Jeremy Cheesman

Nationality:

Qualifications:

PhD programme:

Environmental Management and Development

Supervisor(s) and panel members:

Professor Jeff Bennett, The Crawford School of Economics and Government
Dr Stuart Whitten, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
Dr Rebecca Letcher, Postdoctorate Fellow, Integrated Catchment Assessment and Management (iCAM), Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, ANU  http://sres.anu.edu.au/people/letcherr.html

Topic title and description:

Managing water in Viet Nam’s Dak Lak Plateau: demand, use efficiency, and welfare analyses

Viet Nam’s Dak Lak Plateau is dominated by intensive smallholder coffee production, and is facing water scarcity caused by rapid economic and population growth. The Plateau’s mature water supply economy offers limited scope for developing more economically viable large-scale water supply infrastructure. In contrast, the implementation of demand side water management policies and integrated water resource planning are at best in their formative stage in the Plateau, despite both being required under Viet Nam’s now ten year old Law on Water Resources. The implementation of demand side water management and integrated water resource planning in the Plateau is partly held back by a sparsity of information about the economic value of water in the Plateau’s main uses, a lack of information about social preferences for in-situ water allocation for public good purposes, a limited understanding of how the Plateau’s surface and groundwater systems would respond to water reallocations, and circumscribed knowledge of water use efficiencies in the Plateau’s main water using sectors.

My thesis research aims to shift Viet Nam’s national water policy from principles towards implementation in the Dak Lak Plateau by closing several of the key information gaps currently preventing demand side and integrated water management policies from being developed. Using aggregate economic efficiency as the founding conceptual framework for managing water resources, my research (1) estimates the marginal economic value of irrigation water in smallholder coffee production, dry season irrigated rice production, and household uses; (2) estimates monetised preference strength for allocating additional water in-situ in the Dak Lak Plateau for public good purposes; (3) quantifies the potential for increasing irrigation water use efficiency over the short-run on the Plateau’s coffee and rice smallholdings; (4) characterises household willingness to pay to support public programs aiming to strengthen the resilience, stability, and productivity of the Dak Lak Plateau’s hydro-agro-environmental ecosystem; and (5) measures changes in aggregate social welfare from reallocating dry season water in the Dak Lak Plateau.

Thesis research is based on frameworks and methods drawn from the non-market valuation, production economics, cost-benefit analysis, New Institutional Economics, and integrated hydrologic-agronomic-economic modelling literature. The thesis research makes unique contributions to the existing stochastic production frontier literature on smallholder production, the simulation-optimisation literature on modelling crops that are not subject to aeration stress but are sensitive to soil moisture deficit, the contingent behaviour literature on estimating household water demand with imperfect water pricing, and the contingent valuation literature on estimating preferences for novel goods with supply and demand uncertainty.

Scholarships and Fellowships:

Australian Postgraduate Award

Publications:

Refereed journal articles

• Cheesman, J., J. Bennett, et al. (accepted for publication May 2008). 'Estimating household water demand using revealed and contingent behaviours: evidence from Viet Nam.' Water Resources Research.
• Cheesman, J. and J. Bennett (accepted for publication January 2008). "Farm size, irrigation infrastructure, and the efficiency of coffee production in Viet Nam revisited." Forests, Trees, and Livelihoods.

Peer reviewed technical publications

• Cheesman, J., V. K. Hoc, et al. (2008). Welfare from water in Viet Nam's Dak Lak Plateau: exploring the options using integrated hydrologic-agronomic-economic analysis, Managing Groundwater Access in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam: Working Paper No 7. Canberra, The Australian National University.
• Cheesman, J., T. V. H. Son, et al. (2007). Valuing irrigation water for coffee production in Dak Lak, Viet Nam: a marginal productivity analysis. Managing groundwater in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam. Working Paper No 6. Canberra, The Australian National University.
• Cheesman, J., V. D. H. Vu, et al. (2007). Household willingness to pay for water management programs yielding uncertain agro-environmental benefits in the Dak Lak Plateau, Viet Nam. Managing Groundwater Access in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam: Working Paper No 5. Canberra, The Australian National University.
• Cheesman, J. and J. Bennett (2007). Water's economic value in irrigated rice production in the Dak Lak Plateau, Viet Nam: results from a simulation and optimisation analysis. Managing Groundwater Access in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam. Working Paper No 4. Canberra, The Australian National University.
• Cheesman, J., T. V. H. Son, et al. (2007). Household water's economic value in Buon Ma Thuot, Viet Nam. Managing groundwater in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam. Working Paper No 3. Canberra, The Australian National University.
• Cheesman, J. and J. W. Bennett (2005). Natural resources, institutions, and livelihoods in Dak Lak, Viet Nam. Managing Groundwater Access in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam: Working Paper No 1. Canberra, The Australian National University.

Conference papers

• Cheesman, J., Bennett, J., and Vu, V. D. H. (2008). Willingness to pay for uncertain agro-environmental benefits in Viet Nam: a randomised payment card contingent valuation analysis. Paper presented at Greening Asian Growth: Economic Transition and Sustainable Agricultural Development in East and Southeast Asia. Nanjing, China.
• Cheesman, J., Son, T. V. H., Thuy, T. D., Vu, V. D. H., & Bennett, J. (2007). Demand for household water in Buon Ma Thuot, Viet Nam: evidence from households' revealed and stated preferences. Paper presented at the 51st Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, Queenstown, New Zealand.
• Cheesman, J. & Bennett, J. W. (2006). An integrated approach for modelling the impacts of land and water resource use in the Dak Lak plateau, Viet Nam. Paper presented at the 50th Annual Conference of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, Manly, Sydney.
• Cheesman, J. (2004). Water use modelling: a review. Prepared for project inception meeting - Managing groundwater access in Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands), Vietnam (ACIAR project ADP/2002/015), Hanoi.

Other

• Cheesman, J. (2007). "Book review: Cost - Benefit Analysis and Water Resources Management." Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 51(3, Economics of Water Resource Management): 353-355.
• Cheesman, J., J. Bennett, et al. (revised and resubmitted March 2008). 'Willingness to pay for uncertain project benefits: results from a randomised payment card contingent valuation survey.' Environmental and Resource Economics.

Employment history:

2004-Current The Crawford School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University

Canberra, Australia (based in Papua New Guinea since July 2006)
Resource economist
Lead Australian resource economist researcher for the project ‘Managing groundwater access in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam.’
Tutor and occasional lecturer for the post-graduate courses ‘Methods for Environmental Decision Making’ (2004-2005) and ‘Economics for the Environment’ (2006).

1997-2003 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Sydney and Melbourne, Australia (1998-2000, 2002-2003)
           Deloitte & Touche LLP Philadelphia, United States of America (2000-2002)

Manager, Consulting Group (1998-2003)
Management consultant specialising in strategy, financial operations, and financial and economic modelling for leading local and international organisations.
Analyst, Assurance Group (1997-1998)

Mailing address:

J.G Crawford Building, Building #13,
Crawford School of Economics and Government,
The Australian National University,
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia