The NSW, Victorian and Commonwealth Governments are in the process of corporatising the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme. As part of this process a water inquiry was established to assist in the determination of the environmental operating conditions of the new business, Snowy Hydro Ltd....

The burning of rice stubbles is widely practised in rice based farming systems in north-west India (Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh). The practice leads to substantial air pollution and associated adverse health effects, increased greenhouse emissions, loss of soil organic matter and lower...

Implementation of Council of Australian Governments (COAG) and State based water reform initiatives are likely to create significant structural adjustment pressures in irrigation areas throughout the Murray Darling Basin. There are concerns about the adequacy of short run models in both...

The potential for soil carbon sequestration to play a significant role in meeting Australia’s greenhouse reduction targets has attracted widespread interest. Despite this interest, the economic scope for soil carbon sequestration remains poorly understood and the practical approaches that...

In recent years, there has been both more widespread evidence of the declining health of many of NSW’s rivers as a result of increased irrigation extractions and increasing community concerns about environmental issues. This has led to a greater focus on the need to re-balance in-stream and...

Reform to the Australian water industry has received considerable attention in recent years. This can be partly attributed to growing community concerns about environmental degradation, increasing competition from extractive water users and greater focus by governments on micro-economic reform....

Recent environmental assessments have highlighted the extent of land degradation in Australia and the significant costs involved in addressing it. With projected investment costs running into tens of billions of dollars, it is not surprising that greater attention is now being focussed on who...

This article evaluates irrigated agriculture sector response and resultant economic impacts of climate change for a part of the Murray Darling Basin in Australia. A water balance model is used to predict reduced basin inflows for mild, moderate and severe climate change scenarios involving 10,...

Invasive animal pests inflict many kinds of damage on the environment, and threaten native fauna and flora. We attempt to value the benefits from the extra biodiversity that is protected if these threats were removed. The NSW Rural Lands Protection Board is a major agency that undertakes pest...

The paper presents empirical evidence of the determinants of catastrophe insurance participation in one of the poorest and most disaster prone countries in the world. In a large-scale household survey carried out in 2006 we ask 3,000 residents in six different districts in Bangladesh facing...