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

compensation and rewards for environmental services cres and efficient design of contracts in developing countries behavioral insights from a natural field experiment the use of economic incentives for biodiversity mostly compensation and reward for environmental services including payment for es has been widely supported in the past decades and became the main innovative policy tools for biodiversity conservation worldwide these policy tools are often based on the insight that rational actors perfectly weigh the costs and benefits of adopting certain behaviors and well crafted economic incentives and disincentives will lead to socially desirable development scenarios this rationalist mode of thought has provided interesting insights and results but it also misestimates the context by which real individuals come to decisions and the multitude of factors influencing development sequences in this study our goal is to examine how these policies can take advantage of some unintended behavioral reactions that might in return impact either positively or negatively general policy performances we test the effect of income s origin low effort based money vs high effort based money on spending decisions necessity vs superior goods and subsequent pro social preferences future pro environmental behavior within madagascar rural areas using a natural field experiment our results show that money obtained under low effort leads to different consumption patterns than money obtained under high efforts superior goods are more salient in the case of low effort money in parallel money obtained under low effort leads to subsequent higher pro social behavior compensation and rewards policies for ecosystem services may mobilize knowledge on behavioral biases to improve their design and foster positive spillovers on their development goals

qualitative and quantitative evidence on the true local welfare costs of forest conservation in madagascar are discrete choice experiments a valid ex ante tool summary protected areas may impose local welfare costs through the enforcement of use restrictions predicting their welfare impacts before their establishment could help with the design of compensation schemes discrete choice experiments dces are increasingly used for ex ante evaluations but their validity is largely untested in low income settings using a case study of a new redd reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation project in eastern madagascar we explore the validity of dces in two ways i whether the estimates of welfare costs derived from dce are affected by respondents prior experience of conservation ii whether dce results have high theoretical and content validity we surveyed households who have varying degrees of experience of restrictions to swidden agriculture we also qualitatively debriefed a sub sample of respondents to better understand their thought processes latent class analysis shows that dce outcomes vary with conservation experience households more experienced with forest protection are less willing to trade off rights to clear forest for swidden agriculture with any compensatory interventions whereas less experienced households highly favor support for alternative agricultural techniques and a secure right to clear one hectare of forest although the results show apparent non attendance to some attributes e g cash payments qualitative debriefings suggest that respondents infact do expect relatively low or no utility from the given attributes and hence have theoretically valid preferences similarly the dce has generally high content validity although dce can elicit current preferences in this context using ex ante dce to estimate the welfare costs of such a long term intervention requires caution we conclude that it is difficult to robustly estimate compensation in advance of an intervention there is therefore a need to rethink conservation approaches and the feasibility of achieving fair compensations for conservation imposed restrictions

spatial targeting of payments for environmental services a tool for boosting conservation benefits abstract payments for environmental services pes have become an increasingly popular market based instrument to translate external non market environmental services into financial incentives for landowners to preserve the ecosystems that provide the services however lack of spatial differentiation in the targeting mechanism may lead to efficiency losses addressing this challenge we construct an applied site selection tool which takes into account three variables that vary in space environmental services provided risks of losing those services and participation costs using data from costa rica s nicoya peninsula we empirically test the tool s potential to increase the financial efficiency of the forest focused pes program in place results show that given a fixed budget efficiency increases radically if per hectare payments are aligned to landowners heterogeneity in participation costs involving opportunity transaction and direct costs of protection respectively selecting sites based on environmental service potential also moderately increases efficiency overall additionality could in the best case be doubled but remains generally limited due to current low deforestation risks prevailing in costa rica to take advantage of the high efficiency potentials of flexible payments we propose inverse auction systems as a cost effective approach for the determination of micro level participation costs

international comparisons of productivity and its determinants in the natural gas industry the objective of this paper was to evaluate the performance of the natural gas industry using an inter country comparison of productivity level and its determinants three method ologies multilateral tornqvist productivity analysis managerial index system analysis and non parametric efficiency analysis are employed to make a methodological cross checking and to perform diversified analysis from the empirical results we identified the level and growth rate of productivity of individual firms the results also indicated that the korean gas industry has shown a relatively low level of productivity from the results of managerial performance index analysis we found that during the recent years of regulatory changes the final price of gas has decreased dramatically while the productivity growth has not been enough to offset the effect of decreased output price which has resulted in decreased profit we also examine the extent of the allocative scale and managerial efficiency as source components of the overall efficiency based on the performance of best practiced with the results of this study an effective policy measure could be established to improve the productivity and the overall managerial performance in the natural gas industry q 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

how can market mechanisms for forest environmental services help the poor preliminary lessons from latin america summary market mechanisms for forest environmental services are a new approach for conservation but there is also an increasing interest in the derived developmental benefits of these mechanisms we first propose a conceptual framework for future research on the livelihood impacts of environmental service markets we then review eight latin american case studies on carbon sequestration and watershed protection market initiatives finding positive local income effects in most cases more land tenure security and socioinstitutional strengthening in some cases but some negative effects also we recommend pro poor policy measures such as reducing smallholders transaction costs and removing inappropriate access restrictions

