Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of regulating ecosystem services, such as cli-
mate regulation. Second, soil carbon also has
a role in the production of private goods as
agricultural food production. In a classifica-
tion of the role of soil carbon in agricultural
production, it is important to distinguish be-
tween impacts on mean yield and the impact
on the variability of yield in response to en-
vironmental and climate variability. The dif-
ferent ways in which soil carbon is valued
has important implications for policy design.
The value of soil carbon in climate regula-
tion relates to the benefits to current and
future society as a whole. Therefore, policy
schemes need to align benefits at temporal
and spatial scales quite different to the scales
that influence potential private opportunity
costs in agriculture. Incentives to invest in
soil carbon for robust future agricultural pro-
duction have a very different distribution of
costs and benefit. In this case, both benefit and
costs accrue largely to the private agents, how-
ever much uncertainty and ignorance about
costs and benefit may be involved. The chap-
ter reviews current payment for ecosystem
services schemes to give an overview of the
experiences of constructing incentive schemes
for the conservation and restoration of soil
carbon, which is to capture some part of its
wider societal value and distribute it to those
who may forego the private benefits for doing
so. Designing schemes to encourage private
agents to take long-term perspectives on agri-
cultural management and for the prudent
handling of risks is important to encourage
private self-protection. Payments for ecosys-
tem services schemes are still in their in-
fancy. Future research needs to acknowledge
that, in most contexts, multiple services and
multiple beneficiaries are in place. There-
fore, targeting one form of value generation
is likely to under-perform in terms of overall
welfare generation, and equity issues are
likely to become a major concern in future
scheme developments. On  the other hand,
when valuing soil carbon, it is also important
to recognize the intermediate role of carbon
in the production of goods and services, lead-
ing to a risk of double counting and an over-
estimation of values.
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