 Valuing the environmental externalities of oasis farming in Left Banner, Alxa, ChinaYongping Wei, Robert White, Kelin Hu and Ian Willett Ecological Economics, 2010, vol. 69, issue 11, 2151-2157 Abstract: Agriculture's environmental footprint is expanding and one of its most critical impacts in China is the over-exploitation of surface water and groundwater from aquifers. This study investigated an approach for estimating the physical dimensions of the environmental externalities from a maize cropping system in oasis farming of the arid north-west of China, and the monetary valuation of these environmental externalities based on integrated process-based biophysical and economic models. The simulation results show that current farming practices cause 7854 Yuan/ha of groundwater recharge cost, 7696 Yuan/ha of water treatment cost, and 91 Yuan/ha of N2O mitigation cost. These costs lead to a social benefit-cost ratio of only 0.55, although the farmers' benefit-cost ratio was 1.85. A combination of adoption of recommended best management practices by farmers, and an increase in the water price to 1.1 Yuan/m3 could maintain both the social and farmers' benefit-cost ratios above 1, but the costs of recharging groundwater were large in all cases. Keywords: Monetary; valuation; Environmental; externalities; Oasis; farming; Integrated; economic; and; biophysical; modelling; Water; pricing; Best; management; practices (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:11:p:2151-2157 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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