the effect of the sloping land conversion programme on farm household productivity in rural china abstractthe objective of this paper is to examine the treatment effect on farm household productivity induced by the sloping land conversion program using large balanced household level data from five provinces during 1996 2010 this study shows that the slcp significantly improved the productivity of participants during the first round of funding of the programme until 2008 while the effects decreased gradually in the second round with most years not showing significant differences moreover it is found that there are heterogeneous effects on farm household productivity between the south and north as well as between poor and rich regions

institutional determinants of success among forestry based carbon sequestration projects in sub saharan africa summary this paper contributes to the debate on the economic and social implications of carbon forestry through the study of 42 programs in africa using carbon offset payments to fund tree planting activities such projects may be understood as multi layered collective action problems growing trees for carbon offsets requires not only international financial incentives to plant trees but also local institutions to monitor impose sanctions and distribute benefits consistent with economic theories large projects appear to realize economies of scale contrary to expectations community based projects on lower quality sites often successfully generate and sell offsets while private for profit initiatives appear susceptible to collapse

economic vs non material incentives for participation in an in kind payments for ecosystem services program in bolivia abstract this study examines the motivations that drive participation in a compensation program for environmental conservation in bolivia previous research on payments programs suggests that institutions that appeal to both economic and non material incentives should be encouraged this program attempts such a strategy offering in kind compensation for conservation while simultaneously attempting to engage with environmental values and traditional social norms i take advantage of a comprehensive household survey conducted prior to the offer of the program and employ means comparison tests and multi level regression analysis to compare those who chose to participate with those who did not my research examines whether motivations for participating in this program reflected purely financial calculations regarding the costs and benefits of the program or whether non financial motivations such as environmental or social beliefs and norms played a role as well i find evidence that the program s effort to engage with social motivations was successful and that social factors not financial incentives alone affect participation in the program findings also suggest that environmental values did not play a very large role and that the financial determinants of participation are related mainly to prohibitive costs or barriers to entry rather than the size of anticipated benefits

is biodiversity friendly coffee financially viable an analysis of five different coffee production systems in western el salvador abstract the current trend for reducing shade cover in coffee plantations in northern latin america has prompted concern among conservationists because of its potential implications for the loss of biodiversity to help reverse such a trend a project has been launched to promote biodiversity friendly cultural practices in coffee plantations and the marketing of certified biodiversity friendly coffee this paper examines the financial feasibility of investing in the certification criteria for a biodiversity friendly coffee in farms with different production systems in western el salvador models were developed to estimate net present values and risks associated with the investment for five hypothetical but typical coffee farms 1 traditional polyculture 2 commercial polyculture 3 technified shade less than 1200 m elevation 4 technified shade greater than 1200 m elevation and 5 unshaded monoculture to invest in the biodiversity friendly certification criteria was financially viable in all farms the unshaded monoculture farm type was the most profitable case and the farm under traditional polyculture was the only risk free capital requirements for the investment are low though they increase as shade cover in the farm becomes reduced small cash poor farmers will need assistance to make the up front expenditures required to have the farm certified incentives for certified biodiversity friendly coffee plantations such as tax relief payment for environmental services and soft credits could help make the investment more attractive

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

the political economy of resource driven growth abstract in recent decades resource poor countries have out performed resource abundant ones a stylised facts model of competitive industrialisation describes the long run development of a resource poor country with a political state that is developmental only minor change is required to adapt the model to trace the development trajectory of a resource abundant country with a similar political state however most resource abundant countries engender a political state that is factional or predatory and distorts the economy in the pursuit of rents a staple trap model describes the development trajectory under these conditions the model predicts a growth collapse from which recovery is protracted especially for small economies that lack a niche trade link with a large economy

natural resources and economic development new panel evidence the question as to whether natural resources are a curse on economic growth and development is subject to considerable debates and remains controversial using heterogeneous panel cointegration techniques this paper provides a fresh re examination of the resource curse while allowing for cross section heterogeneity and commonalities in the nexus between natural resource abundance and economic development it finds in a sample of developing countries that economies endowed with abundant natural resources tend to develop more slowly than countries with scarce resources natural resources are on average a curse however there is considerable heterogeneity in the effects of resource abundance on economic development across countries perhaps because of differences in the extent of government intervention access to sound money legal structures and the security of property rights the degree of globalization and or corruption

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

payments for environmental services as an alternative to logging under weak property rights the case of indonesia decentralization reforms in indonesia have led to local communities negotiating logging agreements with timber companies for relatively low financial payoffs and at high environmental cost this paper analyzes the potential of payments for environmental services pes to provide an alternative to logging for these communities and to induce forest conservation we apply a game theoretical model of community firm interactions that explicitly considers two stylized conditions present in the indonesian context i community rights to the forest remain weak even after decentralization and ii the presence of logging companies interested in the commercial exploitation of the forest intuition may suggest that pes design should focus on those communities with the lowest expected payments from logging deals however we show that these communities may not be able to enforce a pes agreement i e they may not be able to prevent logging activities by timber companies moreover some communities would conserve the forest anyway in these cases pes would not lead to additional environmental gains most important the introduction of pes may increase a community s expected payoff from a logging agreement a failure to consider this endogeneity in expected payoffs could lead to communities opting for logging agreements despite pes simply allowing communities to negotiate better logging deals our results indicate that pes design is a complex task and that the costs of an effective pes system could potentially be much higher than expected from observing current logging fees using data collected in indonesia on actual logging fees received by communities we illustrate how the theoretical results could be used in empirical analysis to guide pes design our results are likely to be useful in other cases where local people make resource use decisions but have weak property rights over these resources and where external commercial forces are present the results highlight the importance of understanding the details of the local context in order to design pes programs appropriately

