Objectives: The objective of this study was to simulate human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in a heterosexual population and subsequently analyze the incremental costs and effects of introducing a ...vaccination program against HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18 in Denmark compared with screening alone. Methods: The analysis was performed in two phases. First, an agent-based transmission model was developed that described the HPV transmission without and with HPV vaccination. Second, an analysis of the incremental costs and effects was performed. The results of prevalence estimates of HPV, genital warts, cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN1–3), and cervical cancer in the model simulations before and after introduction of HPV vaccination were extrapolated to the Danish population figures. Incremental costs and effects were then estimated. Future costs and effects were discounted. Results: Cost-effectiveness ratios for annual vaccination of 12-year-old girls, with a vaccination rate of 70 percent without a catch-up program, were estimated at approximately €1,917 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY, 3 percent discount rate) and €10,846/QALY (5 percent discount rate), given a 62-year time horizon. Conclusions: A vaccination program would incur extra vaccination costs but would save treatment costs and improve both quality of life and survival.
Large knowledge gaps currently exist that limit our ability to understand and characterise dynamics and patterns of land-use intensity: in particular, a comprehensive conceptual framework and a ...system of measurement are lacking. This situation hampers the development of a sound understanding of the mechanisms, determinants, and constraints underlying changes in land-use intensity. On the basis of a review of approaches for studying land-use intensity, we propose a conceptual framework to quantify and analyse land-use intensity. This framework integrates three dimensions: (a) input intensity, (b) output intensity, and (c) the associated system-level impacts of land-based production (e.g. changes in carbon storage or biodiversity). The systematic development of indicators across these dimensions would provide opportunities for the systematic analyses of the trade-offs, synergies and opportunity costs of land-use intensification strategies.
Context
South China karst is undergoing large scale land-use conversions driven by reforestation projects aiming at combating land degradation. However, the spatial extent of these human induced ...land-use changes is largely unknown.
Objectives
This study aims at quantifying land use changes in South China karst in the context of large scale restoration and reforestation projects.
Results
We apply an extensive field survey on land-use mapping and find that 45,406 km
2
of farmland have been converted to forest, while 41,811 km
2
have been deforested (likely due to timber harvest), which corresponds to a forest expansion of 6%, and an 8% contraction of farmlands. We find that the converted areas agree well with satellite observed greening trends, explaining why South China karst is considered a global hot-spot of vegetation cover increase. In total, 43% of the farmland to forest conversions have taken place on sloping hills steeper than 25° and predominantly at larger distances from settlements. However, 19,464 km
2
of the steep sloping areas were still farmland in 2016, which is 15% of the total farmland in South China karst.
Conclusions
Large scale forest dynamics are observed on sloping hills. Given the low agricultural productivity but high erosion risk, considerations regarding loss of crop production and local food security must be balanced against gains in expected provisioning of ecosystem services (e.g. carbon sequestration, timber production).
Monitoring systems to improve forest conditions Rasmussen, Laura Vang; Jepsen, Martin Rudbeck
Current opinion in environmental sustainability,
June 2018, 2018-06-00, Letnik:
32
Journal Article
Recenzirano
•Forest monitoring purportedly influences forest governance effectiveness.•Limited scholarly work addresses the conjunction of multiple types of monitoring.•Links between monitoring and forest ...conditions are often assessed qualitatively.•Contextual factors mediate how monitoring affects forest conditions.•Rigorous comparative assessment across sites and monitoring systems are needed.
There is a lack of generalizable empirical analyses of whether particular types of monitoring promote effective forest governance, and under what circumstances. We reviewed a specific sample of the peer-reviewed literature on how monitoring, including state-level, participatory, and third-party monitoring, might affect forest conditions. Examining 25 cases, we found three trends which limit our understanding of the effect of monitoring. First, there was a bias toward studies in Brazil and India, indicating that the literature might not be globally representative. Second, no studies compared different types of monitoring. Third, the majority of studies relied on qualitative approaches, making comparison across cases difficult. These insights suggest focusing research agendas on comparative assessment across sites and monitoring systems.
Many studies have demonstrated the efficacy of protected areas for conserving biodiversity; however, few have investigated the drivers and environmental outcomes of losses in site protection. These ...events, termed protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD), have been documented in various contexts in recent years, one of the most prevalent being Cambodia. We conducted a review of Cambodia’s recent sociopolitical history and assessed deforestation patterns related to PADDD events to determine the drivers and environmental outcomes of PADDD in this context. The drivers of these PADDD events can be traced to large-scale land concessions granted across Cambodia between 1998 and 2012. Policies heavily promoted private investment in agro-industrial activities by way of economic land concessions, some of which were located in protected sites, resulting in PADDD across 12.5% of Cambodia’s protected lands. In total, these legal changes led to 18 downgrades and, eventually, two degazettements. Results show that levels of deforestation and forest fragmentation are significantly higher in these downgraded sites compared to those which remained fully protected. Furthermore, heightened levels of deforestation are apparent up to 7 km outside of economic land concessions on average. The conservation impact of PADDD in this context is likely high, as we document that 20 species of threatened amphibians, birds, and mammals have at least 5% of their global habitat range within or near a downgraded site. This study highlights one potential pathway and outcome of PADDD and may be seen as a guide to preemptively identifying potentially harmful outcomes in similar contexts.
