M. Graziano Ceddia

Short Bio
Graziano Ceddia is Associate Professor in Sustainable Development at the Department of Public Governance of the MODUL University Vienna. Previously he was Lecturer (UK equivalent to Assistant Professor) in Applied Economics at the School of Agricultural Policy and Development of the University of Reading (UK), where he also served as Program Director for the MSc in Agricultural Economics. He obtained a PhD in environmental economics from the University of York (UK), working on the regulation of the externalities associated with the introduction of genetically modified crops in Europe.
Research Interests
His main research interests fall in the area of Ecological Economics and Natural Resources Economics, modeling and analyzing the interactions between socio-economic and ecological systems, particularly in situations where 'market failures' operate. He has been addressing a wide range of topics, including the analysis of policy reforms in the agricultural sector, the coexistence between genetically modified and conventional crops, under a framework of spatial production externalities, the application of ecological-economic models and optimal control techniques to the problems of biosecurity, invasive species and infectious diseases management. More recently he has started to work on the problem of agricultural expansion and deforestation in tropical regions, with a particular interest in the Latin American region.
Projects
-
Dimitris Christopoulos, Graziano M. CeddiaFlood Resilience and Policy Networks in Austria
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, Department of Public Governance and Sustainable Development
Author: Dimitris Christopoulos, Graziano M. Ceddia
Date: 01.01.2015 - 31.12.2015
Managed By: Department of Public Governance and Sustainable Development
-
Graziano M. Ceddia, Dimitris ChristopoulosIndigenous Communities, Land Use and tropical Deforestation (INCLUDE)
Tropical deforestation is an important contributor to climate change, through the release of significant amounts of carbon in the atmosphere. The main proximate cause of deforestation in tropical regions is agricultural expansion, followed by timber extraction. The general objective of this research is to understand how the interaction of technological, environmental, economic and social factors influence land use dynamics, including household decisions, about agricultural expansion and resource extraction in sensitive tropical regions. More specific questions relate to the role of various governance structures, particularly those recognizing common property regimes of land tenure to indigenous and rural communities, and the deliberative evaluation about the opportunity of reforming such structures in order to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. Although such aspects have been addressed in a variety of contexts, the approach proposed here is novel as a) it explicitly models the interaction between institutional, environmental, technological and socio-economic factors at different spatio-temporal scales, b) it specifically focuses on the governance structures associated with different land tenure regimes through the lenses of Social Network Analysis (SNA), c) uses a Q-methodology framework to develop a participatory approach to study stakeholders’ perspectives and attitudes on the necessary governance interventions to prevent deforestation and forest degradation and d) it assesses the relationships between agricultural expansion, deforestation, governance structures and stakeholders’ attitudes, with particular attention to the sensitivity of household land use decisions and resource extraction. In order to meet the research objectives, this project will focus on the province of Salta in the dry Chaco in North-Western Argentina, a region characterized by high rates of land cover change and the presence of indigenous/rural communities.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, Department of Public Governance and Sustainable Development
Author: Graziano M. Ceddia, Dimitris Christopoulos
Date: 01.01.2016 - 01.01.2021
Managed By: Department of Public Governance and Sustainable Development
Research Output
- All
- Books
- Articles
- Chapters
- Title A-Z
- Title Z-A
- Newest Publication
- Oldest Publication
- Newest Modification
- Oldest Modification
- 2020
-
Ulrich Gunter, Graziano M. Ceddia"Can Indigenous and Community-Based Ecotourism Serve as a Catalyst for Land Sparing in Latin America?"2020 in: Journal of Travel Research.
The present study investigates the role of ecotourism as a potential catalyst for land sparing in Latin America, with a particular focus on indigenous and community-based ecotourism. The research question is investigated within a comprehensive empirical land sparing–agricultural expansion framework, which uses the Jevons paradox as its theoretical foundation. It also allows for environmental governance and includes several socioeconomic control variables. In doing so, a panel data set based on secondary data from institutional sources and comprising 10 Latin American countries for the period from 1995 to 2015 is employed, which resulted in 209 observations in total. Panel estimation results show that there is only moderate evidence of land sparing associated with ecotourism, when it occurs on indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ land. To achieve land sparing through ecotourism, titling land to indigenous peoples and local communities as stakeholders is therefore crucial, but this beneficial effect should not be overestimated.
Author(s): Ulrich Gunter, Graziano M. Ceddia
Publication date: 2020
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0047287520949687
- 2019
-
"Indigenous peoples' land rights and agricultural expansion in Latin America: A dynamic panel data approach"2019 in: Forest Policy and Economics. Volume: 109.
