the majority resource-constrained smallholder farmers to shift their production systems entirely away from tobacco in the immediate future.

This paper uses the Q methodology to identify and analyze the diverse perspectives different stakeholders held about Hawane Dam and Nature Reserve (HDNR) wetland ecosystem services (ESS), to guide conservation management actions. Using 72 representative stakeholders to sort 40 statements describing ESS into a predefined distribution and a by-person factor analysis, the results show that stakeholders held three distinct perspectives that we labelled "water users", "conservationists", and "traditional users". There emerged consensus across stakeholders about the relatively high importance of the wetland purification and regulating functions, and the relative low importance of the recreation function. Farmers with relatively fewer livestock and households closer to HDNR ranked a mixture of extractive, cultural and regulation services relatively higher, while urban households ranked extractive water uses that go beyond the more traditional uses higher. Finally, water uses for household and farming activities emerged as non-controversial services, since they were ranked as very important by at least two groups and neutral by the third. The paper concludes by showing how the results contribute to conservation management and reducing problem "wickedness" (or improved problem definition).

Southern Malawi is continuously affected by tropical cyclone-related floods (TCRFs), which have negative consequences on households' livelihoods, thereby displacing most households to neighbouring communities of Mozambique. The TCRFs have further threatened national, regional, community, and household food security agenda, which is already constrained by poverty, poor agricultural practices, low use of improved varieties, unaffordable inorganic fertilizers, and fragmenting landholding sizes. Accordingly, households have indigenously engineered resilience-based Sustainable Landscape Management (SLM) practices, like intercropping, agroforestry, cover cropping, and soil and water conservation practices, against the adverse effects of TCRFs on-farm productivity. Hence, this study examines the effect of TCRFs and SLM adoption on-farm productivity. While using rigorous endogenous switching regression econometric tools, the study finds TCRFs reducing farm productivity by 27 percent. After SLM adoption, the study observes farm productivity enhancement by 29–126 percent when households adopt at least one SLM practices under varying degrees of TCRFs. Despite the highlighted advantages of SLM adoption, female farmers are less likely to adopt SLM practices because they do not have access to productive resources. Hence, the study proposes the need of gender targeted extension services, accompanied by some seed capital for SLM adoption. Besides, there is need to sensitize farmers on the complementarities between inorganic fertilizer and SLM practices. Lastly, future studies should assess the effect of sustained SLM adoption or dis-adoption and input intensification on farm productivity.

A COVID-19 járvány világszerte drámai és soha nem látott hatást gyakorolt az egészségügyre és a gazdaságra. Sok kormány gazdasági mentőcsomagot állít össze, hogy segítse a normális működéshez való visszatérést, ám az IPBES (Biológiai Sokféleség és Ökoszisztéma-szolgáltatás Kormányközi Testület) 2019-ben elfogadott Globális Felmérése szerint a gazdaság megszokott működése az ökoszisztémák állapotának nagyfokú és széleskörű romlásához vezetett az elmúlt időkben. A pandémia utáni világrendnek lehetősége van megfékezni azokat a gazdasági folyamatokat, amelyek mindeddig súlyosbították az ökológiai vészhelyzetet. Tanulmányunk ebből a szemszögből vizsgálja meg a különböző érintettek számára rendelkezésre álló gazdaságpolitikai eszközöket, legyenek azok rövidtávú ösztönzők vagy a globális, nemzeti és helyi gazdaságot hosszabb távon megreformáló, átfogó intézkedések. Olyan beavatkozásokat mutatunk be e két kategória mentén, amelyek az ökológiai rendszer rugalmas alkalmazkodóképességét fenntartó tevékenységeket helyezik előtérbe a biodiverzitást károsító tevékenységek helyett – ilyenek például a pénzügyi támogatások, a jogszabályi korlátozások, valamint a gazdaság- és foglalkoztatáspolitikai intézkedések. Ha a pandémia nyomán kialakult krízist a globális gazdaság átalakítására nyíló lehetőségként tekintjük, esélyünk lehet az évtizedek óta zajló természetkárosító folyamatok visszafordítására.

The chapter references enclosed in curly brackets (e.g.{2.3.1, 2.3.1.2,2.3.1.3})are traceable accounts and refer to sections of the chapters of the IPBES Global Assessment.A traceable account is a description within the corresponding texts of these chapters, reflecting the evaluation of the type, amount, quality, and consistency of evidence and the degree of agreement for that particular statement or key finding.

