Data_Sheet_5_Assessing subsidy integration in the 40 years of agricultural planning in the Maldives.PDF

87% of agricultural subsidies are harmful to the environment and human health while contributing little to food security. The first step to addressing harmful subsidies is to identify and trace them in policies. Small Island Developing States (SIDS), such as the Maldives, are the most vulnerable to environmental degradation caused by activities they contribute minimally. In the case of subsidies, the relative contribution to the environmental degradation by islands and the relative impacts of subsidies on islands are not studied, leaving a void in the global knowledge pool. This paper addresses the first step of this gap by identifying and assessing the historical trends of subsidy integration in Maldivian agricultural policy by analyzing their temporal distribution patterns and the quality of subsidy inclusion in national plans in the past four decades. The framework adopted for this study is a multi-criteria scoring protocol and a classification of 15 subsidy types to deliver a quantitative overview of the status and trends in subsidy in the agriculture sector of the Maldives. The results showed that although the scale of agriculture in the country is limited, subsidies have consistently been an integral part of agricultural planning since 1985, with agricultural inputs being one of the most frequently and highly subsidized over the years. Twelve different subsidy types were traced in the ten assessed national plans, and eleven subsidy types were identified in the plan from 2019 to 2023. These results serve as a baseline for the understanding of subsidies in the Maldives by providing a narrative of an island state for the global overview of subsidies and for comparative studies thereof.

87%的农业补贴对环境与人体健康有害，且对粮食安全的贡献微乎其微。解决有害补贴问题的第一步，是在政策中识别并溯源此类补贴。诸如马尔代夫在内的小岛屿发展中国家（Small Island Developing States, SIDS），受自身贡献极低的人类活动引发的环境退化影响最为脆弱。当前学界尚未针对补贴议题，研究岛屿经济体对环境退化的相对贡献，以及补贴对岛屿经济体的相对影响，这一研究空白使得全球知识体系存在相关盲区。本研究填补了这一空白的第一步：通过分析马尔代夫过去四十年间农业补贴的时间分布模式，以及国家规划中补贴纳入的质量，识别并评估了该国农业政策中补贴整合的历史趋势。本研究采用多准则评分协议与15类补贴类型的分类体系，旨在定量呈现马尔代夫农业部门补贴的现状与变化趋势。研究结果显示，尽管该国农业规模有限，但自1985年起，补贴始终是农业规划不可或缺的组成部分，其中农业生产投入品是多年来补贴频率最高、补贴力度最大的类别之一。在本次评估的十项国家规划中，共追溯到12种不同的补贴类型；而2019至2023年的国家规划中则识别出11种补贴类型。本研究结果可为马尔代夫农业补贴的相关认知提供基准参照：一方面为全球农业补贴概览提供岛屿国家的案例叙事，另一方面也可为相关比较研究提供支撑。