Natural Resource Management and Modelling (Forests, Fisheries, Organic farming)

Our research on natural resources is concerned with the sustainable management of renewable resources including biodiversity, forests, water resources, sustainable agriculture and organic farming, energy resources and marine resources. The main goal being to address complex environmental problems such as the rapid loss of the world’s ecosystem services, climate change, biodiversity loss, overfishing and the degradation of marine ecosystems and to improve the management of these natural resources to support their sustainability. In the case of fisheries, we have a local project on cold water coral with marine ecologists.  This uses bioeconomic modelling to evaluate different management strategies for Irish cold water corals.  A study on organic farming in Ireland is also described below.

Valuing ecosystem functions: the case of cold water corals

In this study we employ the production function approach to quantify functional values associated with ecosystems. Overfishing and degradation of cold water coral ecosystems are in part due to the fact that the environmental services provided by cold water coral reefs go un-rewarded, understating the private value of these marine ecosystems. Environmental services include the delivery of preferred and essential fish habitat, carbon capture helping reduce climate change, pharmaceutical products, and preservation of biodiversity. ENRE researchers have employed the production function approach to develop the theory and methods for pricing ecosystem functions and resilience linked to preferred and essential fish habitat. This approach treats coral habitat as capital stock variables (which provide an input to the fishery) along with the other physical, natural and human capital forms. 

Adoption of organic farming in Ireland

This study is the first “in depth” economic analysis of organic farming in Ireland. In particular it investigates the process of adoption by conventional farmers of organic farming practices.  The Irish organic farming sector occupies just over 1% of the agricultural area, and is operated by just over 1,300 farmers. These figures illustrate that the Irish organic sector is quite small in comparison to other European countries, with an EU average uptake rate of 4% of the agricultural area. In addition, the Irish government set a target of 5% of the agricultural area under organic farming by 2012. Achieving this target requires the conversion of existing farms. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to improve our understanding of farmers’ adoption decisions by investigating the factors that affect the adoption of organic farming in Ireland. More specifically, the intention of conventional farmers to convert to organic drystock farming, adoption and possible abandonment decisions over time.  The study also explores differences between farmers who adopt at an early, medium, late stage or who do not adopt at all. This is achieved by utilising primary data collected specifically for this research from Irish drystock farmers. The research seeks to improve an understanding of farmer decisions by augmenting economic models with models from social-psychology and rural sociology. Finally, the overall objective is to provide a detailed analysis of the decision of Irish drystock farmers to adopt organic farming.  For more details on this see some of the publications below.

Enre’s staff involved in these projects:

Hugh Kelley

Doris Laepple

Naomi Foley

Tom van Rensburg

ENRE publications on Natural Resource Management and Modelling.

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