Environmental protection and poverty alleviation in the developing world are usually heralded as joint objectives. However, these two goals are often associated with different sectoral policy instruments. While so-called payments for environmental services (PES) are increasingly being promoted...

Declining populations in rural and regional areas have become a high political priority in Australia. Calls for measures to support rural communities have been prompted by substantial population declines in some country areas. In Europe and the USA, similar political pressures to halt population...

Wetland ecosystems on privately owned farms – such as those on the Murrumbidgee River Floodplain in the state of New South Wales, Australia – provide a mix of potentially valuable outputs to their owners and the wider community. The mix of values generated is dependent on the biophysical...

Choosing a mechanism to encourage landholders to change their land management inorder to deliver environmental outcomes is a complicated process. Careful instrumentselection may count for little if uptake and adoption are insufficient to meetperformance targets. Similarly, investors may require...

Irrigated agriculture often leads to recharge to local and regional groundwater systems greater than what the systems can absorb, resulting in the development of shallow watertables causing salinity and waterlogging. Policy based on emissions trading offers one option for effective management of...

The use of market-based instruments (MBIs) to provide and protect ecosystem services has gained significant attention in Australia. Despite their popularity, MBIs are not appropriate for the provision of all ecosystem services. Rather, MBIs must be carefully designed given the ecosystem service...

The lack of appropriate incentives through conventional markets is a major cause of deterioration of biodiversity on private land. In response, governments often intervene through changing the incentives faced by landholders. There are, however, potentially many ways that the incentives to...

A rising saline aquifer in the Coleambally Irrigation Area constitutes a common pool resource, characterised by costly exclusion and rival utilisation for regional irrigators. The approach outlined in general terms in this paper is the application of formal, empirical techniques to guide the...