spatial multiproduct pricing empirical evidence on intra european duopoly airline markets this paper estimates a model of spatial multiproduct duopoly pricing when the location patterns differ across markets the theoretical model suggests that the neighbouring configuration yields less competitive nash prices than the interlaced configuration i apply this model to data for intra european duopoly airline markets the empirical results support the theoretical model since i find that fares are higher on intra european markets that exhibit neighbouring configurations in the time domain this result suggests that price competition is reduced when each airline operates on a specific segment of the timetable e g the first 12 hours of the day clearly this result has several implications for policy makers and or airport authorities in charge of awarding slots

the paradox of plenty a meta analysis since sachs and warner s seminal article in 1995 numerous studies have addressed the link between natural resources and economic growth although the resource curse effect was commonly accepted at first many articles have challenged its existence and the results found in the literature are ambiguous in this paper we aim to quantitatively review this literature in order to i identify the sources of heterogeneity and ii assess the impact of natural resources on economic growth a meta analysis is performed on 69 empirical studies on the resource curse totaling 1 419 estimates our findings show that i only developing countries suffer from the resource curse although it is soft ii the way natural resources are taken into account is crucial to understand the heterogeneity found in the literature iii the negative impact of the volatility of the terms of trade on growth should be qualified an additional mra performed on indirect effects size also indicate that when institutions are at their best level the resource curse disappears and may be turned into a blessing

economic factors in farmer adoption of agroforestry patterns observed in western kenya abstract a study of agroforestry adoption by 3 000 project participants in siaya and south nyanza districts in kenya supports three hypotheses 1 1 historical increases in tree domestication and management intensity are responses to declining supply of uncultivated tree resources increased subsistence and commercial demand for tree products and perceived risks of ecological degradation adoption of agroforestry is most likely where consistent with economic incentives for land use change 2 2 high variability in individual farmers tree growing strategies reflects differences in resources and livelihood strategies and household level returns to agroforestry relative to alternative options for meeting specific objectives 3 3 farmers reduce risks associated with new agroforestry practices through incremental adoption and adaptation and cost and risk reducing modifications in technology design

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

compatibility and competition in airlines demand side network effects abstract network effects arising in air transport markets are usually viewed as resulting from the implications of joint production on the cost side in this paper we focus on network effects originating on the demand side we consider a network that links three cities involving two direct and one indirect connection two carriers with asymmetric traffic rights on this network compete sequentially at the first stage they choose their departure times at the second they set prices we show that in order to compensate its network disadvantage the weak carrier chooses its departure time as close as possible to its competitor s this is in contrast to the usual maximum differentiation principle the network effect intensifies price competition depending on the size of the market and on consumers valuation of waiting time various subgame perfect equilibrium configurations are exhibited

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

liberalizing european airlines cost and factor productivity evidence abstract european countries do not all share the same view concerning the benefits of increased competition among airlines in europe to explain this difference in attitudes the paper presents evidence on differences in costs and global factor productivity between the main european national flag carriers the data reveal a clear distinction between the main european and north atlantic routes unit costs per passenger kilometer are lower in north atlantic routes and unit profits are higher in european routes the first result reflects the economies of scale due to higher distances and traffic density on north atlantic routes the second result is an indication of the lower level of competition between airlines in europe finally tornqvist factor productivity growth indexes 1981 1986 show that the initial gap which existed between these productivity measures at the beginning of the period is shrinking this suggests that the european airline industry is currently in a more favorable situation to support more competition

resource intensity institutions and development summary we examine the relationship between resource abundance and several indicators of human welfare consistent with the existing literature on the relationship between resource abundance and economic growth we find that given an initial income level resource intensive countries tend to suffer lower levels of human development while we find only weak support for a direct link between resources and welfare there is an indirect link that operates through institutional quality there are also significant differences in the effects that resources have on different measures of institutional quality these results imply that the resource curse is a more encompassing phenomenon than previously considered and that key differences exist between the effects of different resource types on various aspects of governance and human welfare 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

payments for ecosystem services and wealth distribution abstract payment for ecosystem services pes has come to be regarded as a promising market based policy instrument to internalize environmental externalities the potential of pes is linked to the relationship between the willingness to pay wtp of ecosystem service buyers and the willingness to accept wta of ecosystem service providers this study uses an economic model to analyze factors that influence aggregate wtp and wta in a pes scheme we demonstrate that wealth disparity between ecosystem services buyers and providers can increase transactions furthermore when wealth disparity exists between the buyers and sellers the wealthier population would contribute more into the program and the poorer population would benefit more from it under these conditions pes can be socially progressive and mitigate preexisting economic inequality in this sense the economic model provides justification for integration of pes and poverty alleviation programs results of our study indicate that pes is not a universally applicable conservation tool and there is a need for a more targeted approach to the design and application of pes

conservation payments liquidity constraints and off farm labor impact of the grain for green program on rural households in china this study evaluates the labor response of rural households participating in the grain for green program in china the largest payments for ecosystem services program in the developing world using a panel data set that we designed and implemented we find that the participating households are increasingly shifting their labor endowment from on farm work to the off farm labor market however the effects vary depending on the initial level of human and physical capital the results support the view that one reason why the participants are more likely to find off farm employment is because the program is relaxing households liquidity constraints

