Despite reducing the use of pesticides being a major challenge in developed countries, dedicated agri-environmental policies have not yet proven successful in doing so. We analyze conventional farmers' willingness to reduce their use of synthetic pesticides. To do so, we conduct a discrete choice experiment that includes the risk of large production losses due to pests. Our results indicate that this risk strongly limits farmers' willingness to change their practices, regardless of the consequences on average profit. Furthermore, the administrative burden has a significant effect on farmers' decisions. Reducing the negative health and environmental impacts of pesticides is a significant motivator only when respondents believe that pesticides affect the environment. Farmers who earn revenue from outside their farms and/or believe that yields can be maintained while reducing the use of pesticides are significantly more willing to adopt low-pesticide practices. Policy recommendations are derived from our results.

No abstract

This paper develops a formal analysis of the recovery process for a fishery, from crisis situations to desired levels of sustainable exploitation, using the theoretical framework of viable control. We define sustainability as a combination of biological, economic and social constraints which need to be met for a viable fishery to exist. Biological constraints are based on the definition of a minimum resource stock to be preserved. Economic constraints relate to the existence of a guaranteed profit per vessel. Social constraints refer to the maintenance of a minimum size of the fleet, and to the maximum speed at which fleet adjustment can take place. Using fleet size adjustment and fishing effort per vessel as control variables, we first identify the states of this bioeconomic system for which sustainable exploitation is possible, i.e. for which all constraints can be dynamically met. Such favorable states are called viable states. We then examine possible transition phases, from non-viable to viable states. We characterize recovery paths with respect to the time of crisis of the trajectory, which is the number of periods during which the constraints are not respected. The approach is applied to the single stock of the bay of Biscay Nephrops fishery. The transition path identified through the viability approach is compared to the historical recovery process, and to both open-access and optimal harvesting scenarios.

A central issue in the study of sustainable development is the interplay of growth and sacrifice in a dynamic economy. This paper investigates the relationship among current consumption, growth, and sustained consumption in two canonical, stylized economies and in a more general context. It is found that the measure of what is sustainable is the maximin value. That value is interpreted as an environmentaleconomic carrying capacity and current consumption or utility as an environmentaleconomic footprint. The time derivative of maximin value is interpreted as total, net investment. It is called durable savings to distinguish it from genuine savings usually computed with discounted utilitarian competitive prices.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

a b s t r a c tThe maximin criterion defines the highest utility level that can be sustained in an intergenerational equity perspective. The viability approach makes it possible to characterize all the economic trajectories sustaining a given, not necessarily maximal, utility level. In this paper, we exhibit the strong links between maximin and viability: we show that the value function of the maximin problem can be obtained in the viability framework, and that the maximin path is a particular viable path. This result allows us to extend the recommendations of the maximin approach beyond optimality, to characterize the sustainability of economic trajectories which differ from the maximin path. Attention is especially paid to non-negative net investment at maximin accounting prices, which is shown to be necessary to maintain the productive capacity of the economy, whether the development path is optimal or not. Our results provide a new theoretical ground to account for sustainability in imperfect economies, based on maximin prices.