Productive agriculture under global change

This research program, headed by Prof Randy Stringer, evaluates how climate change and related threatening processes impact on the interrelationships between agricultural landscapes, sustainable production systems and environmental services.

Managing Environmental Services in Agricultural Landscapes

This research program responds to concerns over natural resource degradation and poverty in the face of increasing climate uncertainty. In recent years, development policy has focused on innovative payment for environmental service (PES) programs. PES programs aim to improve market and institutional incentives, including direct payments for the provision of carbon sequestration, watershed management, landscape amenities and biodiversity conservation.

Policies and program involving payments for environmental services are in place in several developing countries. However, the implications of PES programs for the rural poor, the optimal design of programmes to contribute to economic development, and how these initiatives integrate into international treaties to address global warming and biodiversity loss are still not clear. This research attempts to fill this gap by bringing together cases from countries around the world.

Project team
Randy Stringer (University of Adelaide), Erwin Bulte (Wageningen University), David Zilberman (University of California, Berkeley), Leslie Lipper (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization)

Selected publications
Zilberman D, Stringer R, Lipper L, Sakuyama T. (Eds). 2008. Managing Environmental Services in Agricultural Landscapes: Policies and Incentives for Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries. Springer Press, New York. (in press).

Zilberman D, Bulte E, Stringer R, Lipper L. 2008. Environmental services, agriculture and poverty reduction. Environment and Development Economics. (in press).

Ura K, Damania R, Bulte E, Stringer R. 2008. Sustainable agriculture, wildlife biodiversity and poverty in Bhutan. Springer Press, New York. (in press)

Stringer R. 2005. The multiple roles of agriculture in developing countries. In Brouwer F (Ed.) Sustaining Agriculture and the Rural Environment. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Damania R, Karanth KA, Stit B. 2003. The economics of protecting tiger populations: Linking household behaviour to poaching and prey depletion. Land Economics 79 (2):198-216.

Investment Framework for Environmental Resources

This project forms part of the Future Farm Industries CRC, building on the highly successful Salinity Investment Framework (www.sif3.org). The Investment Framework for Environmental Resources aims to develop and integrate similar investment frameworks for water quality, biodiversity, and pest plants and animals; to accelerate the uptake of more sophisticated approaches to regional environmental planning by regional NRM bodies; and to inform governments about approaches to policy design and implementation consistent with current research knowledge, both bio-physical and socio-economic.

Project team
Andrew Manson (PIRSA), Rick Llewellyn (CSIRO), Ian Black (SARDI), Randy Stringer, Wendy Umberger (University of Adelaide)

Cooperation and Collective Action to Increase Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture for Local Landscape Management

This project examines opportunities for highly localised clusters of farmers to achieve more rapid technology adoption for improved local landscape management. An increasing amount of national and international research is focused on identifying optimal landscape design for the delivery of sustainable agricultural production, ecosystem, and other services. However, little attention has been paid to how this might be implemented by landholders in the absence of strict regulatory requirements or expensive payment schemes.

It investigates the form and function of local ‘neighbourhood’ farmer organisation to facilitate improved management at a landscape scale and the range of private and public benefits that may be possible. The research draws on 40 years of production and climate data from producers in Wimmera to reduce the information, learning and management-time costs that are known to limit the adoption of complex innovations.

Project team
Andrew Manson (PIRSA), Rick Llewellyn (CSIRO), Randy Stringer, Wendy Umberger, Hugh Wytner (University of Adelaide)

Selected publications
Wynter H. 2007. Rural Change in Wimmera: A Case Study of a Group of Producers between 1965 and 2006.

Climate Change Impacts on Adelaide Gardens

As the realisation that climate change is happening gradually takes hold in the consciousness of the public worldwide, urban gardeners are being challenged to re-assess their practices to meet new imperatives. Widespread water shortages and restrictions to water use are being experienced everywhere from the Europe to the western United States of America, and Australia. Whether for crop irrigation, public landscapes or home gardens the effects of cuts to water entitlements and caps on use are being felt. In Australia, the imminent collapse of the Murray-Darling River system threatens the environment, the economy and the population.

Current research aims to better understand how home gardens are likely to adapt and to mitigate climate change. More specifically the research seeks to develop insights to resolve climate change challenges.

Project team
Trevor Nottle, David Jones, John Jennings, Randy Stringer (University of Adelaide)