the good the bad and the contradictory neoliberal conservation governance in rural southeast asia summary the logic of the market economy increasingly informs the design and the outcomes of conservation in the developing world this paper uses case studies from thailand and the philippines to investigate this changing conservation landscape and argues first that such conservation governance does not abandon but rather rearticulates forms of coercive conservation and second that the particular manifestations of neoliberal conservation are shaped by the national policies local histories and livelihoods of recipient communities the conclusion asserts that market based conservation governance may constrain as well as support farmer freedom to pursue particular livelihoods resulting in contradictory outcomes for neoliberal conservation governance 2010 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

agricultural policy market barriers and deforestation the case of mexico s southern yucatan summary this paper examines the linkages between agricultural policies and deforestation in a development frontier of southern mexico focusing on support programs targeted at buffering farmers from structural reforms we argue that local barriers to market participation condition the responsiveness of farmers to program incentives thereby constituting a key channel through which agricultural policies impact the environment an econometric model parameterizes the influence of two programs procampo and alianza para el campo on cultivation consistent with an economic environment characterized by market barriers results suggest that program support even when decoupled from production decisions significantly determines land use and deforestation

rule of law and the resource curse abundance versus intensity we examine the resource curse using new data on historic resource stocks and an improved econometric methodology the paper distinguishes between resource abundance stocks and extractive intensity flows focusing on relationships between resources and rule of law previously unavailable information on past resource stocks is estimated we find that economically large initial natural resource stocks are associated with subsequent lower levels of rule of law and do not directly affect growth while raw resource exports do not have a significant effect on rule of law when stocks are included in the analysis but do affect average growth rates sample size is maximized through the use of an emis expectation maximization with importance sampling algorithm to replace missing data minimizing the bias and inefficiency associated with listwise deletion which commonly eliminates half or more of the available data in this setting

payments for environmental services in costa rica costa rica pioneered the use of the payments for environmental services pes approach in developing countries by establishing a formal country wide program of payments the psa program the psa program has worked hard to develop mechanisms to charge the users of environmental services for the services they receive it has made substantial progress in charging water users and more limited progress in charging biodiversity and carbon sequestration users because of the way it makes payments to service providers using approaches largely inherited from earlier programs however the psa program has considerable room for improvement in the efficiency with which it generates environmental services with experience many of these weaknesses are being gradually corrected as the psa program evolves towards a much more targeted and differentiated program an important lesson is the need to be flexible and to adapt to lessons learned and to changing circumstances

corruption perceptions vs corruption reality abstract this paper examines the accuracy of corruption perceptions by comparing indonesian villagers reported perceptions about corruption in a road building project in their village with a more objective measure of missing expenditures in the project i find that villagers reported perceptions do contain real information and that villagers are sophisticated enough to distinguish between corruption in a particular road project and general corruption in the village the magnitude of the reported information however is small in part because officials hide corruption where it is hardest for villagers to detect i also find that there are biases in reported perceptions the findings illustrate the limitations of relying solely on corruption perceptions whether in designing anti corruption policies or in conducting empirical research on corruption

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

conservation versus equity can payments for environmental services achieve both this paper investigates the trade off between conservation and equity considerations in the use of payments for environmental services pes that implicitly incorporate different distributive justice principles using a public good experiment with heterogeneous participants we compare the effects on additional area conserved and distribution of earnings of two pes schemes an equal payment and a payment based on rawls distributional principle which we refer to as maxi min payment scheme the main findings of the framed field experiment conducted in jambi province indonesia indicate that the introduction of a maxi min pes scheme can function as a multi purpose instrument it realigns the income distribution in favor of low endowed participants and does not necessarily need to be compromised by lower environmental additionality at the group level

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

impact of a regional payment for ecosystem service program on the livelihoods of different rural households abstract payments for ecosystem services pes is popular despite little empirical evidence of their effectiveness in poverty alleviation using survey data on rural households livelihoods in changting county southeast china we evaluate the comprehensive and dynamic livelihood impacts of pes on participants and nonparticipants results show that pes programs have been beneficial for participants however negative impacts have been found for nonparticipants in detail the participants livelihood assets are greatly consolidated through a series of policies and institutions these institutions have empowered participants to access to natural resources and excluded the others participants livelihood strategies and sustainable livelihoods are further shaped and mediated by these institutions instead nonparticipants are excluded from the project and prohibited to access to natural resources their livelihood assets and strategies are negatively influenced by resources relocation given the minimal trickle down benefits and remarkable negative impacts the nonparticipants livelihoods are overall adversely affected by the project our study highlights the importance of disaggregated household analysis and dynamic perspective in evaluating livelihood impacts of pes policy strategies should consider household heterogeneity livelihood framework and dynamic impacts in related environmental and development programs

institutions and the resource curse countries rich in natural resources constitute both growth losers and growth winners we claim that the main reason for these diverging experiences is differences in the quality of institutions more natural resources push aggregate income down when institutions are grabber friendly while more resources raise income when institutions are producer friendly we test this theory building on sachs and warner s influential works on the resource curse our main hypothesis that institutions are decisive for the resource curse is confirmed our results contrast the claims of sachs and warner that institutions do not play a role

