ICARUS · Institutional Compatibility Analysis for Resource Use Sustainability
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2009-04-01 → 2011-03-31
- EU contribution
- €161,260
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-IEF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Institutional compatibility analysis for resource use sustainability
The ICARUS applies new institutional economics (NIE) to evaluate the role of institutions on the sustainability of agriculture and rural areas. The 'agriculture-society transactions' (ASTs) has been identified as the unit of analysis of this research. According to the NIE approach, the sustainability of a transaction is measured in terms of value creation and the way this value creation is shared by the 'contracting' parties (i.e. agriculture and society). We used these concepts to find a methodology to compare, in terms of sustainability, different outcomes of different institutional settings under which ASTs are worked out. This approach also clarified the fundamental role of institutions in conditioning ASTs sustainable outcomes and it provides a useful framework to better recognise the right level of policy interventions. One basic point to study the sustainable use of resource in agriculture is paying attention to the institutional dimension of sustainability too. But, how could we depict the role of institutions in relation to sustainability? To answer to this question we decided to build up a theoretical framework which analyses the role of institutions in conditioning sustainable resource allocation within AST. To explain this we used and adapted the scheme of Williamson (2000) as revisited by Slangen et al. (2008). In this framework we recognise sustainable resource use as the outcome of a decision-making process (level V) conditioned by the other four institutional levels. More specifically if we define a typical combination of social embeddedness (level I), institutional environment (level II) and governance structure (level III) with the name of 'institutional setting', we can argue that these institutional settings lead to the actual incentive structures (level IV) which influence the resource allocation and exchange (transactional) process which take place in society (level V). Given its aim and this theoretical background, the ICARUS project work plan was structured in 5 tasks: (i) Task 1 has been related to set up the theoretical framework. (ii) Task 2 relates to policy analysis of the 'new' rural development measures. (iii) Task 3 has been focused on the identification of different institutional settings in the European Union. (iv) Task 4 has been dedicated to the analysis of farm behaviour with a specific focus on family farms. (v) Finally, task 5 has been developed in order to implement more empirical-oriented analyses such as regional case studies. The main findings of the project in each task are synthesised with the relative milestones represented either by already published papers or working papers under submission to refereed journal or presented at international conferences. The project has provided different conceptual and methodological insights and its approach is suitable to be applied also in different time horizon (sustainability when), for different purposes (sustainability why), with different criteria of evaluation (sustainability how), for different levels of sectorial / territorial aggregation (sustainability where) and for different types of stakeholders (sustainability for whom). Moreover, the project provides a useful source of knowledge on the conceptualisation of sustainable agriculture in a social scientific perspective. This point highlights the need to look at the linkages between the process of institutional formation and sustainable resource uses in the agricultural sector. The project clearly indicates that further researches need to be considered to develop the theoretical model and to test it by applying different methodological approaches. References - Slangen L. H. G., Loucks, L., Slangen A., (2008): Institutional Economics and Economic Organisation Theory, Wageningen, Wageningen Academic Publishers. - Williamson O. E. (2000): The new institutional economics: taking stock, looking ahead, Journal of Economic Literature, 38, pp. 595-613.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The Institutional Compatibility Analysis for Resource Use Sustainability (ICARUS) project aims at filling the lack of attention which has been given in agricultural economic literature to institutional causes of unsustainable land use (Oskam, Feng, 2008). This can be done by introducing, both at a conceptual and an empirical level, a formalised methodology to determine how incompatibility between policy instruments (such as rural development measures) and pre-existing institutional settings could influence the sustainability of natural resource use in different European rural contexts. More specifically in this project we would like to focus our attention on the influence of institutional dynamics (such as the effect of introduction of new rural development measures in the working institutional settings of a local context) on land use decision of family-farms, which are, at the moment, the most relevant organisational forms of land management in the European rural areas. Under the common definition of family farms, in fact, it is possible to find all over the European Union Member States a range of different organisational modes or governance structures, which goes from single owner to private limited company in which the family holds all the shares (Slangen et al., 2008). Each organisational form is characterised by a specific decision-making setting but, as a common background, the decisions about resource use are mainly influenced by factors related on the family needs and context relationships. Multiple and sustainable land use provided by a range of multiple farm types is a key-element which characterises the European rurality, and a relevant part of it is constituted by “family farming” land use settings. This is the basic idea around which this project has been pivoted. To achieve this objective we need, on one hand, to understand better the fundamental processes of institutional formation, together with the compatibility between the formal and informal rule
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY · WageningenCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union