Entity-Based Landscape Modelling to Assess the Impacts of Different Incentives Mechanisms on Argan Forest Dynamics

Farid El Wahidi, Julien Radoux, Quentin Ponette and Pierre Defourny
Additional contact information
Farid El Wahidi: Centre de la Recherche Forestière, 10050 Rabat-Agdal, Marocco
Julien Radoux: Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Quentin Ponette: Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Pierre Defourny: Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Land, 2015, vol. 4, issue 4, 1-27

Abstract: Illegal occupation of argan forest parcels by local households is a new phenomenon in South West Morocco. This is primarily due to the weakening of traditional common control systems and to the boom of the argan oil price. The scope of this work is to develop a decision support system based on dynamic spatial modelling, allowing to anticipate the land tenure dynamics and their impact on forest stand degradation under different policy scenarios. The model simulates the change of land possession by locals and the forest stand degradation levels. The methodological approach combines a Markov chain analysis (MCA) with stakeholders’ preferences for land tenure. First, parcels’ transition probabilities are computed using the MCA. Second, the acquiring suitability map is derived from multi-criteria evaluation procedure (AHP) using biophysical and socio-economic data. Finally, uncertainty is introduced in the simulation based on probabilistic analysis for supporting socio-economic diversity and non-mechanistic human behavior. The modelling approach was successfully used to compare three scenarios: business as usual (continuation of illegal acquiring), total disengagement of the population and private/public partnership with incentives for restoring argan parcel. The model yields geographic information about ( i ) the magnitude of the on-going process; ( ii ) the potential occurrence of land use conflicts induced by new policies; and ( iii ) the location of land conservation or degradation hot-spots . The outcomes of the “business as usual” and of the “total disengagement” models were similar over a 30-year simulation period: in both cases, the proportion of “highly degraded” parcels was doubled and the number of “quite degraded” parcels was increased by 50%. On the other hand, should the private/public partnership effectively work, about 40% of the parcels could be restored to a sustainable level.

Keywords: spatial modelling; multicriteria evaluation; Markov chain analysis; entity based; stakeholder’s preferences; incentives mechanisms; argan forest dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1003/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1003/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:4:y:2015:i:4:p:1003-1029:d:58687

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().