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

governance land and distribution a discussion on the political economy of community based conservation abstract the effectiveness of community based conservation cbc has been under discussion through the review of cbc initiatives in developing countries we contribute to the debate by analysing how players influence different factors that determine the outcomes of cbc we highlight several points first the promise of benefits has been overshadowed by constraints on the extraction of natural resources along with the use of governmental schemes to extract partially the rents from cbc which has left little to share inside the communities second cbc design and implementation has often overlooked the asymmetries of power within the community and at the individual level which has produced unequal access to the design decision making and outcomes of this activity third while the elites have had a determinant role in shaping the governance of cbc external agents promotion of cbc has tended to reproduce the existent negotiating power at the community local and national levels fourth land contestation plays a key role in the dynamics of relationship and conflict between the governments corporate interests and the communities finally cbc adaptation to new scenarios depends critically on the process of community empowerment and the building of networks with external agents

the varieties of resource experience natural resource export structures and the political economy of economic growth many oil mineral and plantation crop based economies experienced a substantial deceleration in growth following the commodity boom and bust of the 1970s and early 1980s this article illustrates how countries dependent on point source natural resources those extracted from a narrow geographic or economic base such as oil and minerals and plantation crops are predisposed to heightened economic and social divisions and weakened institutional capacity this in turn impedes their ability to respond effectively to shocks which previous studies have shown to be essential for sustaining rising levels of prosperity analysis of data on classifications of export structure controlling for a wide array of other potential determinants of governance shows that point source and coffee and cocoa exporting countries do relatively poorly across an array of governance indicators these governance effects are not associated simply with being a natural resource exporter countries with natural resource exports that are diffuse relying primarily on livestock and agricultural produce from small family farms do not show the same strong effects and have had more robust growth recoveries

decentralized payments for environmental services the cases of pimampiro and profafor in ecuador abstract few payment for environmental services pes schemes in developing countries operate outside of the central state s umbrella and are at the same time old enough to allow for a meaningful evaluation ecuador has two such decentralised consolidated experiences the five year old pimampiro municipal watershed protection scheme and the twelve year old profafor carbon sequestration programme we describe and compare the two cases using a common pes definition and methodology drawing on both primary interview based information and secondary data we find that both schemes have been relatively effective in reaching their environmental objectives in terms of having probably high additionality levels and low leakage effects a strong focus on the targeted environmental service and a strong degree of conditionality seem to be two key factors explaining these achievements although neither scheme has targeted poverty alleviation or other side objectives both are likely to have improved pes recipients welfare mostly through higher incomes we highlight several observations with more generalised relevance and lessons for the design of pes schemes

poor household participation in payments for environmental services lessons from the silvopastoral project in quindio colombia as the use of payments for environmental services pes approaches in developing countries has grown concern has arisen over the ability of poorer households to participate this paper uses data from a pes project implemented in quindio colombia to examine the extent to which poorer households that are eligible to participate are in fact able to do so the project provides a strong test of the ability of poorer households to participate in a pes program as it required participants to make substantial and complex land use changes the results show that poorer households are in fact able to participate at levels that are broadly similar to those of better off households moreover their participation was not limited to the simpler least expensive options transaction costs may be greater obstacles to the participation of poorer households than household specific constraints

resource abundance and economic growth in the united states abstract it is a common assumption that regions within the same country converge to approximately the same steady state income levels the so called absolute convergence hypothesis focuses on initial income levels to account for the variability in income growth among regions empirical data seem to support the absolute convergence hypothesis for us states but the data also show that natural resource abundance is a significant negative determinant of growth we find that natural resource abundance decreases investment schooling openness and r d expenditure and increases corruption and we show that these effects can fully explain the negative effect of natural resource abundance on growth

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

testing participation constraints in contract design for sustainable soil conservation in ethiopia abstract this paper focuses on contract design to improve the incentive structure of current coordination mechanisms related to sustainable land use management in the ethiopian highlands the main objective is to assess whether and if so under which terms and conditions rural households are willing to enter into contractual agreements to invest in soil conservation measures on their land participation constraints are tested under different soil erosion and institutional economic conditions in a choice experiment targeting 750 rural households we show that contracts provided by local government peasant associations offering additional credit land use security and extension services could be an effective means to increase the share of farmers implementing soil conservation measures however trust in contract terms and conditions appears to play an important role farmers living in the most erosion prone areas are most likely to participate while farmers taking soil conservation measures already are less likely to enter into a contractual agreement with the local government farmers not taking soil conservation measures will only do so if the contract price is lower than or equal to the income losses suffered from soil erosion

why do farmers join payments for ecosystem services pes schemes an assessment of pes water scheme participation in brazil payments for ecosystem services pes have become a popular instrument in the last decades and this growing trend is also clearly evident in brazil however challenges related to implementation of these schemes are often underestimated any guarantee that a payment will secure or provide such a service is subject not only to underlying ecological uncertainties but also to those entailed by the kinds of social interaction that are inherent to policy implementation it is argued that the objectives proposed with these instruments can only be attained by ensuring a wide participation of land users this article advances this topic reporting and discussing evidence on farmer s reasons to participate in three pes water schemes in brazil using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research approaches results indicate that the diverging opinions regarding how ecosystem services are generated or secured decentralized governance structures and the involvement of representative bodies in scheme design and implementation are important factors to consider furthermore access to information and general environmental concern were found to be important variables to explain the propensity of farmers to participate this generates serious policy implications for developing consistent communication and consultation strategies with scheme beneficiaries

