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Deforestation in the southern Yucata...

Busch, Christopher Bennett.

Deforestation in the southern Yucatan: Recent trends, their causes, and policy implications.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Deforestation in the southern Yucatan: Recent trends, their causes, and policy implications.
Author:	Busch, Christopher Bennett.
Description:	248 p.
Notes:	Adviser: W. Michael Hanemann.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0661.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International68-02A.
Subject:	Gerontology.
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=3253792

Deforestation in the southern Yucatan: Recent trends, their causes, and policy implications.
Busch, Christopher Bennett.

Deforestation in the southern Yucatan: Recent trends, their causes, and policy implications. - 248 p.

Adviser: W. Michael Hanemann.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2006.

Cattle ranching has the potential to greatly increase cumulative deforestation in the SY. Scarcity of household labor is a key constraint for the region's smallholding farmers. Unlike cultivation of crops, pasture is much less labor intensive than cultivation of crops. Pasture is also much less constrained by soil fertility. Pasture can be grown permanently, or nearly so, if properly maintained. In practice, farmers typically accumulate pasture over time by planting grasses after a year or two of cultivating crops. The effect is that pasture substitutes, at least partly, for land that would have otherwise been returned to secondary forest in the absence of cattle ranching due to the shifting cultivation methods in use in the SY.Subjects--Topical Terms:

199455
Gerontology.

Deforestation in the southern Yucatan: Recent trends, their causes, and policy implications.
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100 0 $a Busch, Christopher Bennett. $3 264327
245 1 0 $a Deforestation in the southern Yucatan: Recent trends, their causes, and policy implications.
300 $a 248 p.
500 $a Adviser: W. Michael Hanemann.
500 $a Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0661.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2006.
520 # $a Cattle ranching has the potential to greatly increase cumulative deforestation in the SY. Scarcity of household labor is a key constraint for the region's smallholding farmers. Unlike cultivation of crops, pasture is much less labor intensive than cultivation of crops. Pasture is also much less constrained by soil fertility. Pasture can be grown permanently, or nearly so, if properly maintained. In practice, farmers typically accumulate pasture over time by planting grasses after a year or two of cultivating crops. The effect is that pasture substitutes, at least partly, for land that would have otherwise been returned to secondary forest in the absence of cattle ranching due to the shifting cultivation methods in use in the SY.
520 # $a Programs that offer payment to landowners for the environmental services their land provides, such as payments for the carbon benefits of forestry projects under the Clean Development Mechanism, are one of the few potential win-win options at tropical forest frontiers. Some observers feel such projects are part of an optimal response to global warming, though the institutional and management challenges they present are nontrivial. We describe candidate Clean Development Mechanism type projects that could be undertaken in the SY and discuss research showing a large potential for forestry projects throughout Mexico more generally.
520 # $a The story that emerges from modeling results and other evidence is one in which behavior is driven by the interplay of incentives, underlying constraints, a lack of alternative opportunities, government inducements, and household preferences---including risk aversion. Cattle ranching reduces risk and vulnerability. Cattle are more robust to climatic extremes and serve as a savings mechanism for people without easy access to banks. Cattle ranching, which uses relatively more land and less labor than crop cultivation, also fits well with the resource constraints of small household farmers in the SY who hold land in relative abundance. Finally, for many years cattle ranching has received substantial government support in the form of credits and subsidies.
520 # $a This dissertation explores recent trends in deforestation in the Southern Yucatan (SY) of Mexico. Our main empirical finding is that in recent years the expansion of pasture for cattle has driven net forest loss, i.e. deforestation, in the area we studied in the SY. Over the time period 1997--2003, we find an annual deforestation rate of 0.28%, which was entirely due to the expansion of pasture for cattle. Growth in pasture countered declines in land share that occurred in both maize and chili, the main alternative land uses, over the same time period.
520 # $a To date the drivers of this largest category of agricultural land use---pasture for cattle---have remained mostly unexplained. In two modeling chapters, we explore these questions: (1) what determines the allocation of land to pasture within the context of the overall agricultural portfolio, and (2) what are the determinants of the process driving more and more households to begin cattle ranching?
590 $a School code: 0028.
650 # 0 $a Gerontology. $3 199455
650 # 0 $a Economics, General. $3 212429
650 # 0 $a Economics, Agricultural. $3 212485
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710 0 # $a University of California, Berkeley. $3 212474
773 0 # $g 68-02A. $t Dissertation Abstracts International
790 $a 0028
790 1 0 $a Hanemann, W. Michael, $e advisor
791 $a Ph.D.
792 $a 2006
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