Preserving water quality, which has at least four of the ten characteristics of a “wicked problem”, is fundamental for economic development, ecosystems function, and human wellbeing. Consequently, identifying suitable public policies or technological solutions that can maintain or restore affected ecosystems, especially in river catchments, is a huge challenge. Understanding diverse stakeholder perspectives on important water related ecosystem services is critical to improving water governance and quality. This study uses the Q-methodology to identify and analyze perspectives about water-related ecosystem services in the Olifants river catchment, one of the most important and polluted in South Africa, across six diverse stakeholder groups competing for its limited water resources. The Q is a semi-qualitative methodology that can systematically recover detailed views of the subjective perceptions diverse stakeholder groups hold on a given topic. Our results suggest existence of three significant and conflicting perspectives. The “conservationists” privilege regulation and supporting services, the “water users” give highest priority to water for domestic and other private uses, while the “planners” rank mastering the environment for societal benefits highest. Equally importantly, our results also suggest solutions like ecological infrastructure investments, which deliver important services for some stakeholders without compromising the welfare of those who hold neutral perspectives towards them.

Malawi experiences frequent and intense extreme weather events that affect rain-fed household maize production. Thus, households have adopted various climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices to cushion maize production from the adverse effects of extreme weather events, particularly drought episodes. This study examines the drivers of CSA practices' adoption and their influence on the technical efficiency of maize production among drought-affected households. Based on a conditional logit model, the study finds drought episodes substantively enhancing the adoption of organic manure by 76% and soil and water conservation by 29%. The Cobb-Douglas Stochastic Frontier Analysis reveals that households are 63% technically efficient, implying that they can increase current maize production by 37%. A two-stage Tobit model further shows that concurrent adopting organic manure and inorganic fertilizers in the same farm significantly improves maize production's technical efficiency by 18% and is more noticeable among drought-affected households. This study, therefore, advocates for simultaneous adoption of organic and inorganic fertilizers to enhance the effect of CSA practices on the technical efficiency of maize production under intensifying drought episodes. Besides, the study recommends championing gender-targeting extension services to augment the benefits of CSA practices among female farmers. Ultimately, the study results contribute to the existing literature on improving agricultural productivity under varying weather conditions.

While there is much debate on transformative change among academics and policymakers, the discussion on how to govern such change is still in its infancy. This article argues that transformative governance is needed to enable the transformative change necessary for achieving global sustainability goals. Based on a literature review, the article unpacks this concept of transformative governance. It is: integrative, to ensure local solutions also have sustainable impacts elsewhere (across scales, places, issues and sectors); inclusive, to empower those whose interests are currently not being met and represent values embodying transformative change for sustainability; adaptive, enabling learning, experimentation, and reflexivity, to cope with the complexity of transformative change; and pluralist, recognizing different knowledge systems. We argue that only when these four governance approaches are: implemented in conjunction; operationalized in a specific manner; and focused on addressing the indirect drivers underlying sustainability issues, governance becomes transformative.

Technical approaches to food production are important to the food security of growing populations in developing countries. However, strategic investments in research and farm-level adoption require greater coherence in agricultural, societal, and local policies. The Agricultural Innovation System (AIS) and formation of the Cassava Innovation Platform (CIP) in Uganda were designed to stimulate interactions between researchers and farmers, leading to the development of improved cassava varieties through participatory plant breeding (PPB) and participatory variety selection (PVS). Moreover, the establishment of a community-based commercialized seed system called Cassava Seed Entrepreneurship (CSE) has made an important contribution to the rapid multiplication and dissemination of clean planting materials in Uganda. The impact of CIP participation on rural household welfare was measured by household consumption expenditure per capita. The Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model was applied to data from a formal household survey conducted in the eastern, northern, and mid-western regions of Uganda. The education, farm size, livestock size, access to credit, cost of cassava planting materials, access to extension service, access to training, and social group membership are significantly associated with CIP participation. CIP participation resulted in a 47.4% increase in household consumption expenditure. This important evidence highlights the need to promote agricultural innovation platform for improving rural livelihoods. Moreover, CIP participation has impact heterogeneity within the participant group that is conditional on household characteristics such as the gender of the household head, pointing to the need to tailor specific interventions and target specific groups within farm households.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic and unprecedented impacts on both global health and economies. Many governments are now proposing recovery packages to get back to normal, but the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Global Assessment indicated that business as usual has created widespread ecosystem degradation. Therefore, a post-COVID world needs to tackle the economic drivers that create ecological disruptions. In this perspective, we discuss a number of tools across a range of actors for both short-term stimulus measures and longer-term revamping of global, national, and local economies that take biodiversity into account. These include measures to shift away from activities that damage biodiversity and toward those supporting ecosystem resilience, including through incentives, regulations, fiscal policy, and employment programs. By treating the crisis as an opportunity to reset the global economy, we have a chance to reverse decades of biodiversity and ecosystem losses.