geographical targeting for poverty alleviation an introduction to the special issue in the face of rising public deficits and shrinking public resources geographical targeting may be a viable way to allocate resources for poverty alleviation in developing countries efficiency can be increased and leakage to the non poor reduced substantially by targeting increasingly smaller areas this article and more generally the symposium on geographical targeting for poverty alleviation proposes several techniques for augmenting data to produce more detailed poverty maps it focuses on practical considerations in the design of geographically targeted poverty alleviation programs in particular it assesses the advantages and disadvantages of geographical targeting and describes how geographic information systems can be applied to improve poverty mapping

the effects of china s sloping land conversion program on agricultural households in the late 1990s china aimed to mitigate environmental degradation from agricultural production activities by introducing the world s largest payments for environmental services pes program the sloping land conversion program slcp in order to analyze its effects on agricultural households we develop a microeconomic agricultural household model ahm which can model the production consumption and non farm labor supply decisions of agricultural households in rural china in a theoretically consistent fashion based on this theoretical model we derive an empirical specification that we use to econometrically estimate the effects of the slcp and other exogenous factors using a large longitudinal farm household survey data set we estimate the empirical model with the hausman taylor estimation method the empirical results are generally consistent with the results of our theoretical comparative static analysis e g that the slcp significantly decreases agricultural production while the slcp increases non farm labor supply and total consumption in the yellow river basin these effects could not be observed in the yangtze river basin the recent reduction of the slcp compensation payment rates has had some notable but generally small effects

material transfer agreements an economic and econometric analysis this paper uses econometric analysis for understanding the determinants that affect the payment mechanism in material transfer agreements mtas these contracts regulate the exchange of peculiar ecosystem services genetic and biological materials between a provider and a recipient of the service the paper uses a set of model contracts from the late 2000s gathered from the u n world intellectual property organization wipo and the convention of biological diversity cbd empirical results show that the probability that a payment scheme is included in the contract negatively depends on the presence of an acknowledgment obligation to the provider of the material probably aware of the complexity and uncertainty of the recipient s research activity the provider and the cbd requires to be compensated through the recognition of his her important input to the research venture in economics this can be interpreted as payment in terms of moral satisfaction

a dynamic approach to pes pricing and finance for interlinked ecosystem services watershed conservation and groundwater management a theory of payment for ecosystem services pes pricing consistent with dynamic efficiency and sustainable income requires optimized shadow prices since ecosystem services are generally interdependent this requires joint optimization across multiple resource stocks we develop such a theory in the context of watershed conservation and groundwater extraction the optimal program can be implemented with a decentralized system of ecosystem payments to private watershed landowners financed by efficiency prices of groundwater set by a public utility the theory is extended to cases where land is publicly owned conservation instruments exhibit non convexities on private land or the size of a conservation project is exogenous in these cases conservation investment can be financed from benefit taxation of groundwater consumers while volumetric conservation surcharges induce inefficient water use a dynamic lump sum tax finances investment without distorting incentives since the optimal level of conservation is generated as long as payments are correct at the margin any surplus can be returned to consumers through appropriate block pricing the present value gain in consumer surplus generated by the conservation induced reduction in groundwater scarcity serves as a lower bound to the benefits of conservation without explicit measurement of other benefits such as recreation biodiversity and cultural values

investigating fishers preferences for the design of marine payments for environmental services schemes we determine the effects of various management restrictions on adoption rates of marine payments for environmental services pes schemes choice experiments are used in order to determine how fisher participation rates change under different marine pes programme designs various designs with differing restriction rates show different rates of adoption however fishers show a high utility loss associated with any move away from the current management situation irrespective of restriction levels this indicates that pes scheme costs may be high and creating an enabling environment could be important to reducing perceived losses as could investment into conditional in kind compensation mechanisms the paper also shows choice experiments to be a useful tool in marine pes design

natural resources institutional quality and economic growth in china the resource curse has been mainly studied using cross country samples in this paper we analyze a cross province sample from one country china we focus on the interplay between resource abundance institutional quality and economic growth using two different measures of resource abundance a stock resource reserves and a flow resource revenues and employing various econometric approaches including varying coefficient models we find that resource abundance has a positive effect on economic growth at the provincial level in china between 1990 and 2008 an effect that depends nonlinearly on institutional quality 1995 confidence in courts the west china development drive policy initiated in 2000 caused substantial changes which we investigate through a comparative panel data analysis

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

the economic valuation of nature a question of justice while many of the concerns over the economic valuation of nature have gained broad exposure justice concerns remain largely peripheral within both scholarly debate and actual valuation exercises the emphasis is most often on reconciling cultural and monetary valuation increasingly as the valuation of nature gains momentum proponents of the trend seek to relieve apprehensions by suggesting that economic valuation is entirely compatible with intrinsic and esthetic values this attempt to mollify skeptics however misses the mark regardless of whether or not nature may be valued simultaneously in cultural and economic terms the social and environmental justice implications of monetary valuation remain the purpose of this commentary is to clarify that much of the resistance to the economic valuation of nature is motivated by these justice concerns and that reassurances about the cultural value of nature do little to quell them several of the justice reasons to remain cautious of the economic valuation of nature are also elaborated

how accurate is food for work self targeting in the presence of imperfect factor markets evidence from ethiopia effective targeting of transfers is a key issue in public policy to combat poverty much faith is presently placed in self targeting mechanisms such as public employment schemes supported by food for work transfers where targeting errors have been observed these are usually attributed to mismanagement of key operational details such as the project s wage rate using a unique data set from rural ethiopia we demonstrate that targeting errors may also have structural causes in some low income countries we hypothesise that imperfect factor markets generate a predictable dispersion across households in reservation wage rates that breaks down the unconditionally positive relation between income and shadow wages on which the theory of self targeting public employment programmes rests our results confirm that the inaccuracy of ffw targeting stems from the fact that in rural ethiopia higher income households are endowed with more labour per unit of land or animal due to poor factor markets in land and liv

