Transcript: #StandardsGoals for 2024: What’s new for BISAC - Tech Forum 2024
Nicolas GERBER "The economics of land degradation and the costs of action versus inaction"
1. The Economics of Land Degradation and the
Costs of Action versus Inaction
Nicolas Gerber, Center for Development Research (ZEF),
University of Bonn, Germany
UNCCD 2nd Scientific Conference, Bonn, April 10th 2013
Joint work by ZEF and the International Food Policy Research
Institute (IFPRI), 2010-11 and 2012-14, funded by the German
Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
2. First phase (2010-11) - Main
outputs
• State of the art in global
assessments of land
degradation
• Methodology toward a total
economic valuation of land
degradation
• Case studies: Uzbekistan,
Niger, Peru, India, Kenya
(agricultural production –
action cheaper than inaction)
• Partnership concept for a
global ELD assessment.
Condensed and up-dated version:
www.zef.de/fileadmin/webfiles/downl
oads/zef_wp/wp109.pdf
3. Relationship between poverty (IMR)
and land degradation
Source: von Braun et al. 2013
Variable Resolution Baseline End line Source of data
NDVI 8km x 8km 1982–84 2003–06 Global Land Cover Facility (www.landcover.org), Tucker, Pinzon, and
Brown 2004); NOAA AVHRR NDVI data from GIMMS
Infant Sub-district 2005
Mortality Rate
4. Relationship between change in vegetation
cover and change in population density
Variable Resolution Baseline End line Source of data
NDVI 8km x 8km 1982–84 2003–06 Global Land Cover Facility (www.landcover.org), Tucker, Pinzon,
and Brown 2004); NOAA AVHRR NDVI data from GIMMS
Population 0.5o x 0.5o 1990 2005 CIESIN (2010)
density
Source: Nkonya et al. 2011
5. Relationship between change in vegetation
cover & change in gov’t effectiveness
Variable Resolution Baseline End line Source of data
NDVI 8km x 8km 1982–84 2003–06 Global Land Cover Facility (www.landcover.org), Tucker, Pinzon, and
Brown 2004); NOAA AVHRR NDVI data from GIMMS
Government Country 1996–98 2007–09 Worldwide Governance Indicators:
effectiveness http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.asp
Source: Nkonya et al. 2011
6. 2nd Phase Research Project:
The Economics of Land Degradation,
2012-2014, www.zef.de/eld.html
• ZEF and IFPRI engage with other scientific
partners in open partnership
• Operationalize the methodology outlined in
Nkonya et al. 2011 – methods paper out for
discussion
http://www.zef.de/fileadmin/media/news/2135_eld_methods07042013.pdf
• Selected case studies and a standard
methodology to form a template for future
ELD assessments.
7. Sampling Framework for Case Studies
Three steps:
1. Clustering based on key socio-economic and
institutional underlying factors (Nkonya et al.
2011)
2. Validation of clusters using additional socio-
economic and biophysical variables
3. Case studies selected from each cluster,
based i) regional representativeness, ii)
availability of data required for the ELD
assessment
Source: Nkonya et al (2013)
10. Empirical Research Framework
• Core ELD research methods: standard research methods to be
applied in all case studies to fulfill the minimum
methodological requirements for globally comparable and
rigorous ELD assessment,
• Desirable ELD approaches: methods seeking to address the
key challenges specific in each context and to complement,
cross-validate and triangulate, in general, test the robustness
of the results obtained from the core research.
• Sophisticated ELD methods for expanding the research
frontiers in ELD research. They aim to build and expand on the
cutting-edge of interdisciplinary land degradation research.
Source: Nkonya et al (2013)
11. Examples of three categories of ELD
research approaches
Source: Nkonya et al (2013)
funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and in collaboration with UNCCD
Need to look at ELD where it matters to people, and the sort of indicators of LD which are connected to the human dimensions of the LD (NDVI little removed from that), and- High human costs of LD, as 42% of the world‘s very poor rely on degraded land (food & income)- Costs of LD as much as 10% of GDP in SSA
The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project (The WB Group) reports aggregate and individual governance indicators for 213 economies over the period 1996–2010, for six dimensions of governance, incl. Government Effectiveness. It is capturing perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such policies.
funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Need to take into account a wide heterogeneity of land degradation, socio-economic and institutional contextsRandom probability sampling is not the best approach in this contextThis sets appart case studies under ELD research project and any other colection of case studies, together with the common analytical frame exposed later!!key socio-economic and institutional underlying factors: GDP per capita, population density, government effectiveness and agricultural intensification (Nkonya et al. 2011)Validation of clusters using long-term changes in NDVI values, share of rural population in the total, share of agriculture in GDP, average cereal yields per hectare