A Global Evaluation of Public Policies to Mitigate and Reverse Land Degradation

Project Information

LAND-POLICY

Grant agreement ID: 101075824

DOI

10.3030/101075824

EC signature date 29 March 2023

Start date 1 June 2023

End date 31 May 2028

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 452 644,00

EU contribution

€ 1 452 644,00

Coordinated by

RHEINISCHE FRIEDRICH-WILHELMS-UNIVERSITAT BONN
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LAND-POLICY (A Global Evaluation of Public Policies to Mitigate and Reverse Land Degradation)

Reporting period: 2023-06-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Land degradation is one of the major sustainability challenges of our time. It is a driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, and water pollution, and reduces global agricultural productivity. This requires effective and economically efficient policies. LAND-POLICY is a project that combines the global measurement and modelling of land degradation trends with econometric research designs to estimate policy effectiveness, their benefit-cost ratios, and how design features and contextual factors explain policy performance. The project consists of four work packages. In the first WP, global datasets are being built, including a new database of public policies relevant to land conditions, maps of different land degradation indicators, such as soil productivity trends, vegetation and agricultural yield changes, soil erosion, biodiversity and land cover changes. In the second WP, econometric research designs (such as difference-in-differences, difference-in discontinuities, and synthetic control) are used to estimate the causal effect(s) of public policies on land conditions. The comprehensiveness and global scope of the analysis means that for the first time, we are obtaining the “full picture”, largely free of selection and publication biases, and methodologically unified. In the third WP, all the policies’ costs and benefits are being compared to each other and we quantify how much benefit each policy has been generating per its costs. In the fourth WP, we use both conventional econometric techniques and novel machine learning approaches to systematically explain when and why some public policies perform better than others. This research generates new insights on how to improve public policies to mitigate and reverse land degradation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We have compiled and published a large database on public agri-environmental policies from 1960 to 2022 for all countries: Wuepper, D., Wiebecke, I., Meier, L., Vogelsanger, S., Bramato, S., Fürholz, A. Finger, R. 2024. Countries’ Agri-Environmental Policies from 1960 to 2022. Nature Food. In this publication we also already added an analysis of the role of public soil policies in reducing the global issue of soil erosion and find that about 40% of the soil erosion differences between countries comes from differences in their policies. These policies are the basis for our subsequent policy analysis and they are also being used by other researchers for complementary analyses.

We have also already finished a first policy analysis specifically focusing on forests. Focusing on public forest policies, we have found globally overall a reduction in deforestation and forest degradation from public policies. However, there is a lot of heterogeneity globally and the most important factor is policy implementation (stringency and enforcement): Wuepper, D., T. Crowther, T. Lauber, D. Routh, S. LeClec’h, R. Garrett, J. Börner. 2024. Public Policies and Global Forest Conservation. Empirical Evidence from National Borders. Global Environmental Change.

A third research article that is already published is our methods paper on using satellite data in the context of agricultural and environmental economics. We have already learned a lot about this from our data preparation work for our several ongoing policy evaluations for which we rely heavily on satellite data to measure outcomes (land conditions) and contexts (environmental processes, geography): Satellite Data for Agricultural and Environmental Economists: Theory and Practice. Agricultural. Agricultural Economics.

We are currently working on the following analyses:

(1) A global survey among relevant non-governmental organizations, governmental agencies, and international development organizations, on their experiences with environmental policy implementation in each country, (2) A global analysis of the association between different land degradation processes and crop yield gaps, (3) A global analysis of the association between different land degradation processes and socio-economic vulnerabilities, (4) A country-level analysis of the association between different land degradation processes and socio-economic vulnerabilities for India, (5) A global analysis of the effectiveness of public policies to improve cropland soil conditions, (6) A global analysis of the effectiveness of public policies to increase biodiversity on the world's grasslands, also considering the trade-off with food production, (7) A global analysis of the effectiveness of public policies to conserve natural grassland, (8) A global analysis of the effectiveness of pubic policies to regulate land cover transitions, including the distinction between intact and non-intact forests, (9) A global analysis of the effectiveness of ecosystem restoration projects, (10) A systematic literature review on ecosystem restoration, (11) Mapping traditional communities all over Brazil and quantifying their conservation contributions, (12) An impact evaluation of soil conservation projects in Ethiopia, combining satellite and ground data, (13) An analysis of the effectiveness of fertilizer policies in Africa

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

From all our research so far, there are two large patterns that are becoming increasingly clear: First of all, governmental regulations are impactful in protecting the land. For a while now, much of the academic attention has prioritized research on private business policies (e.g. value chain initiatives) and for public policies, market based solutions such as payment schemes for ecosystem services. The impression has been that governmental land-use regulations can be neglected. However, our research suggests that they should rather be seen as the core foundation on which all other policy tools are added as complementary levers. Whether for croplands, grasslands, or forests, payment schemes and various other policies are sometimes more (forest conservation) and sometimes less (grassland biodiversity) effective, but land-use regulations are found to be important across the board, with meaningful magnitudes of effect sizes for every single land cover. The second larger pattern that emerges from our research is that contextual factors strongly favor high-income countries with strong institutions and large environmental policy budgets. Thus, particular for land outcomes in lower income countries, attention should not only be paid to policies, but also their enabling / constraining environment. This also points to an important role of international support and exchange, to ensure that countries actually have the capacity to implement well those policies that are most promising. As more and more funding becomes available for global conservation and restoration of land, this opens up new opportunities to meaningfully address global issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and slow agricultural productivity gains.

We will continue research on this to obtain as much and as reliable as possible empirical evidence until the end of the project. An important ongoing question is what strategies are best to translate these insights into the largest possible real-world impacts.