ecosystem services from eye opening metaphor to complexity blinder abstract what started as a humble metaphor to help us think about our relation to nature has become integral to how we are addressing the future of humanity and the course of biological evolution the metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the difficulties we are in or the task ahead indeed combined with the mistaken presumption that we can analyze a global problem within a partial equilibrium economic framework and reach a new economy project by project without major institutional change the simplicity of the stock flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the human predicament the ecosystem services approach can be a part of a larger solution but its dominance in our characterization of our situation and the solution is blinding us to the ecological economic and political complexities of the challenges we actually face

integrating methods for ecosystem service assessment and valuation mixed methods or mixed messages a mixed method approach was used to assess and value the ecosystem services derived from the dogger bank an extensive shallow sandbank in the southern north sea three parallel studies were undertaken that 1 identified and quantified where possible how indicators for ecosystem service provision may change according to two future scenarios 2 assessed members of the public s willingness to pay for improvements to a small number of ecosystem services as a consequence of a hypothetical management plan and 3 facilitated a process of deliberation that allowed members of the public to explore the uses of the dogger bank and the conflicts and dilemmas involved in its management each of these studies was designed to answer different and specific research questions and therefore contributes different insights about the ecosystem services delivered by the dogger bank this paper explores what can be gained by bringing these findings together post hoc and the extent to which the different methods are complementary findings suggest that mixed method research brings more understanding than can be gained from the individual approaches alone nevertheless the choice of methods used and how these methods are implemented strongly affects the results obtained

exploring the intergenerational persistence of mental health evidence from three generations this paper uses data from the 1970 british cohort study to quantify the intergenerational persistence of mental health and the long run economic costs associated with poor parental mental health we find a strong and significant intergenerational correlation that is robust to different covariate sets sample restrictions model specifications and potential endogeneity importantly the intergenerational persistence is economically relevant with maternal mental health associated with lasting effects on the child s educational attainment future household income and the probability of having criminal convictions these results do not disappear after controlling for children s own childhood and adulthood mental health

using water allocation in israel as a proxy for imputing the value of agricultural amenities this paper uses the water allocation economy in israel as a proxy for imputing the value of agricultural amenities a general equilibrium model is developed and incorporates agricultural amenities as byproducts of agricultural production water trade channels and multiple water types the premise is that until a decade ago water policy in israel was interlinked with agricultural land use policy integrating a monte carlo analysis the model searches for a baseline minimum value of agricultural amenity that makes household in the counterfactual scenario indifferent between the administrative and market mechanisms the minimum imputed value is around 109 agricultural output the intuition is that the gains in economic welfare from improved water use efficiency are offset by the losses in social welfare due to a reduction in available agricultural amenities

national accounting and the valuation of ecosystem assets and their services there has long been interest in integrating the value of environmental stocks and flows into standard measures of economic activity and wealth in particular through the development of adjusted measures of gdp and extended measures of national wealth this paper examines how the valuation of ecosystem services and ecosystem assets can be undertaken in an integrated national accounting setting we clarify the relevant valuation principles most significantly the need to apply the concept of exchange values and explain why the integration of ecosystem services necessitates an extension of the standard production boundary used in economic measurement the main implications of an accounting approach are discussed including the need to distinguish benefits from services the need for valuation methods that exclude consumer surplus and the importance of aligning measures of income and degradation remaining challenges include the treatment of low or negative rents accounting for ecosystem disservices and the derivation of values for ecosystem assets meeting these challenges and advancing work in this area should be the joint focus of economists ecologists and accountants

economy and ecology of emerging markets and credits for bio sequestered carbon on private land in tropical australia abstract a central question addressed is whether emerging carbon markets have the potential to provide an economic incentive for private landholders to reforest without recourse to subsidy a second question is whether bio sequestration in the wet tropics of queensland is cost competitive with southern australia a third given that plantations of monocultures also provide carbon sinks is are the goals of carbon sequestration and biodiversity mutually exclusive or complementary australia intends to meet its kyoto greenhouse gas emissions target even though it has not ratified the protocol while a national system of carbon emission cap and trade does not exist unilateral action by some states to mandate industry caps has generated a demand for offsets however it is the voluntary market for offsets stimulated by demand by companies and government departments that is most active the favourable climate and soils of the wet tropics region of north queensland have enabled the evolution of unique ecosystems deforestation of these has been greatly reduced by world heritage listing of the wet tropics nevertheless much of the landscape remains fragmented an official priority is the encouragement of rainforest plantations on private land with the aim of augmenting endangered ecosystems and the habitat of iconic species but reforestation is heavily subsidised by the australian government using methodology that allows the comparison of uneven streams of costs and benefits it is found that at present prices payments for sequestered carbon defray only a small proportion of costs providing a level of incentive insufficient to stimulate restoration comparative analysis shows that monocultures sequester carbon at a much lower price per tonne however despite the relatively high growth rates of monocultures in the region their cost per tonne of carbon are greater than costs in southern australia a decreasing supply of suitable land for bio sequestration offsets in southern australia may well force brokers to look to the wet tropics in this event the economic analysis suggests land in areas that carried endangered or threatened ecosystems will be devoted to monocultures rather than restored rainforest the paper highlights the asymmetry between the availability of credits for carbon and of credits for biodiversity and the need for public investment in conservation and restoration requiring further investigation is the potential demand for carbon offsets with high biodiversity benefits so called boutique abatements that could readily be supplied in the queensland wet tropics

to value or not to value that is not the question abstract should we reject money when we value nature like most environmentalists ecological economists are increasingly divided on this question synthesizing political ecology with ecological economics we argue that this way of framing the question is limited we propose a reformulation of the question into when and how to value with money and under what conditions we recommend four criteria for a sound choice environmental improvement distributive justice and equality maintenance of plural value articulating institutions and confronting commodification under neo liberalism we call for due attention to the socio political context within which a valuation is placed and the political goals it serves the relevance of this framework is demonstrated by applying it to three practical cases pollution damages water pricing and payments for ecosystem services

designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice an overview of the issues abstract payments for environmental services pes have attracted increasing interest as a mechanism to translate external non market values of the environment into real financial incentives for local actors to provide environmental services es in this introductory paper we set the stage for the rest of this special issue of ecological economics by reviewing the main issues arising in pes design and implementation and discussing these in the light of environmental economics we start with a discussion of pes definition and scope we proceed to review some of the principal dimensions and design characteristics of pes programs and then analyze how pes compares to alternative policy instruments finally we examine in detail two important aspects of pes programs their effectiveness and their distributional implications pes is not a silver bullet that can be used to address any environmental problem but a tool tailored to address a specific set of problems those in which ecosystems are mismanaged because many of their benefits are externalities from the perspective of ecosystem managers pes is based on the beneficiary pays rather than the polluter pays principle and as such is attractive in settings where es providers are poor marginalized landholders or powerful groups of actors an important distinction within pes is between user financed pes in which the buyers are the users of the es and government financed pes in which the buyers are others typically the government acting on behalf of es users in practice pes programs differ in the type and scale of es demand the payment source the type of activity paid for the performance measure used as well as the payment mode and amount the effectiveness and efficiency of pes depends crucially on program design

critique and transformation on the hypothetical nature of ecosystem service value and its neo marxist liberal and pragmatist criticisms abstract ecosystem service valuation esv attempts to transform the opposition of human economic necessity and ecological conservation by valuing the latter in terms of the services rendered by the former however despite a number of esv inspired sustainability initiatives since the 1990s global ecological degradation continues to accelerate this suggests that esv has fallen far short of its goals of sustainable social transformation a failure which has generated considerable criticism this paper reviews three prominent lines of esv criticism 1 the neo marxist criticism which emphasizes the fictitious character of ecosystem commodities 2 the liberal criticism through friedrich hayek s concept scientistic objectivism and 3 the pragmatist criticism of value monism although each form of criticism provides insight into the limitations of esv all share esv s inability to discern what kind of social transformation is possible unable to provide an account of their own immersion in social and historical context these approaches operate in the hypothetical in light of these shortcomings this paper advances a critical theory approach which we contend provides conceptual tools uniquely well suited to more adequately address the question of social transformation

changes in the u s wage structure 1963 1987 application of quantile regression the 1980 s witnessed rapid changes in the structure of wages in the united states in this study recently developed techniques for quantile regression are applied to every march current population survey since 1964 and changes in the return to schooling and experience at different points of the wage distribution are examined the quantile regression technique parsimoniously describes the entire conditional wage distribution this conditional distribution is used to examine changes in within group wage inequality as measured by the difference between conditional quantiles two linear models are considered a simple one group model and a 16 group model the results suggest that the returns to schooling and experience differ across quantiles of the wage distribution but their patterns of change are similar significant differences in wage inequality are also found across the various skill groups the paper also presents a new imputation method for cps data

building the consensus the moral space of earth measurement abstract we chart the moral space of earth measurement with the aim to develop practical tools to evaluate and improve earth measurement frameworks including environmental economic accounting and ecosystem services based on a survey of environmental ethics we develop four concepts that are fundamentally important to fostering agreement in debates over earth measurement frameworks among stakeholders with diverging belief systems the four concepts can thus be used as criteria to evaluate the completeness and defensibility of existing measurement frameworks the first two concepts the consideration of broad human values and long time frames follow the landmark work by bryan norton we further propose the adoption of the capital approach and precaution as the third and fourth concept respectively we conclude with suggestions for how current frameworks could be rendered more complete defensible and internationally acceptable

payments for ecosystem services rife with problems and potential for transformation towards sustainability abstract payments for ecosystem services pes programs are one prominent strategy to address economic externalities of resource extraction and commodity production improving both social and ecological outcomes but do pes and related incentive programs achieve that lofty goal along with considerable enthusiasm pes has faced a wide range of substantial critiques in this paper we characterize seven major classes of concerns associated with common pes designs and use these as inspiration to consider potential avenues for improvements in pes outcomes and uptake the problems include 1 new externalities 2 misplacement of rights and responsibilities 3 crowding out existing motivations 4 efficiency equity tradeoffs 5 monitoring costs 6 limited applicability and 7 top down prescription alienating agency as currently practiced many pes programs are thus of limited benefit and even potentially detrimental to sustainability from this dire conclusion we highlight several innovations that might be combined and extended in a novel approach to pes that may address all seven problems recognizing that pes necessarily articulate and even normalize values our proposed approach entails designing these institutions intentionally to articulate rights and responsibilities conducive to sustainability those we might collectively seek to entrench problems remain and new ones may arise but the proposed approach may offer a way to reimagine pes as a major social and economic tool for enabling sustainable relationships with nature conserving and restoring ecosystems and their benefits for people now and in the future

can financial incentives change farmers motivations an agrarian system approach to development pathways at the nicaraguan agricultural frontier abstract this article offers a conceptual methodological approach to assess how new institutional frameworks such as pes payments for ecosystem services interact with motivations for land use change at the individual and collective level increasing empirical evidence suggests that the effects of payments on inducing long term behavioural change can vary substantially depending on how they are integrated in territorial dynamics we show how individual motivation is the result of collective societal pathways that generate particular opportunities and constraints as well as guiding ideas and habits that work within these pathways through an illustrative case study at the agricultural frontier in nicaragua we show how an agrarian system approach offers a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic interactions on the ground and allows us to better connect farmers individual motivations to collective development pathways in that territory our case study also demonstrates how a local pes intervention is unlikely to lastingly alter the production system logic of farmers or stimulate long term pro environmental behaviour unless accompanied by other types of policies

classifying exchange rate regimes deeds vs words abstract most of the empirical literature on exchange rate regimes uses the imf de jure classification based on the regime announced by the governments despite the recognized inconsistencies between reported and actual policies in many cases to address this problem we construct a de facto classification based on data on exchange rates and international reserves from all imf reporting countries over the period 1974 2000 which we believe provides a meaningful alternative for future empirical work on the topic the classification sheds new light on several stylized facts previously reported in the literature in particular we find that the de facto pegs have remained stable throughout the last decade although an increasing number of them shy away from an explicit commitment to a fixed regime hidden pegs we confirm the hollowing out hypothesis but show that it does not apply to countries with limited access to capital markets we also find that pure floats are associated with only relatively minor nominal exchange rate volatility and that the recent increase in the number of de jure floats goes hand in hand with an increase in the number of de facto dirty floats fear of floating

blue carbon knowledge gaps critical issues and novel approaches blue carbon the carbon stored and sequestered in mangrove forests seagrass meadows and tidal salt marshes is considered a cost effective means to achieve positive climate change mitigation and adaptation outcomes blue carbon is therefore of considerable interest to the scientific and policy communities and is frequently discussed in relation to carbon markets and climate finance opportunities this paper identifies peer reviewed and gray literature documents that discuss blue carbon in the context of finance and market mechanisms the document set is analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively and the principal scientific economic regulatory social and management issues that emerge are discussed the study reveals that 1 the blue carbon literature is dominated by technical and policy commentary with a dearth of research into practical social considerations and a stark absence of private sector perspectives 2 there is confusion over the nature and role of important concepts including private and public sector finance and instruments and 3 understanding of the important issues of investment priorities and risk considerations is also limited this paper therefore identifies gaps in the blue carbon literature clarifies critical concepts and issues and proposes novel pathways for blue carbon research and project development

