Summary
Peat soils that are drained to enable productive agriculture result in land subsidence and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These have negative effects on the environment, in particular climate change, and rural infrastructure. This article reviews the EU and Dutch regulatory requirements for reducing GHG emissions and discusses options to reduce the negative effects of peat soils. An optimisation farm model based on Dutch farm data provides estimates of farm income losses for three different changes in water levels in peat soils associated with changes in production methods for three options of NH3 emission reductions and three options for nature conservation areas. Model results suggest that carbon credits are an excellent method of financing the costs that farmers face when adapting to legal requirements for lower emissions, ideally raising water levels to –20 cm below field level. The comparison of scenario results also outlines the need to take account of different policy objectives simultaneously in policy evaluation, as do farmers when they adapt their farm practices to the policy environment. Opportunities to add value from markets could also help reduce the income loss from the adoption of more environmentally‐friendly practices.
In cities around the world, housing demand is increasing rapidly. Since housing supply is inelastic, house prices are rising as well, which causes affordability problems. Although there is consensus about the need to raise production, there is debate about its location: within the existing city, on underused or derelict buildings and sites, or on greenfield land outside existing city boundaries? The question we address is how researchers on the science–policy interface can support these debates and facilitate evidence-based decision-making. We address two major problems while doing this: (1) the complexity of the object at hand, that is, of the development of urban systems and (2) the politicised nature of science-for-policy. The contribution of this paper is that it links complexity theory to the literature about science-for-policy, two usually unconnected literatures. An additional contribution is that it shows how the role of the scientist as ‘honest broker’, as developed by Roger Pielke, can be operationalised and applied to existing policy debates. We do that for the Dutch debate about housing development in existing urban areas.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.