Agricultural expansion remains an important cause of deforestation in Latin America. There is an on-going debate about whether increasing agricultural productivity leads to land-sparing or Jevons paradox. At the same time, recognizing the customary rights of indigenous peoples and local communities can be particularly effective at slowing down deforestation. We consider ten Latin American countries over the period 1990 to 2010 and use dynamic panel data models to assess whether: a) there is a difference between short-run and long-run effects of improvements in agricultural productivity and b) different land tenure systems are capable of directing the process of agricultural intensification towards land-sparing. Our results allow us to draw a number of stylised conclusions. In general, we observe that higher agricultural productivity per-se is land-sparing, albeit the long-run effects appear smaller than the short-run effects. Most importantly, the overall effect of increased productivity crucially depends on the institutional context. In this respect, increasing the forest area owned or managed by indigenous peoples promotes land-sparing, while increasing the forest area administered by governments and/or owned by private individuals and companies promotes Jevons paradox. In the long-run, the agricultural expansion effects of increasing the forest areas owned by private individuals and companies are stronger than those associated with the expansion of forest areas administered by the government. We also note that the formal recognition of land ownership to indigenous peoples and local communities manifests its beneficial effects in the long-run.
Author(s): Graziano M. Ceddia, Ulrich Gunter, Pasquale Pazienza
Publication date: 2019
Volume: 109
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2019.102001
- 2018
-
"Contribution of international ecotourism to comprehensive economic development and convergence in the Central American and Caribbean region"2018 in: Applied Economics. Pages: 1-16
Drawing on the positive experience from Costa Rica, the study examines whether international ecotourism makes a significant contribution to comprehensive economic development for the Central American and Caribbean region and contributes to comprehensive economic convergence. Following a standard empirical growth model, a dynamic panel regression model is estimated using time-series data from 1995 until 2012 for a cross section of seven countries. The interaction of international tourism and various established sustainability indicators is employed allowing ecotourism to be consistently quantified across countries, while numerous country-specific structural characteristics are controlled for. The estimation results show that international ecotourism has a statistically significant positive effect on both traditional economic development (real GDP per capita) and comprehensive economic development (adjusted net savings; ANS per capita), which is a measure of a society’s potential future well-being, thus providing evidence in support of the tourism-led growth hypothesis and pointing towards an important role for ecotourism in driving comprehensive economic convergence.
Author(s): Ulrich Gunter, Graziano M. Ceddia, David Leonard, Bernhard Tröster
Publication date: 23. 1. 2018
Pages: 1-16
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2018.1430339
- 2017
-
"Assessing adaptive capacity through governance networks: The elaboration of the flood risk management plan in Austria"2017 in: Environmental Science & Policy. Volume: 77. Pages: 140 - 146
One of the consequences of climate change is the increase in the frequency and entity of extreme weather events, including floods. Any strategy dealing with the various impacts of climate change must focus not only on mitigation aspects, but also on improving on the level of adaptive capacity. Over the past decades there has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of floods in Europe, a fact which has prompted the European Union (EU) to put forward the Directive 60/2007 (the ‘Floods Directive’), requiring Member States to produce a comprehensive Flood Risk Management Plan (FRMP) by 2015. The purpose of this paper is to assess how the implementation of the ‘Floods Directive’ has contributed to the level of adaptive capacity in Austria, a EU member State hosting an important river basin. By relying on the existing literature, the paper first describes the governance system associated with flood risk management in Austria prior to the elaboration of the FRMP. Subsequently, based on collected primary data, the paper studies the governance structure associated with the elaboration of the FRMP in Austria by using descriptive social network analysis (SNA) and discusses the implications in terms of adaptive capacity of flood governance. The elaboration of the FRMP has had the merit of coordinating the pre-existing regional legislation into a coherent national framework, under the leadership of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Environment. A limited number of other public administration stakeholders act as brokers, but the overall governance structure appears centralized and exhibits low modularity. Such a structure, moreover, is exclusively composed of public administration actors with no de facto participation of other stakeholders (e.g., NGOs and private companies). The incorporation of a wider set of organizations in the earlier phases of the policy cycle is welcomed, in order to make the whole process less technocratic and effectively improve the overall level of adaptive capacity.
Author(s): Graziano M. Ceddia, Dimitris Christopoulos, Yeray Hernández-González, Elena Zepharovich
Publication date: 11. 2017
Volume: 77
Pages: 140 - 146
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2017.08.014
-
"International ecotourism and economic development in Central America and the Caribbean"2017 in: Journal of Sustainable Tourism. Volume: 25. Issue number: 1 Pages: 43-60
Using annual data for the period 1995–2012 for seven Central American and Caribbean countries, six different open-economy growth models that allow for international (eco-) tourism are estimated using panel-data techniques. Two main results of the investigation are that international tourist arrivals per capita have a highly significant impact on real GDP per capita, and also that five different sustainability indicators interacted with international tourism have a positive impact on economic development. Furthermore, quantile regression shows that lower and medium income deciles of the population in particular benefit from international (eco-) tourism. The results are complemented by very similar findings for a set of 12 Central American and Caribbean countries using only two sustainability indicators, thus corroborating the validity of the specification. In addition, control variables are also generally significant and they feature the algebraic signs expected from economic theory.
Author(s): Ulrich Gunter, Graziano Ceddia, Bernhard Tröster
Publication date: 2017
Volume: 25
Issue number: 1
Pages: 43-60
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1173043
Load more results
