Economic factors are an important direct and indirect driver of desertification and land degradation, associated with market failures and the lack of appropriate economic policies to address these failures. Hence, economic and political instruments and mechanisms are required to modify the market in such a way that it encourages land owners to invest in sustainable land management (SLM) options and thereby help to combat land degradation. This article synthesizes the economic aspects of land degradation, first in a rather general way. It then discusses existing valuation methods used to assign economic values to land degradation including the resulting problems which in turn hamper costbenefit analyses. Finally, based on these points a brief review is given of potential financial mechanisms to combat land degradation and promote SLM. The paper argues that valuation of the economic costs of land degradation and desertification would increase awareness of the extent of the land degradation phenomenon and its impacts on rural development and agriculture. This could also be a useful tool for decision-making on sectoral orientations for development assistance targeted at desertification, land degradation and drought.
Economic development approaches are increasingly entailing local geographic scales and encouraging the mobilization and organization of territorial actors given local conditions and resources. Lebanon is a country facing frequent uncertainty with recent economic and social difficulties. Its popular cuisine may play a key role in its development and that of its rural space. In fact, that cuisine incorporates a traditional cultural practice called “Mouneh” which consists of preserved pantry foods, historically used to ensure household nutrition. Today, rural food cooperatives are engaging in that practice using agricultural produce from local farmers and are employing women. Despite strong internal and external challenges, they remain attractive actors as their principles of collective benefit, participation and democracy form a strong link with sustainable development goals. This study transversally analyzes the status of food cooperatives in a major agricultural region in Lebanon, the Bekaa valley. Findings mainly quantified size and production and provided a mapped representation of the spatial dependencies on local farmers versus urban markets for trade. With 75% women members and firm reputation in authenticity, food cooperatives in the Bekaa specifically and Lebanon generally are also extensively supported by donors but are being labeled as donor-dependent. Yet, cooperatives are localized in a largely agricultural territory with sufficient evidence of differentiation that could potentially be valorized. Hence, with optimal framing, regulation and networking of cooperatives, one can assume a protection of culinary heritage is possible with scalable contribution to food security and needed local development given major recent setbacks.
This paper aims to map the ecosystem services (ES) provided by a reputed agropastoral ecosystem in the south of Albania and ascertain whether social capital affects the level of importance attributed to them. A perception analysis of both buyers and sellers of ES within the pastoral ecosystem is undertaken. The pastoral ecosystem is mainly evaluated for cultural services such as tradition, enhancing the area’s image, and environment ES. The strong inclination towards cultural ES and socioeconomic services indicates a lack of awareness of both buyers and sellers of ES in the local community regarding the environmental aspects of their ecosystem. However, participants showing a higher radius of trust with high linking social capital are more likely to confer very high importance to environmental services. Similarly, the cultural ES (traditional aspect) of the pastoral ecosystem is affected by cognitive and structural social capital. These are interesting findings for public policymaking concerning the opportunity to develop market transaction ES. Its development is more ground-based and effective if participation and civic engagement, especially the Linking dimension, is enhanced in the pastoral community.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.