LANDWELL: Climate-induced welfare impacts of ecosystem goods and services from agricultural and seminatural landscapes in Norway
Alternative title: LANDWELL: Klimapåførte velferdseffekter av endringer i økosystemgoder og -tjenester fra landbruks- og seminaturlige landskap i Norge
The agricultural sector produces a wide range of ecosystem goods and services (EG&S). Agriculture manages a large part of the Norwegian land area, including agricultural and semi-natural landscapes, of potentially great importance to society. The EG&S from these agricultural areas include provisioning services (e.g., food/food security), regulating services (e.g., carbon sequestration, erosion control), cultural services (e.g., landscape aesthetics, tourism, recreation), biodiversity as well as human health and welfare. Agriculture is vulnerable to changes in climatic conditions, and climate change increases the pressure on the agricultural landscape and the production of EG&S. Although climate change is expected to have some positive consequences (e.g., longer growing seasons), climate change will most likely also have negative effects. Extreme weather events are also expected to become more frequent. LANDWELL is an interdisciplinary research project which aims to assess the effects of climate change and how these affect the production of various goods and, in turn, the welfare effects for people. Both EG&S that have a market price and those that do not will be included. We will carry out analyses at both the national and regional levels in Norway and for associated food and tourism industries and livelihoods in selected district communities. The most important research questions LANDWELL seeks to answer are:
• What are the most likely, important climate impacts on EG&S from agricultural and seminatural landscapes in Norway?
• What are the resulting climate-induced welfare impacts in Norway and how are they distributed?
• What are the local economic and wider consequences for associated industries and livelihoods of selected, rural communities?
LANDWELL is a collaborative effort between Ruralis, NIBIO, NINA, Menon Centre for Environmental and Resource Econ., and SSB (project owner).
LANDWELL commenced on 1 May 2021 and held two digital start-up meetings the same year: An internal start-up meeting for the Norwegian collaborating institutions, on 9. September 2021 and a meeting with the project's expert group (Scientific Advisory Board, SAB) on 29. October 2021. The project homepage is at Statistics Norway. no. The website has a hyperlink to NFR's project bank with scientific publications and other information.
In 2022, the project has worked to identify the best indicators for ecosystem goods and services from agriculture that can be used for the scenario modelling in JORMOD both in internal working meetings and in an international workshop with 17 participants, of which 7 are international participants (Task 1.1 and Task 1.2). The international workshop was held 25-28 October 2022 in Oslo and contributed to knowledge exchange both in terms of development in the EU and other countries and to discussions about how different knowledge and experiences can be used to better understand climate and nature-related challenges for Norwegian agriculture. Among other things, the definition and delimitation of semi-natural land, which is discussed among researchers at home and internationally, was thoroughly discussed in the workshop. As a result, the project works with method development for mapping semi-natural land in Norway (manuscript in development). The workshop also contributed to establishing collaborations with international researchers, including discussions of joint, interdisciplinary article ideas. For Task 1.3, the project has presented work on the risk of fire in coastal heathland traditionally used as pasture and how this fire risk is affected by agricultural land use on "Den Lille Store Utslippsdagen" (The Little Big Emissions Day), April 2022, organized by, among others, KLP. This work has now been accepted and will be published in Samfunnsøkonomen on 15 December 2022. The methods used in this work are documented in two Statistics Norway reports, both published by Statistics Norway in 2021. The methodological work on the basis of this analysis was also presented at "GIS-Day" at the University of Oslo, Department of Archaeology in November 2021. The project has also presented acceptance and willingness to pay for carbon taxes at the Frischsenteret at the University of Oslo (WP2) in April 2022. Further work on this topic looks at the population's view of climate policy's possible impact on agriculture and rural Norway (Task 2.1). An article on this topic is under peer review in the Journal of Rural Studies (level 2). Regarding agriculture’s management of land (grazed outfields) and climate, the project has analysed the change over time in preferences for land-use when it comes to planting climate forests on previously grazed areas. One article on this topic is under revision in the journal Climatic Change (level 1) (Task 2.1). The employment contract has been signed for the project's postdoc (Abinet Aweke) at NMBU. She will start in early 2023, as soon as she has defended her PhD at NTNU.
The agricultural sector manages a significant part of Norwegian agricultural and seminatural landscapes providing a large amount of both market and non-market ecosystem goods and services (EG&S) for society. These landscapes and resources are also important for other sectors such as tourism, recreation and food industries and contribute to good living conditions and quality of life, especially in rural areas. Little is still known about both how climate change will affect the agricultural sector’s ability to provide EG&S from cultural and seminatural landscapes, and the overall welfare consequences of these impacts for people and for associated industries. This project aims to fill this gap. We propose a broad, interdisciplinary project, coupling social science (environmental and agricultural economics, rural sociology) with natural sciences (climatology, biology, agronomy, landscape ecology, physical geography). Our approach aims first to utilise and operationalise available research and data on physical climate change impacts on the agricultural sector and derive indicators of change of EG&S. This will form the basis for an ambitious and innovative investigation into methods and applications to reliably assess welfare impacts of projected climate change, estimating both monetary and non-monetary indicators of value on multiple geographical scales in Norway. In addition to high-quality research output, the project will generate user-relevant analyses and recommendations for efficient adaptation policies for the agricultural sector. A team of researchers from Statistics Norway (SSB), Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Ruralis, and Menon Economics will implement the project, in close cooperation with a pre-recruited reference group and an international academic advisory board.
