The Economics Of Soil Conservation In Developing Countries

First published in 1985. This book examines wide variety of ways in which environmental deterioration, in particular soil erosion, can be viewed and the implicit political judgements that often inform them. Using the context of developing countries, where the effects tend to be more acute due to underdevelopment and climatic factors, this work aims to examine this source of uncertainty and make explicit the underlying assumptions in the debate about soil erosion. It also rejects the notion that soil erosion is a politically neutral issue and argues that conservation requires fundamental social change. This title will be of interest to students of environmental and developmental studies.

The author can be contacted at:[email protected].

Soil erosion has become a problem of crisis proportions in developing countries around the globe, and better approaches to land management are desperately needed. This book provides analytical frameworks to guide the creation and appraisal of soil erosion control programs. The authors discuss a broad range of important issues involved in designing and implementing more effective soil conservation programs. The book begins with a discussion of the physical and economic dimensions of soil erosion and an estimation of the extent of the problem. It then explains how to improve the evaluation of soil conservation programs by integrating scientific knowledge with economic methods and procedures. A series of practical illustrations graphically demonstrates the application of the concepts derived from the theory. The most important organizational, institutional, technical, and macroeconomic aspects of soil and land management appraisal are outlined, and the major elements of project or program design are also pinpointed and illustrated. Finally, the book suggests areas most in need of future research.

Recommendations of the working groups; Technical papers.

Conservation agriculture aims to make better use of agricultural resources through the integrated management of available soil, water and biological resources, combined with limited external inputs. This study examines the financial and non-financial factors that affect the adoption and success of conservation agriculture at farm, national and global levels.

Contents: Dirt poor: poverty, farmers and soil resource investment/ by Leslie Lipper; Methodological issues in analysing the linkages between socio-eocnomic and environmental systems/ by Dan Osgood and Leslie Lipper. Includes 1-page abstracts in French, Spanish and Arabic