Incentive mechanisms of carbon farming contracts: A systematic mapping study.

Despite increasing interest, a lack of comprehensive knowledge regarding the efficient design and implementation of carbon farming schemes remains. These schemes must efficiently achieve higher carbon sequestration, incentivize farmers, and increase farmers' participation in global carbon markets. Our study systematically reviews, describes, and maps available evidence related to carbon farming contracts to assess different incentive mechanisms for carbon farming. We conduct a systematic mapping review of articles extracted from various databases employing the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence method. We shortlist 52 articles and analyze about 40 global case studies, identifying three main incentive mechanisms of carbon farming contracts, namely, result-based, action-based, and hybrid payments. We examine how these incentive mechanisms are designed, in addition to associated payment types, monitoring approaches, and barriers to implementation. Result-based payments include stringent monitoring and can be implemented through auctions, carbon credits, product labels or certificates. Action-based payments are found to be simpler, with lower monitoring requirements for farmers and can be paid upfront or after contract implementation. Hybrid payments combine both techniques, offering low-risk and guaranteed payments for farmers and definite environmental mitigation impacts. Result-based and hybrid payments motivate farmers to innovate to meet environmental objectives while also connecting them to carbon markets. The major challenges to developing a successful carbon farming project include lack of permanence, non-additionality, and the absence of stringent monitoring, reporting, and verification standards, all of which affect farmers' incentives. This study determines that carbon farming contract design and efficiency can be improved by analyzing the lessons learned from previous experiences. By examining and improving the attributes that define different incentive mechanisms, farmers can be better motivated to enroll in carbon farming schemes and benefit from increased access to carbon markets to potentially transform agriculture into a viable tool for climate action.

Bioeconomy and Circular Economy: Implications for Economic Evaluation in the Post-COVID Era.

The objective of this paper is to review selected insights about the current economic research on the Bioeconomy and circular economy, with a particular focus for the role of primary sector, and to derive implications for organisation, evaluation and valuation practice in the context of the post-COVID era. A framework for the analysis of optimal level of circularity and related economic and evaluation concepts is developed for this purpose. We highlight how higher focus on circularity will increase the complexity of market relationships, contributing to flexibility, but also to uncertainty. The paper argues that these issues will become more important in the post-COVID era, due to the plea for increasing Bioeconomy resilience. New organisational concepts and models are hence needed. Evaluation, on the other hand, will need to be embedded even more in the decision-making processes, in spite of the increasing uncertainty and difficulties in evaluation.

The role of spatial information in the preservation of the shrimp nursery function of mangroves: a spatially explicit bio-economic model for the assessment of land use trade-offs.

Conversion to aquaculture affects the provision of important ecosystem services provided by mangrove ecosystems, and this effect depends strongly on the location of the conversion. We introduce in a bio-economic mathematical programming model relevant spatial elements that affect the provision of the nursery habitat service of mangroves: (1) direct or indirect connection of mangroves to watercourses; (2) the spatial allocation of aquaculture ponds; and (3) the presence of non-linear relations between mangrove extent and juvenile recruitment to wild shrimp populations. By tracing out the production possibilities frontier of wild and cultivated shrimp, the model assesses the role of spatial information in the trade-off between aquaculture and the nursery habitat function using spatial elements relevant to our model of a mangrove area in Ca Mau Province, Viet Nam. Results show that where mangrove forests have to coexist with shrimp aquaculture ponds, the inclusion of specific spatial information on ecosystem functions in considerations of land allocation can achieve aquaculture benefits while largely preserving the economic benefits generated by the nursery habitat function. However, if spatial criteria are ignored, ill-advised land allocation decisions can easily lead to a collapse of the mangrove's nursery function.