Sustainable Land-use Practices in European Mountain Regions under Global Change: an Integrated Research Approach

Huber, Robert; Bugmann, Harald; Buttler, Alexandre; Rigling, Andreas

doi:10.5751/es-05375-180337

Cited by 28 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…The policy scenarios are consistent with national-level scenarios developed by the MOUNTLAND project (Huber et al 2013c), which present potential pathways for national-level demographic development, socioeconomic dynamics, and land use policy developments in relation to changing climate conditions based on global greenhouse emission scenarios (IPCC 2000, Abildtrup et al 2006). …”

Section: Policy Scenariossupporting

confidence: 72%

Combining Policy Network and Model-Based Scenario Analyses: An Assessment of Future Ecosystem Goods and Services in Swiss Mountain Regions

Hirschi¹,

Widmer²,

Briner³

et al. 2013

E&S

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ABSTRACT. We argue that the often-proclaimed disregard of ex-ante assessments of the provision of ecosystem goods and services in policy-making processes is not only due to a neglect or a misinterpretation of the results of such assessments in the relevant political processes, but also due to an inaccurate inclusion of political variables into those assessments. To address this weakness, we combine a model-based scenario analysis with a policy network analysis. Analyzing the structure of the policy network and taking into account the policy preferences of the individual network actors allows us to assess the feasibility and likelihood of policy developments as derived from scenario-based modeling assessments. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach in an analysis of potential policy measures aimed at maintaining crucial ecosystem goods and services in Swiss mountain regions, with a specific focus on agriculture, which is arguably one of the most important sectors for various ecosystem goods and services in those regions. Our results show that a production-oriented agricultural policy still has strong political support and, consequently, a status-quo protection scenario is very likely. In contrast, a more environmentally friendly agricultural policy is unlikely if it leads to extensive new regulations for agricultural production. Even with a greening scenario performing best within a set of ex-ante model-based assessments of future policy options, our policy network analysis suggests that changes in agricultural policy would have to reconcile the support of the provision of nonmarketable ecosystem goods and services with market deregulation policies in order to become politically feasible.

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Section: Policy Scenariossupporting

confidence: 72%

Combining Policy Network and Model-Based Scenario Analyses: An Assessment of Future Ecosystem Goods and Services in Swiss Mountain Regions

Hirschi¹,

Widmer²,

Briner³

et al. 2013

E&S

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“…The framework in this study is based on the integrated research approach as applied in the Mountland project (Huber et al 2013a). The core of the project explicitly considers different feedback between ecosystem dynamics, socioeconomic assessment of EGS, and policy options (Huber et al 2013b).…”

Section: Conceptualized Feedback-loop Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Social-Ecological Feedback Effects in the Implementation of Payments for Environmental Services in Pasture-Woodlands

Huber¹,

Briner²,

Peringer³

et al. 2013

E&S

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. 2013. Modeling social-ecological feedback effects in the implementation of payments for environmental services in pasture-woodlands. ABSTRACT. An effective implementation of payment for environmental services (PES) must allow for complex interactions of coupled social-ecological systems. We present an integrative study of the pasture-woodland landscape of the Swiss Jura Mountains combining methods from natural and social sciences to explore feedback between vegetation dynamics on paddock level, farm-based decision making, and policy decisions on the national political level. Our modeling results show that concomitant climatic and socioeconomic changes advance the loss of open grassland in silvopastoral landscapes. This would, in the longer term, deteriorate the historical wooded pastures in the region, which fulfill important functions for biodiversity and are widely considered as landscapes that deserve protection. Payment for environmental services could counteract this development while respecting historical land-use and ecological boundary conditions. The assessed policy feedback process reveals that current policy processes may hinder the implementation of PES, even though a payment for the upkeep of wooded pasture would generally enjoy the backing of the relevant policy network. To effectively support the upkeep of the wooded pastures in the Jura, concomitant policy changes, such as market deregulation, must also be taken into account.

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“…Land abandonment is driven by the interaction of environmental and socio-economic factors, such as climate, topography, soil conditions, lack of road-infrastructure development, or degree of part-time farming within a region [6][7][8][9][10]. These interactions result in complex social-ecological systems that can only be investigated by a holistic approach and integrated research [11][12][13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity Analysis of a Land-Use Change Model with and without Agents to Assess Land Abandonment and Long-Term Re-Forestation in a Swiss Mountain Region

Brändle

Langendijk

Peter³

et al. 2015

Land

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Land abandonment and the subsequent re-forestation are important drivers behind the loss of ecosystem services in mountain regions. Agent-based models can help to identify global change impacts on farmland abandonment and can test policy and management options to counteract this development. Realigning the representation of human decision making with time scales of ecological processes such as reforestation presents a major challenge in this context. Models either focus on the agent-specific behavior anchored in the current generation of farmers at the expense of representing longer scale environmental processes or they emphasize the simulation of long-term economic and forest developments OPEN ACCESSLand 2015, 4 476 where representation of human behavior is simplified in time and space. In this context, we compare the representation of individual and aggregated decision-making in the same model structure and by doing so address some implications of choosing short or long term time horizons in land-use modeling. Based on survey data, we integrate dynamic agents into a comparative static economic sector supply model in a Swiss mountain region. The results from an extensive sensitivity analysis show that this agent-based land-use change model can reproduce observed data correctly and that both model versions are sensitive to the same model parameters. In particular, in both models the specification of opportunity costs determines the extent of production activities and land-use changes by restricting the output space. Our results point out that the agent-based model can capture short and medium term developments in land abandonment better than the aggregated version without losing its sensitivity to important socio-economic drivers. For comparative static approaches, extensive sensitivity analysis with respect to opportunity costs, i.e., the measure of benefits forgone due to alternative uses of labor is essential for the assessment of the impact of climate change on land abandonment and re-forestation in mountain regions.

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Sustainable Land-use Practices in European Mountain Regions under Global Change: an Integrated Research Approach

Cited by 28 publications

References 63 publications

Combining Policy Network and Model-Based Scenario Analyses: An Assessment of Future Ecosystem Goods and Services in Swiss Mountain Regions

Combining Policy Network and Model-Based Scenario Analyses: An Assessment of Future Ecosystem Goods and Services in Swiss Mountain Regions

Modeling Social-Ecological Feedback Effects in the Implementation of Payments for Environmental Services in Pasture-Woodlands

Sensitivity Analysis of a Land-Use Change Model with and without Agents to Assess Land Abandonment and Long-Term Re-Forestation in a Swiss Mountain Region

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