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

globalization forest resurgence and environmental politics in el salvador summary globalization is often viewed as a driver of deforestation but there are contexts where it promotes forest recovery this is the case in el salvador in spite of population densities in excess of 200 people per km2 the country which has been seen as a malthusian parable of population and ecological catastrophe is now increasingly wooded this reflects the impacts of globalization new flows of labor capital commodities and ideas which profoundly affected the rural economy as well as local processes such as civil war which constrained the agricultural frontier structural adjustment policies and agrarian reform

inequality democracy and the environment a cross national analysis abstract this paper joins the debate on the relationship between inequality and the environment departing from the past contributions which focused either on the theories of environmental behavior or on economic interests this paper develops arguments about political choice mechanisms that help explain the linkages between inequality and national policymaking related to the establishment of protected areas a cross national analysis of the interactions between inequality democracy and the legal designation of protected areas in a global sample of 137 countries shows that ceteris paribus the effects of inequality vary depending on the strength of democracy in relatively democratic countries inequality is associated with less land in protected areas whereas in relatively undemocratic countries the reverse is true the highly significant effects of inequality undermine the democratic dividend in the arena of nature conservation

performance of an agro forestry based payments for environmental services project in mozambique a household level analysis there has been a paucity of research on the impacts of small scale payments for environmental services pes projects in developing countries the aim of this paper is to evaluate the household level impacts of a small scale agro forestry based carbon sequestration project in rural mozambique in 2006 questionnaire based interviews were conducted quarterly of 290 randomly selected households in the buffer zone of the gorongosa national park in mozambique we used the propensity score matching technique to assess the pes project impacts on household cash income consumption expenditure forest resource use and crop yields we found that in contrast to nonparticipant households pes participant households earned more cash income incurred more consumption expenditure collected less forest products and harvested lower quantities of agriculture crops in addition we found through decomposition analysis that there was a differential in pes income both male headed and high income households were being favoured as project benefit recipients future pes projects should focus on a payment scheme that can better ensure the benefit to all the participant households and also pay extra attention on the benefits distribution to the vulnerable households

taking stock a comparative analysis of payments for environmental services programs in developed and developing countries abstract payments for environmental services pes are an innovative approach to conservation that has been applied increasingly often in both developed and developing countries to date however few efforts have been made to systematically compare pes experiences drawing on the wealth of case studies in this special issue we synthesize the information presented according to case characteristics with respect to design costs environmental effectiveness and other outcomes pes programs often differ substantially one from the other some of the differences reflect adaptation of the basic concept to very different ecological socioeconomic or institutional conditions others reflect poor design due either to mistakes or to the need to accommodate political pressures we find significant differences between user financed pes programs in which funding comes from the users of the es being provided and government financed programs in which funding comes from a third party the user financed programs in our sample were better targeted more closely tailored to local conditions and needs had better monitoring and a greater willingness to enforce conditionality and had far fewer confounding side objectives than government financed programs we finish by outlining some perspectives on how both user and government financed pes programs could be made more effective and cost efficient

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

capacity and product market competition measuring market power in a puppy dog industry abstract in this paper we specify and estimate a structural model which accounts for competition in two variables capacity and prices the model has a two stage setup in the first stage firms make capacity decisions followed by a product differentiated price setting game in the second stage since costs are endogenized through the first stage this has important implications for the measurement of market power in the product market in particular simpler one stage specifications would result in a bias in the measurement of market power which can be linked to the taxonomy for two stage games given in fudenberg and tirole 1984 fudenberg d tirole j 1984 the fat cat effect the puppy dog ploy and the lean and hungry look american economic review paper and proceedings 74 361 366 we then estimate this model demand cost short and long run and conduct for the european airline industry using data for the period of 1976 1990 we perform a number of specification tests and reject a simple one stage specification in favor of our two stage set up in particular we find that some degree of market power in the product market exists however market conduct in the two stage set up is significantly less collusive than in the more widely employed one stage specification which is consistent with the direction of bias in puppy dog games this illustrates that collusiveness of firms market conduct in the product market is significantly overestimated whenever capacity competition is not accounted for

endogenous costs and price cost margins an application to the european airline industry this paper allows for endogenous costs in the estimation of price cost margins in particular we estimate price cost margins when firms bargain over wages we extent the standard two equation set up demand and first order condition in the product market to include a third equation which is derived from bargaining over wages in this way price cost margins are determined by wages and vice versa we implement the model using data for eight european airlines from 1976 1994 and show that the treatment of endogenous costs has important implications for the measurement of price cost margins and the assessment of market power our main result is that observed prices in europe are virtually identical to monopoly prices even though observed margins are consistent with nash behavior apparently costs had been inflated to the point that the european consumers were faced with a de facto monopoly prices