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

long run trends in internal migrations in italy a study in panel cointegration with dependent units the objective of this paper is to examine the long run determinants of internal migrations from southern italy in order to accomplish this task the paper develops a bootstrap test for panel cointegration analysis with dependent units monte carlo simulations show that the test based on the continuous path block bootstrap has good power and size properties and is robust to both short and long run dependence across units the empirical analysis points to income in the sending region as a key factor of the decline of migrations with unemployment and income differentials playing only a minor role copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

payments for ecosystem services as commodity fetishism abstract payments for ecosystem services pes economically reward resource managers for the provision of ecosystem services and are thus characterised by i an ecological function subject to trade ii the establishment of a standard unit of exchange iii and supply demand and intermediation flows between those who sell and buy ecosystem services this paper departs from the term commodity fetishism broadly understood as the masking of the social relationships underlying the process of production to illuminate three invisibilities in the commodification of ecosystem services firstly we argue that narrowing down the complexity of ecosystems to a single service has serious technical difficulties and ethical implications on the way we relate to and perceive nature secondly the commodification of ecosystem services denies the multiplicity of values which can be attributed to these services since it requires that a single exchange value is adopted for trading finally we suggest that the process of production exchange and consumption of ecosystem services is characterised by power asymmetries which may contribute to reproducing rather than addressing existing inequalities in the access to natural resources and services

efficiency of payments for environmental services equity and additionality in a case study from a biosphere reserve in chiapas mexico payments for environmental services pes have been claimed as a more efficient way of accomplishing conservation and development goals than other indirect strategies reaching their optimum when the buyer pays the opportunity costs of the foregone benefits different inefficient situations have been described like lack of additionality where payments are given for practices that would have been adopted anyway trade offs between efficiency and equity of pes have usually emerged as well in this paper we assess the equity additionality and stakeholders perceptions of a pes scheme in a mexican community inside a biosphere reserve we applied structured interviews to all adults a total of 66 people from 31 households our results show a dual response in equity and additionality depending on land tenure pes have an egalitarian effect within landowners and landless groups but it broadens the gap between them additionality is low for landowners and high for the landless people in the community even though the former are the ones with full decision over the land although the scheme does not seem efficient under the classical pes paradigm it is perceived as a reward reinforcing conservation attitudes even though most of the interviewees claim it to be insufficient

valuing nature lessons learned and future research directions this paper critically reviews the literature on environmental valuation of ecosystem services across the range of global biomes the main objective of this review is to assess the policy relevance of the information encompassed by the wide range of valuation studies that have been undertaken so far published and other studies now cover most ecosystems with aquatic and marine contexts attracting the least attention there is also a predominance of single function valuation studies studies valuing multiple functions and uses and studies which seek to capture the before and after states as environmental changes take place are rare by and large it is the latter types of analyses that are most important as aids to more rational decision taking in ecosystem conservation versus development situations involving different stakeholders local national and global aggregate global scale estimates of ecosystems value are problematic given the fact that only marginal values are consistent with conventional decision aiding tools such as economic cost benefit analysis in general valuation data provide prima facie support for the hypothesis that net ecosystem service value diminishes with biodiversity and ecosystem loss balmford et al 2002 science 297 p 950 future research effort should include complementary research on multiple ecosystem services that seeks to capture the temporal disturbance profile and its causal factors the explicit recognition of multiple interdependent ecosystem services and values poses both conceptual and empirical research challenges it would serve to transform the practice of research in this sub field via the a priori assumption of multiple and inter dependent use instead of independent single use this line of reasoning can then be extended to the institutional arrangements that determine which values are captured new institutional processes and arrangements are probably required in order to best realise benefit streams from multiple ecosystem use and non use provision across a range of different stakeholders

terms of trade and exchange rate regimes in developing countries abstract since friedman essays in positive economics university of chicago press chicago 1953 157 203 an advantage often attributed to flexible exchange rate regimes over fixed regimes is their ability to insulate more effectively the economy against real shocks i use a post bretton woods sample 1973 96 of 75 developing countries to assess whether the responses of real gdp real exchange rates and prices to terms of trade shocks differ systematically across exchange rate regimes i find that responses are significantly different across regimes in a way that supports friedman s hypothesis the paper also examines the importance of terms of trade shocks in explaining the overall variance of output and prices in developing countries

economic experiments for collective action in the kyrgyz republic lessons for payments for ecosystem services pes abstract payments for ecosystem service pes schemes have become increasingly popular in attempting to promote ecological stewardship and conservation behaviour through provisioning of economic incentives often as market inspired transactions the scholarship and empirical application of pes schemes has tended to focus on contract design and conditionality of payments rather than more fundamentally examining whether incentives do indeed influence behaviour in desired ways in this paper a set of incentive framed treatments are introduced to existing collective action institutions promoting common pool resource management in order to explore the effects of incentive provision on the propensity to participate in the maintenance of collectively owned irrigation canals the experiments take place in the kyrgyz republic characterized by the historic transition of nomadic collective traditions subsequent soviet rule to advances towards democracy market integration and the first pes pilot in the country in the incentive treatments provided we reveal the close interplay between the framing of incentives the influence of village leaders mobilizing collective activity and social norms of reciprocity trust and enforcement in mobilizing collective work each framed case study exhibits a unique configuration of individual motivations group norms and other regarding rationalities providing critical insight into this new frontier of pes implementation

how not to pay field experimental evidence on the design of redd payments abstract payments for ecosystem services pes can use many design features we investigate the impact of payment conditionality types i e different specifications when to pay and when not to pay for pes on deforestation and agricultural production in a lab in the field experiment our experiment also tests variations in contract period and payment volatility we designed a highly visual simulation game to characterize the decision situation of a cattle rancher in brazil the player can expand extensive pasture by deforestation or intensify existing pasture the model includes both a land and a capital constraint we applied the game in an economic framed lab in the field experiment in tocantins brazil payments conditional on forest carbon stock lead to slow but steady deforestation while payments conditional on forest carbon stock change suppressed deforestation more strongly but payments conditional on stock increase cattle production while payments conditional on stock change have no effect on production thus depending on the level of leakage either type of conditionality can be more cost effective in reducing global carbon emissions contracts with limited periods lead to strong deforestation after the end of the payment period payment volatility had no significant effect

