By assuming a combination of specific roles, governments can institutionalize environmental protections through practical and applicable strategies that improve the management of natural resources.
In a forthcoming book Steps Toward Green: Policy Responses to the Environmental Footprint of Commodity Agriculture in East and Southeast Asia, experts from The World Bank, EcoAgriculture Partners, and Clarmondial identify a series of roles policymakers can play to promote environmental stewardship in agriculture. The recommendation is to assess each case and determine how and where more sustainable resource management can be implemented. Due to the multifaceted connections at the nexus of land use, agriculture, and conservation, this often requires policymakers to be conscientious in strategizing which actions to implement.
The forthcoming book Steps Toward Green discusses the factors conditioning the relevance and effectiveness of policies to improve environmental performance of commodity agriculture.
Multifaceted strategies allow governments to make environmental stewardship a priority for green agriculture investments
Steps Toward Green makes the suggestion for governments to play a set of complementary, mutually reinforcing roles to institutionalize environmental stewardship. In designing a strategy for achieving an environmental outcome, government leaders must assess the stakeholders involved, the human interests expressed in the landscape, the associated decision-making bodies, and the status of common pool resources to identify which roles are appropriate for encouraging the participation of each stakeholder group affected by environmental outcomes. For example, a government can be a Definer by endorsing specific environmental goals and assigning which government agencies are responsible for completing these goals. However, if the national government does not provide these agencies with training to build staff capacity to make conscientious decisions relevant to the goal, the national government may be exercising a lost cause. Capacity building implies that governments 1) fund research and specialized training and 2) enable government agencies to be knowledgeable in their new roles.
In East and Southeast Asia, nonprofit organizations, agribusinesses, and civil society have taken immense strides in experimenting with multi-functional landscapes that achieve environmental protection goals, alleviate insecurities in local food systems, and elevate the standard of living for agricultural communities. The development of Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) in the Philippines is a good example of where the government is using a combination of mutually reinforcing roles. NCA places an economic value on ecosystem services (e.g. carbon sequestration, erosion control, and flood regulation provided by forests) allowing policy makers to show the link between the degradation of natural resources with the depletion of national wealth. In this capacity, government agencies are defining the outcome (protection of key natural resources shared across a large area) and assigning responsibilities to specific actors, directing and generating revenues to fund staff time to develop the specific accounts, and enabling key actors to make knowledgeable management decisions by providing specialized training for tracking changes in the landscape by partnering with NGOs.
Join the experts on September 15th in a panel discussion on commodity agriculture, development, and policy in East and Southeast Asia.
A leader in Natural Capital Accounting is the World Bank’s Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) Partnership. This is an international coalition that works with governments and land use planners to make sure environmental benefits (e.g. of clean water, flood control, or healthy fisheries) and the cost of their degradation are accounted for in development planning. The WAVES Partnership has made headway in several countries around the world. One such success story in the making is in the Lake Laguna basin of the Philippines, where collaboration with subnational entities is resulting in water accounts for the lake’s provisioning of drinking water, water pollution, flood and erosion control, and fish stocks for aquaculture activities. Tracking changes to these services over time creates incentives for conscientious management of upstream land resources that protect the lake’s water quality for the Calabarzon and Metro Manila area, the latter of which encompasses one-fourth of the Philippines’ population. Combined, the two cities contribute to 60% of the country’s GDP.
Lake Laguna underpins the activities of 14 million people. Competing uses include: drinking water, recreation, energy, and aquaculture. The conversion of land upstream leads to sediment discharge into the lake. Maps derived from WAVES Policy Briefing: Ecosystem Accounts for Laguna de Bay, Philippines, June 2015.
The Philippines has embraced Natural Capital Accounting since the 1990s, but did not have an institutionalized national arrangement for tracking this information regularly and using it in decision making. The WAVES Partnership is working closely with key decision makers at the national, subnational, and regional levels to provide the scientific knowledge necessary for conscientiously managing the lake’s resources and supporting the development of ecosystem accounts. The Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA), the authority in charge of managing the lake, leads the technical work. Working alongside the Philippine’s National Economic and Development Authority and other agencies, WAVES is providing training and expert support to build capacity around the creation and management of ecosystem accounts.
Building in values for the lake’s “services” makes the costs of diminishing the quality of these resources more obvious to its users. Specifically, Lake Laguna is home to rapidly expanding fish pen developments; in the 1970s, this was one of the fastest growing fish pen areas in the world. Many aquaculturalists work in this area to raise tilapia and milkfish for sale in local and regional markets. Slightly upstream from the lake are large-scale export-based industries in bananas, pineapples, and mangoes, as well as rapidly expanding urban areas near Metro Manila. These operations have increased the flow of sediment into the lake and reduced flood control capacity. Combined with rapid aquaculture expansion, these factors limit the lake’s ability to provide clean water and support capture fisheries.
Setting the example of how the Funder role works to institutionalize environmental stewardship
The LLDA, in collaboration with the WAVES Partnership as well as national and local experts, created accounts to show the consequences of land conversion, such as the build-up of sediment in the lake and a buildup of chemicals in the water, and of over-reliance on aquaculture, which reduces water quality and the productivity of capture fisheries. Accounts for the ability of the lake to control floods, regulate water quality, and provide viable fish stocks encourage the rehabilitation of degraded resources and make a stronger case for agencies like the LLDA to hold a financial interest in the lake’s ecological health.
Natural Capital Accounting is taking hold in the Lake Laguna area due to the investment of personnel and finances from the Philippine government and from international institutions. The WAVES Partnership demonstrates how concerted, collaborative efforts around landscape restoration and sustainable uses can benefit from institutional financial support. More importantly, it demonstrates the effectiveness and necessity of government playing multiple roles along the agriculture (and aquaculture) development process to ensure long-term environmental and economic sustainability.
Learn More
To learn more about the WAVES Partnership and their work in the Philippines, please visit the WAVES website here.
Greening Commodity Agriculture
September 15th Book Launch & Panel Discussion
This event will take place in Washington, D.C., and made available worldwide through a live webcast.
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