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

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

alternative use systems for the remaining ethiopian cloud forest and the role of arabica coffee a cost benefit analysis this paper presents a cost benefit analysis of three different use systems for the remaining cloud forests in ethiopia which at present are being depleted at the rate of 8 per year these use systems are a traditional conversion to crop land b sustainable management of the forest e g by growing high quality semi forest coffee and c strict conservation we find that under business as usual conversion to cropland yields the highest net present income value for the local population taking into account watershed services sustainable forest use is in the best interests of the country for discount rates of 10 or lower taking into account the global benefits of biodiversity conservation and carbon storage sustainable forest management also yields the highest total economic value while strict conservation does not pass a cost benefit test even at a discount rate of 3 c 2012 elsevier b v all rights reserved

tenure constraints and carbon forestry in africa our analysis shows that landowners with customary tenure in africa can be efficient providers of carbon forestry if tree planting helps secure their permanent claims to the land if the farmer s tree planting can reduce the threat of eviction the amount of land allocated to carbon forestry may be greater or lesser than under private ownership but it is always more than if tenure security is completely absent our results support the view that carbon forestry schemes should accommodate traditional african customary tenure systems and if designed successfully can both promote carbon forestry and benefit the poor

carbon and livelihoods in post kyoto assessing voluntary carbon markets 1 introductionthe rst kyoto commitment period ends in 2012 with no clearconsensus regarding post kyoto governance there is nonethelessan increased recognition that efforts to adapt to climate change areas important as mitigation strategies world bank 2010 adaptationobjectivesbuildonlong termeffortstorelatemorefullyclimatechangemitigation embodied by the establishment of carbon markets to theenhancement of adaptive capacity and sustainable development smitand pilifosova 2003 ideally carbon marketscan contribute toadapta tion and mitigation objectives by reducing greenhouse gas emissionswhile also contributing to sustainable development outcomes a win win agenda that is explicitly represented in the dual goals of theclean development mechanism cdm milder et al 2010 estimatethat25to50 million low income landstewardscouldbene tfromcar bon markets alone by 2030 especially if carbon projects invest in liveli hood enhancing practices despite the rapid growth of carbon offsets over the past decade sustainable development objectives for the developing world are lag ging boydet al 2009 olsen 2007 sutterandparreno 2007 toun derstand the dynamics at play i relate mitigation actions driven byland based carbon projects to livelihood outcomes in the developingworld i focus speci cally on voluntary carbon markets vcms situating them within the wider carbon governance system i e cdm because these markets have been at the forefront of newdevelopments in carbon governance facilitating for instance theadvent of reduced emissions for deforestation and degradation redd mechanisms while carbon markets have the potential tofoster pro poor growth and environmental conservation in practicelinking carbon markets to livelihoods is greatly constrained by thecomplexity of socio economic political and environmental conditionson the ground as well as dif culty in building trust and linkages acrossscales 2 voluntary carbon market within the wider regulatory contextof carbon nancethe kyoto protocol 1997 was instrumental to the developmentof global carbon nance mechanisms including regulatory frame works such as the cdm and parallel voluntary markets these mar kets support the trade of carbon offsets to reduce sequester oravoid the emission of greenhouse gases globally despite their rapidgrowth during the past 7 years carbon markets have slowed downdue to their vulnerability to global economic crises as well as abroader uncertainty relating to the fate of the kyoto agreementpost 2012 linacre et al 2011 peters stanley et al 2011 whilethe total value of global carbonstabilized around 142 billion the pri mary cdm decreased by 50 since 2009 for a total value of 1 5 billion less than 2005 when the kyoto protocol was rst implemented linacre et al 2011 9 given these uncertainties lessons learnedfrom the voluntary carbon will be extremely valuable to assess howcarbon markets may evolve vcms are considerably smaller than regulatory frameworks with0 1 of the value and 0 02 of the volume of the global carbon market peters stanley et al 2011 11 yet their impact on the trajectory ofcarbon markets is not negligible in opposition to a declining cdm 131 2 mtco2e were traded in 2010 for an overall value of 424 millionusd 34 more than 2009 and even exceeding historic trends 45 ofthese credits were land based and 29 were related to the burgeon ing redd carbon market peters stanley et al 2011 11 the volumeof vcms even exceeded that of the primary cdm in 2010 fig 1 the cdm was developed to reach a twofold agenda reduce ghgemissions by facilitating the trade of carbon offsets between industri alized countries that rati ed the kyoto protocol and the developingworld while simultaneously contributing to sustainable developmentin the host countries while in theory synergies exist between thetwo objectives in practice there are trade offs between cost ef cient mitigation and sustainable development goals which resultlimited sustainable development outcomes boyd et al 2009 olsen 2007 sutter and parreno 2007 sustainable development efforts

competition in european aviation pricing policy and market structure the purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of liberal bilateral agreements on some european air routes in terms of price competition and market structure the author proposes a model that explains firms behavior and shows that after the liberalization firms exploit their cost advantages and differentiate their products more but market structure still depends on access to airport facilities and other ancillary services controlled by the flag carriers these results differ from american evidence in that the author finds that the effect of airport presence on prices through lower costs more than offsets the effect through higher perceived quality copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

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