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

whose equity matters national to local equity perceptions in vietnam s payments for forest ecosystem services scheme this paper focuses on the assessment of legislative considerations and local perceptions of equity in vietnam s payments for forest ecosystem services scheme pfes equity perceptions are powerful determinants of human behaviour and consequently many environmental conflicts arise from contested visions of what constitutes as equitable environmental management therefore equity can play an instrumental role in shaping outcomes of pfes schemes this paper analyzes how contextual procedural and distributive equity considerations are reflected in national pfes legislation and implementation how equity outcomes are perceived locally and whether local perceptions match legislative considerations we reviewed national legislation and government reports conducted expert interviews on the national and provincial level as well as surveys focus group discussions and in depth interviews on the local level our findings reveal that equity outcomes are very much affected by contextual factors such as how the forest land allocation regulation determines the distribution of use rights in the implementation of pfes national aspirations and rationales of equity as outlined in legislation were not met due to technical constraints financial costs and social and institutional conflicts the implementation on the ground contrasts with local interests our results show that on the local level the preference for a distributive equity principle is very much influenced by the degree of transparency of the payment distribution process the prevailing perceptions of equitable benefit distribution by local pfes participants correspond to a merit based principle of compensation for the effort of forest protection

urban commons service generation delivery and management a conceptual framework abstract urban commons are currently not studied holistically under the rationale used by the ecosystem cascade framework in this paper we build on the ecosystem cascade framework to present a conceptual model that provides a comprehensive view of urban common resources and allows decision makers to develop suitable interventions to meet objectives of sustainability and equity the model looks at the role of and explains the linkages between urban commons biophysical structures user population characteristics power dynamics use behavior benefits generated and management strategies the model adds to existing literature by focusing on direct benefits and equity and by elaborating on the role of transaction costs and management strategies in governing urban commons considering direct benefits allows for a complete picture of overall benefits while making governance decisions as opposed to considering benefits received only through human effort focusing on power asymmetries between stakeholders highlights the inequities created in accessing benefits from urban commons elaborating on management strategies provides greater insight into the complexities of managing urban commons and the impacts that governance decisions can have finally including transaction costs highlights the factors that influence costs of managing resources we illustrate the use of the model with literature from urban india

the value of biodiversity markets society and ecosystems the value of biodiversity is discussed at different levels including market value non market values to humans and the value of biodi versity to ecosystems the main conclusion is that although market exchange values of environmental services may be used to justify biodiversity protec tion measures it must be stressed that exchange value constitutes a small portion of total biodiver sity value the total value of existing biodiversity is largely unknown but indications are that it is essen tial to human existence the various levels of biodi versity value point to the need for a hierarchical and pluralistic methodology to determine appropri ate policies for its preservation jel q21 i introduction among ecologists there is a general con sensus that biodiversity1 is of critical impor tance to the health of ecosystems and even for the long term survival of the human species there is also a consensus that bio diversity is being lost at a rate which is a cause for concern 2 economists on the other hand generally view biodiversity as just an other good which is to be placed in the basket of market choices just as any other the discussion of the specifics of biodiver sity policy has been unsatisfactory partly because of the different meanings of the word value used by economists and ecolo gists many ecologists fail to understand the logic of market allocation and why biologi cal resources are used in seemingly irra tional ways many economists fail to ap preciate the narrowness of the concept of economic value as indicated by relative prices determined by market exchange fol lowing anderson 1966 and brown 1984 the discussion below considers economic measures of value to be species of the genus assigned value which belongs to the family value many biologists and paleontologists be lieve that we are at a critical point in the history of the human species and perhaps even in the 600 million year history of com plex multicelled life on earth if the paleon tologists and biologists who study the phe nomenon of mass extinction are correct the current human induced mass extinction may be of the same order of magnitude as the five other major extinction episodes which destroyed between 20 and 96 percent of existing species on the planet ehrlich and ehrlich 1992 ward 1994 wilson 1992 we are living in a truly remarkable period in earth s 41 billion year history the valua tion decisions our species has made in the recent past and will make during the next few decades will determine the fate of life on earth for the next tens of millions of years it is critical to clarify the language and concepts we use to estimate the value of biodiversity and thus policies leading to its destruction or preservation the importance attached to the issue of biodiversity preservation necessarily in volves ethical judgments about duty to fu ture generations and responsibility toward the nonhuman natural world although in dividuals hold a variety of conflicting beliefs about human responsibility to the natural world this does not mean that policy choices

an institutional analysis of payments for environmental services abstract in this paper the characteristics and functioning of pes is analyzed from an institutional perspective while in theory pes is seen as a market solution to environmental problems as an alternative to state hierarchical and community governance a review of a large amount of case studies shows that pes in practice depends rather fundamentally on state and or community engagement hence pes are foremost a reconfiguration of the roles of public bodies and communities becoming core intermediaries or buyers first to establish pes rights to the land that delivers the environmental service must be clarified this demands public action second transacting over environmental amenities is very costly creating markets for environmental services depends therefore crucially on state and community facilitation hence buyers are often public agencies high transaction costs also influence price setting payments do not follow the market format as intermediaries frequently are setting the price with users often being unaware even of the fact that they pay finally the distinction between payments as incentives and as fair compensations is emphasized while payments may strengthen community relations and simplify action for environmental care they may also introduce a purely instrumental logic and in some cases worsen the environmental status by crowding out environmental virtues for the future greater awareness of these dynamics is warranted

payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services for sustained on farm utilization of plant and animal genetic resources abstract this paper discusses the potential application of payment for ecosystem services like schemes to tackle market failures associated with the public good characteristics of agrobiodiversity conservation services so called payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services pacs would increase the private benefits from utilizing local plant and animal genetic resources on farm through voluntary reward mechanisms so as to sustain their on farm conservation theoretical and applied insights about pacs are discussed and attention drawn to some of the challenges to be overcome in implementing pacs in particular these relate to the identification of potential buyers the complex institutional setting in which pacs might operate and the articulation of a meaningful conservation goal based on a safe minimum standard approach the latter is urgently needed so as to ensure that additional agrobiodiversity services are generated relative to a fixed pricing approach pacs schemes that seek to overcome information asymmetries through the use of conservation auctions may be associated with significant efficiency gains however potential trade offs between ecological effectiveness economic efficiency and social equity considerations need to be carefully evaluated

