In order to strike the right balance between agriculture and the environment, policymakers in both developed and developing countries are increasingly resorting to Payments for Environmental Services (PES). PESs are contracts between a farmer and the government in which the farmer receives a payment in exchange for the adoption of greener practices. PES programs usually aim to tackle major current environmental issues but can be expensive. It is thus critical to provide credible evaluations of their effectiveness. Yet, evidence on their impact remains scarce. This project aims to fill this gap by using modern econometric methods, such as experimental and quasi-experimental techniques, to provide the first evidence-based evaluations ever made for a series of agri-environmental programs in France and Brazil. The work is organized around four main projects. Project #1 is a quasi-experimental impact evaluation of the French pesticide-use reduction program, using data provided by the French Department of Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture. Project #2 – “Nudging winegrowers to reduce pesticide use: a behavioural approach” – is a randomized impact evaluation of a pilot pesticide-use reduction program based on non-monetary incentives. The implementation will be run in collaboration with the regional network of site operators in charge of the implementation of the French agri-environmental scheme in Languedoc-Roussillon. Project #3 is an impact evaluation of the French grassland conservation program. This project is a quasi-experimental impact evaluation of the PES schemes, applying regression discontinuity designs to data provided by the French Department of Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture. Project #4 is an impact evaluation of a pilot REDD+ project in the Trans-Amazonian region in Brazil. In this project, we use the introduction of the first PES-based REDD+ project ever launched in Brazil by a Non-Governmental Organization in the region of Para in 2012 as a natural experiment in order to evaluate the long-run impact of this project. In particular, we focus on the permanence of the effects of this REDD+ project by collecting new data from the baseline sample, about three years after the PES program starts. This will be done in close collaboration with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), as part of its Global Comparative Study (GCS) on REDD+, and with the Brazilian non-governmental organization in charge of the implementation of the PES program, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM). The originality of the PENSEE project is twofold. First, we tackle the central issue of the sustainable management of natural resources in a series of empirical studies. Indeed, our project builds on and extends the literature on PES evaluation by providing the first evidence-based evaluations ever made for a series of PES-based programs in France and in Brazil. Second, we will provide original empirical results by using experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation approaches, such as difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity and randomized controlled trial techniques. These approaches have been used extensively in recent years and have permitted credible inferences about the impacts of a wide range of relations, but very rarely about the impact of agri-environmental schemes on agricultural practices and environmental outcomes. Our project will fill this gap.

The TRADEGREEN project examines public policies aiming at reconciling international trade with our environment: the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), subsidies on decarbonated technologies, and environmental provisions in trade agreements. The first two policies reduce carbon leakage. The CBAM can be combined with free emission allowances, with export rebates, or with public investment in technological change. The impact and efficiency of these instruments are investigated in an economic model in which international trade and firms' investment in decarbonated technologies are endogenous. The model is calibrated on European data to obtain estimates. The environmental provisions of trade agreements are analyzed in a framework with asymmetric information about the signatory countries' willingness to protect the environment. Our goal is to come up with environmental provisions that mitigate the harmful impacts of trade on ecosystems, for instance by making the reduction of tariffs contingent on the adoption of more stringent environmental standards. The theoretical analysis is complemented with two empirical evaluations. The first investigates the relationship between the signatory countries' environmental values and policies with the environmental provisions of the trade agreements in various issues such as biodiversity, climate change, GMOs, pesticides, or air quality. The second study focuses on the agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur. Using administrative, economic, and satellite data, we calibrate the theoretical model to estimate tariff cuts on agricultural products contingent on measurable targets on deforestation reduction in the Brazilian Amazone. TRADEGREEN aims at improving our understanding of environmental and trade policies, and quantifying their impact on economics, trade, and our planet.