This paper proposes that transboundary water governance needs to become an essential input to sustainable governance of protected natural reserves. The paper reviews the challenges and opportunities for such governance mechanisms, and identifies the factors behind successful practices. Successful transboundary governance of water and nature requires the reduction of associated transaction costs. Firstly, water diplomacy through joint research, data collection and monitoring, capacity building, dialogues for consensus building, promoting responsible leadership and providing advisory support can help in overcoming mistrust between stakeholders and create opportunities for cooperation. Secondly, power asymmetries may hinder transboundary water governance, therefore, there is a need to involve multi-scale links across stakeholders to counter-balance local power asymmetries and engage all stakeholders in consultations and negotiations. Thirdly, transboundary water governance is critically dependent on accurate and transparent data and analysis tools for informing policy decisions. Science-policy interactions for facilitating transboundary water governance were found to be most effective when the knowledge on joint water and nature governance is co-produced in a trans-disciplinary manner, in collaboration with wide-ranging informal networks of scientists, policy makers, and civil society. Finally, transboundary water governance organizations can serve as platforms for facilitating water diplomacy, building trust and cooperation, especially when they are granted the ability to enter into binding cooperative agreements regardless of external political pressures.

This article reviews the literature on the conservation and livelihood impacts of recent policy and institutional reforms concerning the management of common pool natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa. The evidence suggests that the specific institutional and natural resource context is critical to the success or failure of reforms. We also identify several methodological and data deficiencies in the literature that pose significant challenges for the design of effective and sustainable policies in the future. We propose several priorities for future research, including improving the characterization of the nature, extent, and purpose of policies; controlling for confounding effects and selection bias in research design; developing standardized and conceptually sound impact measures that are aligned with the goals of policy reforms; adopting ecosystems approaches that model complex coupled socioecological systems; broadening cost and benefit measures to include the regulation of ecosystem services of significant local, regional, and global value; and identifying long-term economic incentives and benefit-sharing arrangements among stakeholders, particularly given the increasing competition from alternative land use options. Finally, we find that the literature is dominated by contributions from the natural sciences, suggesting an opportunity to increase the role of environmental economics and policy research.

This chapter uses intersectoral transactions data captured in the United Republic of Tanzania's social accounting matrices to assess the economy-wide trade-offs involved in the decision to cut a hectare of standing forest. Each hectare of standing forest contributed to the sectoral GDP of forestry and hunting, which stood at TSh 296.7 billion in 2001, translating to TSh 6,168 per ha per year (2001). Felling a hectare of such a forest has two consequences: first, it will not contribute to the current GDP estimate of TSh 6,168 per ha per year (2001). Second, the potential value added by forestry and hunting to other sectors of the economy - in terms of income and valued added taxes - to a total quantity estimated in the present study at TSh 10,599 per ha per year (2001) will also be lost. Accordingly, clearing a hectare of standing forest translates into a total loss of TSh 16,767 per ha per year (2001) in terms of direct and indirect losses. Additionally, the study shows that an increase in household consumption of forestry and hunting sector output results in an increase in GDP, household income, wage rates and composite commodity prices. These predictions are clearly of importance in informing forest policy: in the interest of improving the welfare of rural poor, rural non-poor, urban poor and urban non-poor households, forest policies should encourage growth in sectors that make use of forestry as an input in their production.

Watershed management is a complex activity with constraints on funding and human resources in many parts of the world, and there is a need for global effort to identify strategies that can work. To complement regulatory approaches, attention is now also being given to market-based incentives because of their potential cost-effectiveness. This study seeks to provide impetus to the use of the most successful market-based incentives to promote sustainable watershed practices through strengthening and increasing direct participation by local communities and the private sector. To identify proven market-based incentives for use to catalyze local community and private sector participation, a review of a sample of 26 purposively selected case studies from different contexts in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas is conducted. In reviewing those case studies, emphasis is placed on understanding the threats to specific watersheds, the market-based incentives used, the countrywide policy environment, the outcomes from the interventions, the factors for success and failure, and the pertinent policy issues in support of upscaling and the uptake of appropriate market-based approaches. The study identifies seven key policies that Governments should consider to upscale and facilitate the uptake of market-based incentives to promote participation by local communities and the private sector in watershed management.