paying for the hydrological services of mexico s forests analysis negotiations and results abstract mexico faces both high deforestation and severe water scarcity the payment for hydrological environmental services psah program was designed to complement other policy responses to the crisis at the interface of these problems through the psah the mexican federal government pays participating forest owners for the benefits of watershed protection and aquifer recharge in areas where commercial forestry is not currently competitive funding comes from fees charged to water users from which nearly us 18 million are earmarked for payments of environmental services applicants are selected according to several criteria that include indicators of the value of water scarcity in the region this paper describes the process of policy design of the psah the main actors involved in the program its operating rules and provides a preliminary evaluation one of the main findings is that many of the program s payments have been in areas with low deforestation risk selection criteria need to be modified to better target the areas where benefits to water users are highest and behavior modification has the least cost otherwise the program main gains will be distributive but without bringing a pareto improvement in overall welfare

towards an ecological theory of unequal exchange articulating world system theory and ecological economics abstract the focus of this paper is on how an ecological perspective might provide us with an analytically more precise way of defining unequal exchange it is only by looking at the ecological conditions of human economies that we can adequately conceptualize the mechanisms which generate inequalities in distribution considerations of market power aside neoclassical economic ideology has dispelled all possible criteria for assessing a market transaction as unequal or unfair one way to assess the occurrence of unequal exchange may be to look at the direction of net flows of energy and materials concrete productive potential but without falling into the trap of equating productive potential with economic value on the contrary it can be analytically demonstrated that unequal exchange emerges from a kind of inverse relationship between productive potential and economic value the notion of a reasonable market price conceals the fact that what is being exchanged are intact resources for products representing resources already spent if we consider longitudinally along the production process any given set of fuels and raw materials destined to be transformed into a given product plus waste its content of available energy will be inversely related to its utility or price in other words the more of its original energy that has been dissipated the higher its price this means that production i e the dissipation of resources will continuously be rewarded with ever more resources to dissipate generating ecological destruction and global core periphery inequalities as two sides of the same coin

redefining payments for environmental services abstract the environmental economics and the ecological economics perspectives on payments for environmental services pes propose rather different views on how to define pes its key elements and on the role of pes in ecosystem conservation and rural development this paper compares these two perspectives and addresses the following questions what is an appropriate definition of pes grounded in the theory and practice underlying it what are the key design elements of pes what should the scope of pes be given the possible trade offs between efficiency and equity it is found that pes schemes should focus on cost effectiveness and best practice for positive livelihood impacts pes schemes should be transparent and provide additional services with conditional payments to voluntary providers

on the relation between ecosystem services intrinsic value existence value and economic valuation various attempts have been made to amalgamate the concepts of intrinsic value and ecosystem services often with a stop over at the economic concept of existence value these attempts are based on a confusion of concepts however in this article two types of non use values are distinguished warm glow value related to the satisfaction people may derive from altruism towards nature and existence value related to the satisfaction people may derive from the mere knowledge that nature exists and originating in the human need for self transcendence as benefits to humans warm glow and existence values can be considered ecosystem services neither warm glow value nor existence value represents benefits to nature itself however intrinsic value lies outside the scope of the wide palette of ecosystem services although the concept of ecosystem services does not cover benefits to nature and the intrinsic value of such benefits intrinsic value is not necessarily incompatible with economic valuation although a deontological ethics does not allow economic valuation of nature as an end in itself consequentialism does in consequentialism however intrinsic value is not attributed to nature itself but to benefits to nature these benefits can be economically valued on the basis of benefit transfer

commodity currencies and the real exchange rate abstract this paper examines whether the real exchange rates of commodity exporting countries and the real prices of their commodity exports move together over time using international monetary fund imf data on the world prices of 44 commodities and national commodity export shares we construct new monthly indices of national commodity export prices for 58 commodity exporting countries over 1980 2002 evidence of a long run relationship between national real exchange rate and real commodity prices is found for about one third of the commodity exporting countries the long run real exchange rate of these commodity currencies is not constant as would be implied by purchasing power parity based models but is time varying being dependent on movements in the real price of commodity exports

can payments for environmental services help reduce poverty an exploration of the issues and the evidence to date from latin america summary this paper examines the main ways in which payments for environmental services pes might affect poverty pes may reduce poverty mainly by making payments to poor natural resource managers in upper watersheds the extent of the impact depends on how many pes participants are in fact poor on the poors ability to participate and on the amounts paid although pes programs are not designed for poverty reduction there can be important synergies when program design is well thought out and local conditions are favorable possible adverse effects can occur where property rights are insecure or if pes programs encourage less labor intensive practices 2004 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

linking conservation and welfare a theoretical model with application to nepal abstract theoretical articles linking conservation and welfare find a negative relationship between these two variables while empirical studies show that land protection may be positively related to welfare several authors attribute this empirical result to the development of ecotourism in protected areas we thus argue that the gap between the theory and existing empirical results is partly explained by the fact that most theoretical models do not account for a productive activity on protected land therefore we develop a theoretical model in which conservation allows developing an alternative sector and show that the relationship between conservation and welfare is u shaped we test this theoretical prediction using nepalese data and find that conservation combined with ecotourism is indeed positively related to local welfare

forest biodiversity and timber extraction an analysis of the interaction of market and non market mechanisms abstract forest ecosystems provide a range of products and services for human use primarily due to the biodiversity inherent in them from the ecological viewpoint this diversity is of different kinds and has the potential to cater to human well being in multifarious ways however the mix of services that is available to any economy from forests depends in addition to their biological characteristics on the nature of the economic regime within which they are exploited some commodities such as timber are extracted in a regime driven in the main by market forces others such as non timber forest products may be extracted under a variety of arrangements the range varying from open access to common property regimes services such as those of water cycle augmentation and micro climate regulation are typically available to communities as free goods it is hypothesized that this difference in institutional regimes has implications for the mix of products and services that are extracted in different ways through its effect on the extraction efforts for the marketed product because of policies such as plantation which are intended to increase the supply of the marketed product typically timber through a change in biodiversity of the forest stock which in turn results in a decreased availability of the non marketed products the present paper studies conditions under which timber has been extracted from forests of the north indian state of uttar pradesh up during the 1975 2000 period to examine this proposition it is postulated that extraction of timber at any point of time depends on the stock the effort involved in extraction as represented by the per unit cost of extraction the biodiversity index defined as a product biodiversity index and a variable depicting ecological characteristics of the forests using a modified gordon schaefer production function and the assumption that forests are managed for sustainable timber extraction the reduced form equations are derived and estimated using data from uttar pradesh forests for the 1975 2000 period the results suggest that in the absence of variables representing the plantation area and biodiversity corrected stocks the explanatory power of the model is low even though extraction is seen to be significantly impacted by effort if however the ratio of plantation area and biodiversity adjusted extraction are introduced as explanatory variables interesting results with respect to the trend of extraction over time are obtained as stocks of woody biomass increase extraction increases a decrease in biodiversity of the stock may be accompanied under a certain set of circumstances with a rising trend in extraction and at a rising rate as explained above however an increased biodiversity may imply a decreasing trend in the extraction in the future provided that present extraction y does not rise at a rate faster than the rate of increase in the biodiversity these two results seen together are we believe significant they point to the fact that policies aimed at increasing plantation increase short run timber extraction further if biodiversity increases the impact on future extraction of timber depends on relative rates of change in biodiversity and extraction per unit effort it is clear that trade offs between timber extraction and existence of biodiverse forests providing a variety of goods and services