The Diet+ project proposes to analyse diets in France, by focusing on the relationships between the market mechanisms and the overall quality of diet, including the quality of the consumption, the possible improvements in the foods quality, the quality of the environment, the land use, and the possible improvements in public health. This project will particularly study the impact of diets changes on consumers, supply chains and farmers. These diets changes may come from both food innovations and/or policies aiming at improving both environment and public health. Applied microeconomics combined with food science/engineering will be used for analysing various markets adjustments and possible improvements in supply chains. Econometrics works, experimental economics, industrial analyses will lead to quantified estimates of various markets adjustments coming from these changes in diets. The objective of Diet+ is to provide precise estimates of impacts of diets changes on consumers, supply chains and farmers, by also considering both environment and public health. The project will be divided in three Work Packages (WP) taking into account various markets adjustments from the land use to the consumers’ health. The WP1 will focus on some changes in diets and their influences on markets and supply chains. The WP2 will detail the foods variety offered to consumers and the foods innovations with their impacts on market structures. Based on results of WP1 and WP2, the WP3 will examine the optimal policy that could improve the overall quality of diets. More precisely, the WP1 will focus on the overall change in diet, and its impact on both supply chains and characteristics related to environment and public health. We will focus on the meat sector that is often in front line regarding scientific and public debates. First, we will assess how a change in the demand for meat would impact overall consumers diet and agricultural production, by linking a demand model with an agricultural production model, assuming no food industry reactions. Second, we will study how this change in the demand for meat would influence consumers’ diet, firms’ profits and market shares of supply chains, by linking a demand model with a supply model for meat, assuming no agricultural producers’ responses. The WP2 will study recent consumption trends regarding food variety and innovation. The first task will focus on animal products with healthy and environmental-friendly characteristics, including the new-vegetal substitutes for meat. The second task will analyse the relationship between the market structure, the level of health and environmental-friendly varieties, and the innovations. We also plan to determine how the health and environmental-friendly characteristics affect the value sharing between producers, manufacturers and retailers. The third task is devoted to design one innovation in the cheese sector, by creating a mixed “animal-vegetal” cheese and by evaluating its consumers’ acceptance. The WP3 will analyse impacts of policies on diets, environment, public health, and their consequences on adjustments in supply chains. We will study the optimal choice of instruments such as per-unit taxes/subsidies, labels and/or standards/norms related to meat and dairy products. We will measure the impact of these policies on agents’ surpluses, environment and public health. Additionally, we will pay attention to the transition from the current agro-food sector to a new model aligned with nutrition and low-carbon objectives, which requires a precise study of “progressive” shifts at each stage of the supply chain. Eventually, WP3 will examine the complementarity between health and environment in the analysis of future policy choices. The combination of these different approaches will give a complete view regarding sustainable policies that directly or indirectly influences behaviours, market mechanisms and sustainability of diets.

In the context of agriculture increasingly relying on groundwater irrigation, it is crucial to develop reliable and applicable methods for assessing the sustainability of agricultural systems under climate change. A wide variety of models have been developed for ex-ante evaluation of management policies or assessment of the impacts of land-use changes. They are commonly used to support decision making by stakeholders through participatory approaches. However, due to the difficulty in implementing truly trans-disciplinary projects, the models rarely represent both the complex biophysical processes at stake in agricultural watersheds and the farmer adaptation strategies to changes. Consequently, these models are not able to adequately account for the spatial and temporal interactions and feed-backs between these two components. The Indian context is an extreme case where the integration of these components is both essential and challenging: the “groundwater revolution” which started three decades ago and induced a well identified “groundwater crisis” with tremendous impacts on water resources and ecosystems, is being carried out by millions of very small farmers owning individual borewells, with a large diversity of practices and strategies. The ATCHA project aims to accompany the adaptation of farming systems to climate change by combining an integrated biophysical model with a participatory approach in a network of experimental watersheds in the Karnataka state. Through a truly trans-disciplinary approach, involving hydrologists, geochemists, soil scientists, agronomists, geographers, economists and sociologists and with a strong participation of Indian partners including scientists, extension service agents and stakeholders, we aim at demonstrating the ability of integrated models to share knowledge between researchers and stakeholders and to co-build and assess scenarios of sustainable development of agriculture. The ATCHA project is based on (1) the strong partnership initiated with the International Joint Laboratory IFCWS (Indo-French Cell for Water Sciences, involving the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) which allowed to build an extensive database in the Berambadi experimental watershed (Critical Zone Observatory, ORE BVET) and (2) a specific Indo-French project (CEFIPRA AICHA, 2013-2016) in which an integrated model combining hydrology (AMBHAS), agronomy (STICS), economy (MoGire) and farmer decision (Namaste) models was developed. The ATCHA project will complement the Sujala III project (2014-2019), led by the Karnataka Watershed Department and in which IFCWS takes part in the coordination of the monitoring carried out in 14 experimental watersheds across the Karnataka state. The ATCHA project is composed of 3 work packages (in addition to the coordination WP): i) development of novel methodologies to gather spatialized information on soils and land use, using both ground and multi-satellite data at high spatial and temporal resolution ii) improvement of the model realism by calibrating a large number of tropical crops and bridging knowledge gaps for modelling nutrient cycles in tropical irrigated agro-systems and iii) development of a participatory approach to build and assess scenarios of adaptation to climate change and its critical assessment. We expect the ATCHA project to produce not only significant scientific advances on the functioning of agro-hydrosystems under high anthropogenic pressure but also to have a strong socio-economic impact, in terms of capacity building for the Indian partners (in particular for crop and agro-system modelling), improving the relevance of advice given to farmers by extension services and the efficiency of public policies.