This study investigates how Maya farmers in Mexico respond to agri-environmental subsidies aimed at promoting sustainable land use decisions. We do so through a serious games approach, using a ...tailor-designed board game to identify the land use behaviors of Maya farmers. The game simulated three different subsidy programs promoting mechanized agriculture, forest conservation, and agroforestry. We find that farmers tend to clear forested areas in response to agroforestry subsidies. Also, we observe that land use decisions are path-dependent, with farmers adhering to traditional and mechanized agriculture and hesitant to engage in conservation and agroforestry. These findings highlight the potential of serious games as a tool to improve understandings of how farmers make land use decisions and the resulting land use change patterns. Specifically, our findings show that serious games are well suited to understand how path dependency in decision-making can influence the effect of subsidies – and whether subsidies thereby achieve the intended goals, such as reduced deforestation.
Cyclones and other extreme events exert increasing pressure on South-East Asia’s societies and put smallholder farmers at risk. Here, we draw on participatory causal-diagramming workshops, interviews ...and survey data, to provide contextually grounded knowledge about rural communities’ exposure and vulnerability to climate-related hazards in western Myanmar. By tracing how the 2015 cyclone Komen led to a prolonged humanitarian disaster, we show that climate-related risks in this area arise from the complex interplay of households’ pre-existing vulnerabilities, persistent farming challenges, extensive disasters and cascading effects, which disparately affect lowland and upland communities. The different household strata’s dissimilar vulnerabilities vis-à-vis Komen’s impacts were rooted in the distinct exposure of their production systems to landslides and floods. Pre-existing land-access barriers, land-degradation processes, climatic stressors, agricultural pests and diseases, and chronic lack of assets and food insecurity further mediated households’ vulnerability. Relief interventions did not stop the disaster’s escalation, although this could have been achieved with early technical and material assistance to address the cyclone’s impacts on farmers’ land. Targeted aid for households facing imminent food insecurity or debt crisis could have lessened engagement in precarious coping strategies and distress migration. A diversification of households’ livelihood and land-use practices and increased redundancies of critical assets and infrastructure could help to mitigate future cyclone-triggered disasters. By demonstrating the strengths of local knowledge approaches in untangling the complex interplay of extreme events with households’ everyday vulnerabilities and agricultural land-use practices, we make a case for more contextually grounded disaster risk and climate adaptation research.
Global climate change is predicted to alter precipitation and temperature patterns across the world, affecting a range of infectious diseases and particularly foodborne infections such as ...Campylobacter. In this study, we used national surveillance data to analyse the relationship between climate and campylobacteriosis in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and estimate the impact of climate changes on future disease patterns. We show that Campylobacter incidences are linked to increases in temperature and especially precipitation in the week before illness, suggesting a non-food transmission route. These four countries may experience a doubling of Campylobacter cases by the end of the 2080s, corresponding to around 6,000 excess cases per year caused only by climate changes. Considering the strong worldwide burden of campylobacteriosis, it is important to assess local and regional impacts of climate change in order to initiate timely public health management and adaptation strategies.
•We present centennial HANPP trends in nine European countries based on national data.•HANPP declined from 63% of potential NPP (1902) to 55% (2003).•Intensification and contraction of cropland and ...grazing land explain HANPP trends.
Profound changes in land use occurred during the last century in Europe, driven by growing population, changes in affluence, and technological innovation. To capture and understand these changes, we compiled a consistent dataset on the distribution of land-use types and biomass extraction for nine European countries (Albania, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) since the late 19th to early 20th century, when national statistical publications became available. We then calculated a range of indicators within the “human appropriation of net primary production” (HANPP) framework for the nine countries and for the sum of all countries on a yearly basis from 1902 to 2003. We find that cropland and grazing land contracted in all countries except Albania in the observed period, while forestland increased. Crop yields increased in all countries, most strongly during the second half of the 20th century. In some countries, biomass extraction on grazing lands increased to a similar extent. Overall, HANPP was high but declined slightly from 63% of the net primary production of potential vegetation in 1902 to 55% in 2003. This is the result of increasing crop yields on shrinking cropland and grazing land, which was only partly offset by increasing biomass extraction on expanding forests and by expanding settlement areas. HANPP trends on croplands were mostly uniform across countries, but differed substantially on grazing lands. While political differences, e.g., between communist and capitalist countries, did not directly affect HANPP dynamics, economic and population growth were related to increases in biomass extraction for long periods of time in much of the sample, and only in recent decades did the collapse of the Eastern Block’s Comecon market, EU agricultural policy, and world market developments coincide with a stagnation of biomass extraction.
The land potential for producing biomass for bioenergy purposes has been highly debated in recent years. The present paper analyses the possibilities and consequences for land use and agricultural ...production of biofuel production in Denmark based on domestic wheat and rape under specific scenario conditions for the period 2010–2030. The potential is assessed for a situation where policy targets for renewable energy carriers in the transport sector is reached using biofuels, and where second generation ethanol increasingly substitutes first generation ethanol.
Three scenarios are developed and evaluated: a baseline, an alternative scenario allowing continuous growth in the now dominant livestock branch and a biofuel scenario assuming that efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in biofuel displaces part of the domestic production of fodder.
Results show that the biofuel demand could be met in 2020; but only if current rape oil production is used to satisfy local bio-diesel demand. It would also imply that the Danish bio-diesel export currently supplying a minor part of the German fuel market would seize. In 2030, however, only about 60 percent of the biofuel demand would be covered by self-sufficiency. If biofuels were to displace animal production to make up for this, a reduction of the pig production between 10 and 20 percent would result. Efficiency increases across production branches would allow the animal production to continue un-affected if about half of the rape oil produced for other purposes is utilized.
► The demand for a 10% biofuel mix in Denmark in 2020 can be met by domestic crops. ► To meet biofuel demand 2nd generation ethanol products must be economically viable. ► A trade-of between biofuel and animal production is foreseen after 2020. ► Direct and indirect land use changes outside Denmark are likely to occur.
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