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Masters Degrees (Agricultural Economics)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Agricultural Economics) by Author "Browne, Michelle."

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    Investments in ecological infrastructure: an assessment of the expected costs and benefits of rehabilitation of the Mthinzima Wetland in KwaZulu-Natal.
    (2018) Buthelezi, Nothando Sharon.; Ferrer, Stuart Richard Douglas.; Browne, Michelle.
    The uMgeni River is an important water resource in KwaZulu-Natal. It is, however, one of the major systems identified as having water that may pose a serious health risk to users of its (untreated) water. Increasing pollution in the upper catchment, supplying the Midmar Dam has been attributed to sewage effluent due to inadequate sewage infrastructure, expanding agricultural lands and household waste from Mpophomeni Township. The Mthinzima River flows adjacent to the settlement where it joins a tributary that flows through Mpophomeni settlement (a 6000-unit settlement that was developed in the 1960s), after which it flows under the district road (R617), through a degraded wetland system (The Mthinzima wetland) and into Midmar Dam. The Mpophomeni township development was poorly planned and should not have been situated near a strategic water resource, because it posed threats to the water resource. Two interventions were proposed to reduce the pollution flowing from the Mpophomeni Township into Midmar Dam: a new Waste Water Treatment Works (WWTW) would be built in conjunction with rehabilitation of ecological infrastructure. The rehabilitation of ecological infrastructure would primarily entail wetland rehabilitation. Ecological infrastructure has value that is important for human well-being. However, the key incentive challenge is the public dimension of the value. Often studies that aim to value investments in ecological infrastructure give total economic value of the ecological infrastructure instead of the change in total economic value attributable to the investment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the incremental change in supply of services from the wetland post rehabilitation, considering the demand, supply and opportunities for those wetland services. The new conceptual framework introduced in this study considered the potential of ecological infrastructure to supply its services, the opportunity (activities or circumstances that make it possible for the wetland to be used) afforded to the ecological infrastructure to supply its services and the demand for ecological services. It also examines the impacts of investments (or disinvestments) in ecological infrastructure and/ or engineering infrastructure on the value of ecological infrastructure. Economic Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) was used for this analysis, it is widely applied as an appraisal technique particularly for use as an input into public decision-making processes. CBA both helps inform decision-makers and helps hold them accountable for their decisions. The cost benefit analysis technique was used to evaluate whether investments in ecological infrastructure bring about a worthwhile change in ecosystem services. The study was limited by data shortages and used the replacement cost technique (one mega litre waste water treatment works) to value the incremental change in wetland services post rehabilitation. The net present value results of the CBA were all positive, the estimated net present value for change in wetland services post rehabilitation over the period of 20 years was found to be between R7 086 573 and R11 935 240 using different discount rates. The net present value of the wetland rehabilitation investment showed an increasing pattern as the wastewater treatment plants maintenance costs were assumed to be a higher percentage of the wastewater treatment plant. Therefore, the study concluded that investments in ecological infrastructure in the form of the Mthinzima wetland rehabilitation was worthwhile as the investment yielded net positive marginal results post rehabilitation. The results of CBA do not govern the choice of investment especially as data availability was limited, rather it is a useful tool to test the robustness of a project to alternative assumptions concerning the magnitude of costs and benefits, and the various social demands with respect to the return on invested capital. Based on this the results of the CBA, the study concluded that investing in wetland rehabilitation of the Mthinzima wetland is robust.
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    Measuring household resilience in developing countries : evidence from six African countries.
    (2011) Browne, Michelle.; Ortmann, Gerald Friedel.; Hendriks, Sheryl Lee.
    In this study, a household resilience score was developed as a measure of rural household resilience to identify households with low resilience and to measure progress towards improved household resilience. Resilience is the ability of households to cope with risk. The motivation for the study originated from the first objective of the Framework of African Food Security (FAFS) of improved household risk management, and the indicator of progress towards this objective – proposed by the FAFS - a resilience score. A review of the literature indicated that the assets owned by a household could be used as a proxy for resilience. The household component of the Demographic and Health Surveys for six African countries was used to develop and apply the resilience score. The score was estimated using an index of assets owned by the household and information regarding household access to certain services and characteristics of the dwelling. There is disagreement in the literature concerning the best method of constructing an asset index in terms of how to weight the variables included in the index. As a result, four methods of constructing an index of socio-economic status (SES) were selected for comparison in this study: two linear principal component analysis (PCA) techniques; a non-linear or categorical principal component analysis (CATPCA) method; and a simple sum of assets technique. The results from the application of each of the four indices to the country data and the resulting classification of households into quintiles of SES were compared across several assessment criteria. No single method out-performed the others across all the assessment criteria. However, the CATPCA method performed better in terms of the proportion of variance explained by the first principal component and the stability of the solution. The results showed that for all methods, SES was not evenly distributed across the sample populations for the countries analysed. This violates the assumption of uniformity implied when using quintiles as classification cut-off points. As an alternate to the quintile split cluster analysis was applied to the SES scores derived for each country. The classification of households into SES groups was repeated using k-means cluster analysis of the household SES scores estimated by the CATPCA method for each country. The results showed that a greater proportion of households fell into relatively lower levels of SES, which is in contrast to the assumption of uniformity of SES made when using the quintile cut-off approach. Cluster analysis better reflected the clustered nature of the household data analysed in this study, compared to the quintile cut-off method. In a final analysis, the index of SES along with k-means cluster analysis was applied to household data from two different time periods for five African countries to determine whether the resilience measure was able to detect changes in household SES between the two periods and, therefore, whether the tool could be used to monitor changes in household resilience over time. The results showed evidence of adjustments in SES over time: there were differences in the per cent of households allocated to the clusters of SES between the two periods. Using the CATPCA index and k-means cluster analysis, Egypt, Uganda and Mali showed an increase in the per cent of 'poor' households, while for Kenya and Tanzania there was a reduction in the per cent of households allocated to the first cluster between time periods: the decrease for Kenya from 2003 to 2008 was as much as 13 percentage points. The observed changes in SES were then compared to changes in national poverty estimates reported in the literature. The resilience score developed in the study displayed an ability to track changes in household SES over time and could be used as a measure of progress towards improved household resilience. As such, the resilience measure could be valuable to policy-makers for monitoring the impacts of policies aimed at improving household resilience. Future research is recommended before the reliability of the resilience measure developed here can be fully ascertained.