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

towards a unified scheme for environmental and social protection learning from pes and cct experiences in developing countries environmental protection and poverty alleviation in the developing world are usually heralded as joint objectives however these two goals are often associated with different sectoral policy instruments while so called payments for environmental services pes are increasingly being promoted for environmental protection poverty alleviation is increasingly addressed by conditional cash transfers cct program these instruments although aimed to achieve distinct objectives have a number of similarities and challenges in their design and implementation phases this paper elaborates on these similarities and develops a unifying generic framework that is used to discuss the extent to which both approaches could be unified

can redd still become a market ruptured dependencies and market logics for emission reductions in brazil abstract during almost 20 years of political debate on the nature of payments for ecosystem services pes these schemes have been characterized mostly as a non market approach even though attempts to transform them into market instruments has persistently recurred in these debates one notable example is the materialization of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd in brazil where a sustainable development discourse dominates national forest governance at the expense of a carbon commodification discourse this research paper adopts a foucauldian approach to plot the epistemological foundations of the market logics that still influence redd institutionalization in brazil to a large extent and thereby reproduce what we define as a ruptured dependence on nature more specifically we recognize ruptured dependence in the three building blocks of market instruments namely singularization monetary valuation and appropriation our analysis shows that redd institutions have retained the singularization and monetary valuation of emission reductions even though the appropriation processes have rejected the possibility of exchange and instead emphasized the national ownership of emission reductions however appropriation remains a highly politicized process that is sensitive to criticism and open to calls for alternative approaches that are closer to ruptured dependence

the history of ecosystem services in economic theory and practice from early notions to markets and payment schemes article i nfo this paper reviews the historic development of the conceptualization of ecosystem services and examines critical landmarks in economic theory and practice with regard to the incorporation of ecosystem services into markets and payment schemes the review presented here suggests that the trend towards monetization and commodification of ecosystem services is partly the result of a slow move from the original economic conception of nature s benefits as use values in classical economics to their conceptualization in terms of exchange values in neoclassical economics the theory and practice of current ecosystem services science are examined inthelight ofthis historicaldevelopment from thisreview we conclude thatthefocus onmonetary valuation and payment schemes has contributed to attract political support for conservation but also to commodify a growing number of ecosystem services and to reproduce the neoclassical economics paradigm and the market logic to tackle environmental problems

weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics the main argument of this paper is that weak comparability of values should be seen as one characteristic feature of ecological economics the formal properties of the concepts of strong comparability implying strong or weak commensurability and weak comparability implying incommensurability will be clarified multicriteria evaluation offers the methodological and mathematical tools to operationalize the concept of incommensurability at both macro and micro levels of analysis the concept of incommensurability of values already has a long tradition in economics moreover we will show that analytic philosophy theories of complexity post normal science and the recent theories of rationality lead with different trajectories to a non algorithmic approach which in our view could be implemented by some forms of multicriteria evaluation 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

analyzing the impacts of foreign exchange and oil price on biofuel commodity futures abstract this paper employs an arji trend model that combines the autoregressive jump intensity arji and component models to analyze the effects of the u s dollar index and oil prices on the dynamic properties of biofuel related commodity futures the results show that the arji trend model not only provides a better fit for the data on the volatility dynamics of corn soybean and wheat futures but also performs better in terms of out of sample forecasting the u s dollar index and oil prices both generate significant impacts on the returns of the futures since the coexistence of permanent component transitory component and time varying jumps are observed in those futures the arji trend model is beneficial for acquiring a better understanding of the differential attributes among corn soybean and wheat futures

market power inflation targeting and commodity currencies abstract the commodity currency literature highlights the robust exchange rate response to fluctuations in global commodity prices that occurs for major commodity exporters the magnitude of the response however varies widely across countries and over time horizons this paper examines the real exchange rates of 51 commodity exporters over the period from 1980 to 2010 and finds that in the long run a higher degree of market power in the world commodity trade can reduce the exchange rate response while in the short run an inflation targeting regime can amplify it these differential impacts across countries and horizons are of particular relevance for monetary policy making and for trade strategy in commodity abundant economies

ecosystem services as technology of globalization on articulating values in urban nature the paper demonstrates how ecosystem services can be viewed and studied as a social practice of value articulation with this follows that when ecosystem services appear as objects of calculated va

building institutions to trade ecosystem services marketing forest carbon in mexico summary this paper analyzes institutional design organizational capacity and interplay in markets for ecosystem services it examines the development of a market based mechanism to commercialize forest carbon in mexico through the clean development mechanism cdm this is compared with a state run carbon forestry program aiming to provide emission rights to voluntary retail based carbon markets marketing forest carbon is hampered by lack of organizational capacity in government and civil society uncertainties in the international policy process and the interplay with existing common property institutions in rural mexico the paper identifies theoretical and practical barriers to implementing institutional arrangements for forest carbon trading

real exchanges rates commodity prices and structural factors in developing countries this paper provides new empirical evidence about the relationship that may exist between real exchange rates and commodity prices in developing countries that are specialized in the export of a main primary commodity it investigates how structural factors like the exchange rate regime the degree of financial and trade openness the degree of export concentration and the type of the commodity exports affect the strength of the commodity price real exchange rate dependence

modelling systemic risk and dependence structure between the prices of crude oil and exchange rates in brics economies evidence using quantile coherency and ngcovar approaches abstract in this study we examine the dependence structure and systemic risk between return series of the prices of crude oil and the brics exchange rates to us using the quantile coherency methods of barunik and kley 2015 and the nonparametric conditional value at risk granger causality test hereafter ngcovar of diks and wolski 2018 over the period 2005 2017 further we use the hiemstra and jones 1994 hereafter hj and diks and panchenko 2005 hereafter dp tests for comparison purposes our findings indicate that all countries reveal significant negative dependence in the long run dynamics between oil prices and brazilian indian and south african currencies hj and dp tests suggest that lagged crude oil prices have predictive power for the brazilian and russian exchange rates furthermore a robust unidirectional lagged dependence exists from the brazilian exchange rate to crude oil prices concerning the chinese indian and south african currencies we find no contagion effects from to those countries to the oil market for russia there is limited evidence of contagion effects these findings provide insights for regulators and international investors

