Page 22 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

ecuador’s banana sector under climate change: an economic and biophysical assessment to promote a sustainable and climate-compatible strategy
the characteristics that drive efficiency from those that contribute to the lack of sustainability. The analysis should include the key aspects of the market, institutions and governance.
Subsequently, a biophysical assessment of the agricultural system should be undertaken, taking into account the agronomic, agro-ecological and geospatial (or territory) considerations relating to the evaluation of the likely impacts of climate change and the scope for adaptation. The economic and biophysical assessments will identify the existing sources of unsustainability and the economic incentives and disincentives that drive them. Such an assessment
will establish the technical options available in terms of adaptation, as well as
the economic incentives that are essential. To transition to a more sustainable agricultural system, however, a socio-institutional analysis will be required in order to address the critical issue of governance so as to ensure social acceptance and inclusive policy-making by stakeholders at the national, sector and farm levels. This will pinpoint the critical sources of vulnerability and will identify possible solutions to develop appropriate policies and implementation strategies.
3.2 Description of proposed framework
The proposed framework includes specific agriculture sub-sectors (e.g. crop- based, livestock, mixed, agroforestry or a geospacial ecosystem) that share a common set of biophysical and socio-institutional analyses that will focus on the sustainability implications of the system and the exacerbating impacts of climate change. The aim of the analysis is to identify the scope of climate adaptation and enhance resilience, while ensuring continuous economic viability and social equity (Figure 2). To enable a transition to a climate-compatible (sometimes referred as climate-smart agriculture), the framework is implemented in three stages. Figure 3 illustrates this.
4. Stage 1: Tri-dimensional analytical
This stage includes the gathering of evidence. The framework is schematically described in Figure 4.
4.1 Economic analysis
The economic analysis should include an appraisal of the production, productivity and extent of input use (intensification). Agronomy and agro-ecology are determining factors as are the economic drivers (incentives and disincentives). The focus of the economic analysis should be twofold: an appraisal of the
(i) economic efficiency and its drivers, including the sources of comparative advantage, and (ii) negative externalities that contribute to the current state of unsustainability of the system. This can be linked to the presence of incentives in overuse input resources that lead to the sub-optimal use of resources or economic disincentives to resource preservation. This, in turn, should lead
to an appraisal of the negative externalities that are linked to the agricultural system, defined by its agronomic and agro-ecological factors, as well as to the set of economic incentives and disincentives that drive the production process.
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