Project

Assessing Environmental Impacts of Chinese Livestock Husbandry Policies: integrating individual activities into environmental modelling

The Chinese government has been supporting the intensification of livestock husbandry production for more than 10 years. While animal husbandry has consequently undergone a diversification in breeding scales and degrees of intensification, this trend only partly was accompanied by a professionalization of farms in terms of waste treatment. Therefore, nowadays, animal husbandry is carried out on a diversity of scales, with differing degrees of professionalization and a variety of manure management practices. This diversity cannot be ignored for properly assessing the effectiveness of NPSP mitigating policies.

Based on theoretical and empirical analysis, this research wants to develop a more integrated methodology and model for assessing policies in terms of their capacity to mitigate nutrient emissions of animal husbandry. A bottom-up approach in modelling will be used to capture individual behaviour changes and their respective aggregate environmental performance in terms of nutrient emissions. Through a comparison of policy scenarios, recommendations will be drawn on how to improve policy making and implementation.