ecosystem services concepts and approaches in conservation just a rhetorical tool many commentators have raised questions about the recent focus on ecosystem services es concepts in conservation but little empirical analysis exists we present a novel empirical analysis using interviews and q methodology to examine how conservation practitioners and organisations are interpreting and using es concepts and associated approaches we find that these concepts are being adopted for instrumental imperatives to broaden constituencies and with an expectation of extending funding sources we uncover concerns within conservation that the utilitarian emphases of es concepts may compromise the ability to make non utilitarian arguments for nature in the future in relation to changing practice we examine shifts in partnerships and funding where es ideas provide a shared language about flows of value apparently accelerating the integration of conservation and the private sector whilst many respondents noted the significance of shifts related to es ideas some attempted to play these down presenting their organisation s adoption of these ideas as just a rhetorical tool however we argue that the adoption of es concepts cannot be presented as solely rhetorical given that these increasingly underpin and inform planning tools and policy instruments

external wealth the trade balance and the real exchange rate abstract we examine the link between the net foreign asset position the trade balance and the real exchange rate in particular we decompose the impact of a country s net foreign asset position external wealth on its long run real exchange rate into two mechanisms the relation between external wealth and the trade balance and holding fixed other determinants a negative relation between the trade balance and the real exchange rate we also provide additional evidence that the relative price of nontradables is an important channel linking the trade balance and the real exchange rate

reprint of linking conservation and welfare a theoretical model with application to nepal theoretical articles linking conservation and welfare find a negative relationship between these two variables while empirical studies show that land protection may be positively related to welfare several authors attribute this empirical result to the development of ecotourism in protected areas we thus argue that the gap between the theory and existing empirical results is partly explained by the fact that most theoretical models do not account for a productive activity on protected land therefore we develop a theoretical model in which conservation allows developing an alternative sector and show that the relationship between conservation and welfare is u shaped we test this theoretical prediction using nepalese data and find that conservation combined with ecotourism is indeed positively related to local welfare

payments for ecosystem services from local to global abstract payment for ecosystem services pes is becoming increasingly popular as a way to manage ecosystems using economic incentives the environmental economics approach to pes tries to force ecosystem services into the market model with an emphasis on efficiency the ecological economics approach in contrast seeks to adapt economic institutions to the physical characteristics of ecosystem services prioritizing ecological sustainability and just distribution and requiring a transdisciplinary approach this paper summarizes the results of a participatory atelier workshop held in costa rica we developed a set of principles the heredia declaration for pes systems and report on evolving initiatives in several countries we discuss how the distinction between ecosystem goods which are stock flow resources and ecosystem services which are fund service resources and the physical characteristics of the fund services affect the appropriate institutional form for pes we conclude that pes systems represent an important way to effectively manage fund service resources as public goods and that this represents a significant departure from conventional market institutions

the environmentalism of the poor revisited territory and place in disconnected glocal struggles abstract in 2002 the year it was published the environmentalism of the poor was one of the first books examining in a multidisciplinary perspective three parallel environmental movements around the world eleven years later we re examine these movements the cult of wilderness the gospel of eco efficiency and the mantra of environmental justice focusing on the increased visibility of struggles representing environmental justice and the environmentalism of the poor even if they are often disconnected from an organizational standpoint glocal manifestations of resistance have emerged since the 1990s today environmental movements assert common values related to place identity and culture activists concepts such as ecological debt environmental justice environmental liabilities land grabbing environmental gentrification corporate accountability climate justice food sovereignty or economic degrowth are the keywords of the networks of the global environmental justice movement at the same time such concepts support the rural and urban movements that remake place for marginalized groups re assert traditional practices and protect territory from contamination land appropriation and real estate speculation some possibilities exist for cooperation between environmental justice and the other varieties of environmentalism here comparative research can help unravel the use of valuation languages different from green economic growth or sustainable development

participation in the world s first clean development mechanism forest project the role of property rights social capital and contractual rules abstract clean development mechanism cdm forest projects are perceived as an attractive way to both help mitigate climate change and transfer income to rural poor however to engender participation of small scale producers a cdm forest project must offer sufficient incentives while minimizing their costs of participation all the while respecting the need for additionality property rights social capital and contractual rules are critical in the success of cdm forest projects in this paper we ask what factors affect participation in the world s first cdm project established in guangxi province china using village level surveys we find that although the project facilitates participation through carbon pooling and a share holding system much of the project land remains unforested we find that the primary reasons for the unforested regions are constrained contractual rules property rights allocation disputes and low levels of social capital in some villages

the poverty of money marxian insights for ecological economists abstract karl marx s philosophical political and sociological analysis of the workings of capitalism provides insights regarding the character of monetary value price and the role of the market that are relevant to ecological economists ecological economists are divided over the utility of pricing components of ecological systems and the potential role of the market in achieving ecologically sustainable societies in the marxian influenced socialist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries similar issues were raised by those preoccupied with organising state policy and manipulating the market to achieve social justice for example at particular points in the russian and cuban revolutionary processes the potential and limitations of monetary pricing and market exchange were debated in a heated and detailed way in as much as ecological economists hold certain interests in common it is worth reflecting on marx s view of the human role within nature and analysing the discussions and experiences of marxian experimenters in social transformation that relate specifically to exchange

reconciling theory and practice an alternative conceptual framework for understanding payments for environmental services article i nfo this article provides an alternative and novel theoretical approach to the conceptualization and analysis of payments for environmental services pes we devote special emphasis to institutional and political economy issues which have been somewhat neglected in the literature on pes we argue that the coasean and pure market approach dominating the conceptualization of pes in the literature cannot be easily generalized and implemented in practice by contrast taking into account complexities related to uncertainty distributional issues social embeddedness and power relations permits acknowledging the variety of contexts and institutional settings in which pes operate the alternative approach presented in this introductory article to the special section may be more appealing to pes practitioners since while avoiding restrictive and prescriptive standpoints it allows some key sources of complexities they usually deal with on the ground to be more easily understood

