Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Agricultural land management strategies to reduce phosphorus loads in the Gippsland Lakes, Australia

Contents:

Author Info

  • Roberts, Anna M.
  • Pannell, David J.
  • Doole, Graeme J.
  • Vigiak, Olga

Abstract

A target to reduce phosphorus flows into the Gippsland Lakes in south-eastern Australia by 40 per cent to improve water quality has previously been established by stakeholders. An integrated analysis at the catchment scale is undertaken to assess the agricultural land management changes required to achieve this target, and to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of these changes. It appears technically feasible to achieve a 40 per cent reduction in P load entering the lakes, but the least-costly way of doing so would require around A$1 billion over 20 years, a dramatic increase in the current levels of funding provided for management. On the other hand, a 20 per cent P reduction could be achieved at much lower cost: around $80 million over 20 years and requiring more modest land-management changes. The choice of optimal land-management strategies depends upon whether on-going costs for management maintenance are likely to be available after the initial funding ceased. Reliance on voluntary adoption of ‘Current Recommended Practices’ (CRPs) is unlikely to deliver changes in management practices at the scale required to have sufficient environmental impacts. Enforcement of existing regulations for the dairy industry would be amongst the most cost-effective management strategies. The major implications of this work for agriculturally induced diffuse-source pollution include the need for feedback between goal setting and program costs, and consideration of factors such as the levels of landholder adoption of new practices that are required, and the feasibility of achieving those adoption levels. Costs, land holder adoption of new practices and socio-political risks appear neglected in the formulation of many water quality programs. The framework used in this study provides a strong basis for discussion and debate about the environmental outcomes that can be achieved with limited budgets and also about the agricultural production and environmental tradeoffs required to reduce diffuse-source nutrient pollution. The results are relevant to comparable water-quality programs worldwide.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://purl.umn.edu/102454
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Western Australia, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics in its series Working Papers with number 102454.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 28 Jul 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ags:uwauwp:102454

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009
Phone: (61) (8) 6488 1757
Fax: (61) (8) 6488 1098
Email:
Web page: http://www.are.uwa.edu.au/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: benefit: cost analysis; dairy; diffuse source; trade-offs; Environmental Economics and Policy; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; Q15; Q25; Q53; Q57;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Suzi Kerr & Kit Rutherford & Kelly Lock, 2007. "Nutrient Trading in Lake Rotorua: Goals and Trading Caps," Working Papers 07_08, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. 210 – Under-estimating the costs of environmental protection
    by David Pannell in Pannell Discussions on 2012-03-19 12:00:00
  2. 210 – Under-estimating the costs of environmental protection
    by David Pannell in Pannell Discussions on 2012-03-18 23:48:04
  3. 235 – Ranking environmental projects 1
    by David Pannell in Pannell Discussions on 2013-04-30 16:03:56
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Pannell, David J., 2013. "Value for Money in Environmental Policy and Environmental Economics," Working Papers 146501, University of Western Australia, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:uwauwp:102454

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (AgEcon Search).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.