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KULUNDA: Climate Smart Agriculture pp 275–287Cite as

The Role of Institutional Policy Congruity for Sustainable Land Use in the Kulunda Steppe

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Part of the Innovations in Landscape Research book series (ILR)

Abstract

In Russia and likewise in the Kulunda steppe, only recently, environmental-oriented policy measures have been introduced. Yet these are confronted with the prevailing post-socialist institutional environment, such as de facto property rights on land, administrative inertia, values and production habits of farmers. Revealing institutional factors with the help of the Procedure of Institutional Compatibility Assessment (PICA) that prevent effective and cost-efficient policy implementation can help to better support the prevention of soil erosion, nutrient loss and climate gas emission in the future and to work toward more sustainable land use. We investigate Russian agricultural land protection policies and specific regulatory instrument to explore and structure critical socioeconomic, administrative and institutional factors that diminish the effective execution of the instruments. Credible monitoring and sanctioning turned out to be almost impossible in the Kulunda region. Further, we argue that the servitude right, or farmers` perception on positive effects of inadequate soil practices, could not be addressed by short-term administrative solutions. We rather suggest information provision and subsidies for voluntary conservation measures to reach more sustainable agro-ecological practices.

Keywords

  • Degraded black soils
  • Environmental policy measures
  • Crop residues burning
  • PICA method
  • Policy incongruity
  • Kulunda steppe

The material in this chapter was previously published in the Journal Land Use Policy and is to a large extent republished here under the Creative Commons License 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Theesfeld and Jelinek (2017).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Fire statistics usually refer to agricultural lands which includes forest belts and moorlands. We corrected the numbers accordingly.

  2. 2.

    Expert opinion describes the outreach of that practice: “In the follow-up spring, after a high grain yield season, about 25% of the agricultural area under conventional cultivation is burned.”

  3. 3.

    Average density of the cattle is only around 7 heads/100 ha of agricultural land ROSSTAT 2016. Regional Statistics. Agriculture and Forestry Section. http://akstat.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_ts/akstat/ru/statistics/enterprises/agriculture/. Accessed July 2016.

  4. 4.

    The penalties varied between 1.500 RUB (30 EUR) up to 2.000 RUB (40 EUR) and 30.000 RUB to 40.000 RUB (600–800 EUR) for physical persons and legal entities, respectively.

  5. 5.

    Authorization of the body carrying out the fires, proof of anti-fire equipment and training.

  6. 6.

    Personal communication with the staff at the Administration of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Von-Seckendorff-Platz 4, 06120, Halle (Saale), Germany

    I. Theesfeld

  2. Department of Agri-Environmental Policy, Research Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information (IAEI), Mánesova 75, 120 00, Prague 2, Czech Republic

    L. Jelinek

Authors
  1. I. Theesfeld
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  2. L. Jelinek
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Correspondence to I. Theesfeld .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geoscience and Geography, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany

    Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Manfred Frühauf

  2. Institut für Bodenkunde, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Prof. Dr. Georg Guggenberger

  3. AMAZONEN-Werke H. Dreyer GmbH & Co. KG, Astana, Kazakhstan

    Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Tobias Meinel

  4. Agricultural, Environmental and Food Policy, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany

    Prof. Dr. Insa Theesfeld

  5. Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde (IfL), Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Prof. Dr. Sebastian Lentz

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Theesfeld, I., Jelinek, L. (2020). The Role of Institutional Policy Congruity for Sustainable Land Use in the Kulunda Steppe. In: Frühauf, M., Guggenberger, G., Meinel, T., Theesfeld, I., Lentz, S. (eds) KULUNDA: Climate Smart Agriculture. Innovations in Landscape Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15927-6_19

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