real exchanges rates in commodity producing countries a reappraisal commodity price booms as those recorded in the last decade may have a significant economic impact in small commodity exporting developing countries whether the impact on output is positive or negative is still unclear it depends on various factors notably on the impact that commodity prices can have on the real exchange rate of the commodity exporting countries two recent papers show that the real exchange rate appreciates when commodity prices increase our analysis produces new estimates of this relationship by focusing on a large sample of developing countries which are specialized in the export of one leading commodity by using non stationary panel techniques robust to cross sectional dependence we find that the price of the dominant commodity has a significant long run impact on the real exchange rate when the exports of the leading commodity have a share of at least 20 percent in the country s total exports of merchandises our results also show that the larger this share the larger the size of the impact

how we come to value nature a pragmatist perspective abstract valuation studies have been mobilized to demonstrate the importance of nature to society and to incorporate concerns about nature into decision making although increasingly popular in ecosystem service research such studies have also been criticized in particular tensions between the assumptions of valuation methods and the real life processes of valuing have been identified this article argues that a process based pragmatist approach to valuing helps to evaluate the relevance of valuation studies results pragmatism proposes a focus on activities through which people come to value natural elements in their everyday life rather than on the outcomes of valuing processes using this approach we examine three empirical cases 1 restoration of natural springs in finland 2 protection of the bearded vulture in the french alps and 3 management of urban biodiversity in the city of grenoble france through these cases we demonstrate how nature s value to people emerges from commonplace ways of engaging with natural elements such as domestication inheriting and community building we conclude by discussing the usefulness of acknowledging this kind of processes in nature conservation

commodity prices and growth in africa a frican economies export primary commodities and most export little else policymakers as well as economists and historians of african economic development have seen these exports as both a hope and a curse the following parable tells the story once upon a time a servant of the ruler discovered a miraculous plant which grew readily in that country and whose seeds could be woven into fine cloth so desirable was this fabric that it became prized all over the world and fetched a high price after two score years the plant accounted for most of the country s trade with the world the ruler ordered the peasants to grow the plant paid them only a fraction of its price and he and his nobles became fabulously wealthy because the ruler wished to be remembered as a great ruler and as the father of his country he used his wealth to build a great army and brought machines from foreign countries to make the fine goods that previously could only be obtained from foreign merchants but the machines often broke down and the goods that they made were of poor quality and after the ruler died they were left to rust under the ruler s successor there was a war in a foreign land where the plant also grew so that there was a great shortage and its price increased threefold in only three seasons the new ruler spent his newfound riches on fantastic extravagance while immense sums were expended on public works after the manner of the east and on productive works carried out in the wrong way or too soon not even the threefold increase in prices could support these expenditures and the country soon found itself deeply in debt when the war ended and the price fell the country could no longer pay the interest on its debt or borrow more money even after it had sold its only useful public work to a foreign power so that power sent a mission to the country the publication of whose report from which the above

intellectual mercantilism and franchise equity a critical study of the ecological political economy of international payments for ecosystem services abstract this text addresses the ecological political economy of international payment for ecosystem services ipes taking the united nations collaborative programme on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries redd as a case in point it asks in what ways may ipes schemes impinge upon the political and economic autonomy of local and indigenous peoples in tropical countries it is argued that pes schemes like redd should be assessed not only with respect to questions of distributional equity does everyone have enough pie but also with respect to franchise equity does everyone want pie and that failure to take questions of franchise equity into account in ipes schemes reflects a form or intellectual mercantilism where wealth transfers from new economies to old ones are achieved by redefining existing locally available resources as internationally tradable speculative commodities this proposition is considered through exploration of two illustrative cases the redd social and environmental standards redd ses and the yasuni itt initiative and through normative political theory recommendations building on dryzek and stevenson s discussion of deliberative systems regarding how it might be possible to ensure franchise equity within redd in particular and within global environmental governance more generally

heterogeneity in the intergenerational transmission of alcohol consumption a quantile regression approach abstract this paper addresses the question of whether the effect of parental drinking on children s later consumption of alcohol which is frequently found to be of positive sign exhibits a certain pattern of heterogeneity in particular if this effect is more prominent in the upper tail than elsewhere in the distribution of children s alcohol consumption conventional regression analyses that focus on the mean effect may substantially underrate parental drinking as a risk factor for children s later alcohol abuse in our empirical application we address this issue by applying censored quantile regression methods to german survey data the supposed pattern of heterogeneity is indeed found in the data at least for daily parental drinking in addition the intergenerational transmission of alcohol consumption exhibits gender specific heterogeneity

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed

reprint of ecosystem services concepts and approaches in conservation just a rhetorical tool abstract many commentators have raised questions about the recent focus on ecosystem services es concepts in conservation but little empirical analysis exists we present a novel empirical analysis using interviews and q methodology to examine how conservation practitioners and organisations are interpreting and using es concepts and associated approaches we find that these concepts are being adopted for instrumental imperatives to broaden constituencies and with an expectation of extending funding sources we uncover concerns within conservation that the utilitarian emphases of es concepts may compromise the ability to make non utilitarian arguments for nature in the future in relation to changing practice we examine shifts in partnerships and funding where es ideas provide a shared language about flows of value apparently accelerating the integration of conservation and the private sector whilst many respondents noted the significance of shifts related to es ideas some attempted to play these down presenting their organisation s adoption of these ideas as just a rhetorical tool however we argue that the adoption of es concepts cannot be presented as solely rhetorical given that these increasingly underpin and inform planning tools and policy instruments

payments for environmental services in watersheds insights from a comparative study of three cases in central america we have compared three cases of payments for water related environmental services pes in central america in terms of socioeconomic background opportunity costs of forest conservation and stakeholders perceptions of the conditions of water resources and other issues we found that in general the opportunity costs are larger than the amounts paid which apparently contradicts the economic foundation of pes schemes and suggests that the role of intangibles is important in inducing participation the results also show that trade offs between different environmental and social goals are likely to emerge in pes schemes posing some doubts as to their ability to be multipurpose instruments for environmental improvement and rural development we also found that pes schemes may work as a conflict resolution instrument facilitating downstream upstream problem solving though at the same time they might introduce changes in social perceptions of property rights

exploring the links between equity and efficiency in payments for environmental services a conceptual approach this paper addresses the relationship between equity and efficiency in pes schemes from a conceptual point of view emphasis is placed on the role of the institutional setting social perceptions about economic fairness or distributive justice of the payments uncertainty and interactions between agents including power relations we introduce the heuristic concept of the efficiency equity interdependency curve to illustrate potential combinations between equity and efficiency that may be theoretically possible the paper argues that different types of institutional factors determine which equity efficiency combinations may be potentially feasible influence the actual combination that will be achieved on the ground and condition possible changes in that combination due to exogenous factors by stressing the role of institutional aspects in shaping the equity efficiency relationship the paper attempts to go beyond the dominant coasean vision of pes