The authors used a framed field experiment with coffee farmers in Costa Rica after tropical storm Alma to explore how farmers react to different levels of risk to income and productive means from extreme weather under measurable and unmeasurable uncertainty. They also examined whether investment costs to reduce vulnerability exhibit economies of scope.
In contrast with what we perceive is the conventional wisdom about setting a second-best emissions tax to control a uniformly mixed pollutant under uncertainty, we demonstrate that setting a uniform tax equal to expected marginal damage is not generally efficient under incomplete information about firms’ abatement costs and damages from pollution.
Organic agriculture (OA) is a concrete and promising strategy for adaptation to climate change and variability for rural communities has additional potential as a mitigation strategy.
OA is a sustainable livelihood strategy with decades of use in several climate zones and widely variable local conditions. Its financial requirements for adaptation or mitigation are low. Further research is needed on yields from OA and its mitigation and sequestration potential. Other critical aspects to consider are information provision and institutional structures.
Read María A. Naranjo' opinion article (Estrategias de adaptación al cambio climático en Costa Rica) in "La Nación" (January 28th), related to the EfD Central America Project "Small Farmers' Determinants of Private Adaptation to Climate Change Strategies" (Spanish only).
This paper attempts to bring some central insights from behavioural economics into the economics of climate change.
When the Stern Review challenged the conventional wisdom and called for strong and immediate action on climate change, reactions were initially fierce. However, the ensuing debate has shown a new consensus in the making.
This article contains three contributions to this discussion posted by: Robert Mendelsohn, Thomas Sterner and U. Martin Persson, and John P. Weyant.
Climate change is likely to exacerbate the dry conditions already experienced in southern Africa. When rainfall does come, it is likely to be in bursts of greater intensity, leading to erosion and flood damage. However, these predictions have had very little influence on policy in southern African countries.
This paper describes an integrated modeling approach to combine a top-down, recursive CGE model with a bottom-up, electricity-sector model to simulate two categories of policies.