Minimising ecological and social externalities in tropical crop expansion

The Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures focuses on advancing sustainability research and connecting it with the policy debate around how humans can live in a more sustainable way.
grantham.sheffield.ac.uk

We are recruiting Scholars who will combine outstanding intellect with a strong commitment to public engagement, leadership and action. These ambitious individuals will complete interdisciplinary PhD research projects to help solve the challenges of sustainability. They will be supported by the Centre through a unique training programme, designed to equip them with the skills to become policy advocates and leaders in sustainability matters.

Your application for this studentship should be accompanied by a CV and a 200 word supporting statement. Your statement should outline your aspirations and motivation for studying in the Grantham Centre, outlining any relevant experience.

Please select ’Standard PhD’ and the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences. Fill in the title of your desired project and the name(s) of the supervisors’. The starting date of the PhD will be the start of the next academic year - 1 Oct 2017. The ’Funding stage’ on the form will be ’project studentship’.

With growing demand for tropical agricultural products, including palm oil, rubber and wood-pulp, there is an urgent need to find sustainability between natural ecosystems, people and economics. Each crop has an emerging crop-specific sustainability initiative in varying degrees of development aimed at reducing the wider environmental and social damage they cause (externalities). A major overlooked impediment is the planning methodologies and resulting plans of government resource-use agencies, which increases the conflicts between environment, society and different crop types for land. Focusing on West Africa and Southeast Asia, this Scholarship will:
(1) Quantify the ecological and social externalities of agricultural expansion.
(2) Determine the economic costs and benefits of companies internalizing these externalities.
(3) Spatially simulate optimal landscape plans for multiple crops that maximize ecological, social and economic sustainability.
We seek applicants with interests in tropical conservation science and environmental economics, with enthusiasm for computer-based research and some fieldwork.

For many tropical crops, there is an emerging crop-specific sustainability initiative in varying degrees of development. By taking a single crop approach to sustainability, there is increasing evidence that crops are competing with each other for suitable areas for expansion. For example, restrictions on deforestation for oil palm are resulting in a massive conversion of jungle rubber in Indonesia and jungle cocoa in West Africa to monoculture oil palm, marginalizing these small-holders, and resulting in deforestation for rubber and cocoa elsewhere. Thus isolation between sustainability initiatives promotes competitive maximization that can result in perverse outcomes, indicating a need for a step change in thinking that instead promotes collaborative optimization.

Major corporations are increasingly becoming aware via Natural Capital thinking that they must internalize the costs of the wider social and environmental damage they cause (externalities). Critical is an accurate quantification of externalities through the supply chain in preparation for internalization. Even if they achieve this, a major overlooked impediment remaining is the lack of Natural Capital thinking in the planning methodologies and resulting plans of government resource-use agencies, which increases the conflicts between society, natural systems, and different crop types, fueled by external economic interests. Developing enhanced spatial planning that in corporates externalities to limit perverse outcomes is a key frontier.

This Grantham Scholarship will focus on West Africa and Southeast Asia where oil palm, rubber, cocoa, and paper-pulp companies are competing to expand as land runs out. It will meet three Objectives:

(1) Quantify the ecological and social externalities of agricultural expansion using methodologies of the Natural Capital Alliance. Ecological values will include biodiversity, protected areas, and restoration, and social values will include food sovereignty and water.

(2) Determine the economic costs and benefits of internalising the externalities from Objective 1, and thus moving the burden of environmental and social costs to consumers.

(3) Spatially simulate optimal landscape plans for multiple crops that maximize ecological, social and economic sustainability via collaboration with a network of commodity producer and purchaser companies who are working with co-supervisor Martin Hollands.

Key words:
Tropical agriculture, environmental economics, rainforest biodiversity, agricultural policy, Natural Capital, commodity supply chains