Abstract
The desire for refining status quo cost–benefit protocols to fully encompass econometric model uncertainty motivates the search for improved technology. Availability of unique Ethiopian highlands milk-market livestock data provides an ideal laboratory for investigation of alternative land-use pathway designs. In these contexts, we present novel methodology for ranking and selecting sustainable ‘land-use pathways,’ arguing that the methodology is central to sustainable-land-use-policy prescriptions, providing essential innovation to assessments hitherto devoid of probabilistic foundation. Demonstrating routine implementation of Markov-Chain, Monte-Carlo procedure, ranking-and-selection enactment is widely disseminable and potentially valuable to land-use policy prescription. Application to a sample of Ethiopian-highlands, land-dependent households highlights empirical gains compared to conventional methodology. Applications and extensions that profit future land-use sustainability within the Ethiopian highlands and, also, more generally, are discussed.
Highlights
As noted, occasionally, within recent contributions [1,2,3,4], human–livestock interactions are one of the major contributing forces effecting global land-use change
The usual tool applied for informed evaluations of the impacts of land-use change is the conventional method of cost–benefit analysis
We demonstrate how measurement problems are resolved, straightforwardly, as an outcrop of conventional methodology, exploiting extant Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) methods
Summary
Within recent contributions [1,2,3,4], human–livestock interactions are one of the major contributing forces effecting global land-use change. In deriving estimates of key parameters and, having a procedure for adequately representing this uncertainty present and embedding it within the decision-making process is one attraction of the alternative methodology In this context, Markov Chain Monte Carlo procedures prove indispensable for navigating the rich and varied model space confronting the investigation. The windfalls that are likely to arise evolve from the discernment of appropriate policy prescriptions hitherto ignored or left nascent by conventional methodologies and the the likely gains accruing implementation of improved cost–benefit procedures that take fuller account of all prevailing and relevant empirical uncertainties Locating one such beneficial procedure is the task presented before us and is the task with which we engage in the remainder of this contribution. This paper presents a procedure for ranking and selecting alternatives in the general context of policy evaluation and the specific context of land-use prescription within which sustainable livestock systems may co-exist [17].
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