productive energy use and economic growth energy physical and human capital relationships abstract ecological and biophysical economists and historians of economics consider that availability of energy inputs has played a key role in driving economic growth in industrialized and emerging economies nevertheless being very sensitive to structural characteristics or stages of economic development the strength of this link differs among countries this study analyzes the role of energy in economic growth from a geographical standpoint by estimating an aggregate translog production function with human and physical capital and productive energy use as production factors within a growth framework panel data of 38 major countries for the period from 1995 to 2007 were used the strength of the link between energy and growth is analyzed for the whole sample and the following relevant country groups oecd bric nafta east asian east european and eu15 countries obtained results show that the calculated productivity elasticities with respect to energy use are positive for all country groups bric countries have higher elasticities around 0 37 and eu15 countries have lower elasticities around 0 12 weak substitutability relationships between energy and capital are observed for all groups except for bric and east european countries which show complementarity relationships

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

relational goods and participation incorporating sociability into a theory of rational action theoretical explanations of why rational individuals would participate in politics remain unsatisfactory this paper addresses the problem by developing and analyzing models which include among citizens payoffs relational goods objectives which depend upon interactions among persons the models predict more participation than do the standard approaches for example under some circumstances persons will be more likely to act if they believe others will act contrary to free rider logic more importantly conditions are identified under which leaders could increase mass activity thus a model is provided of mobilization in terms of the preferences and decisions of a rational individual

electricity intensity convergence in iea oecd countries aggregate and sectoral analysis convergence in electricity intensity is analyzed among a sample of iea countries sigma convergence the narrowing of the distribution and to a lesser degree gamma convergence movement within the distribution are detected however electricity intensity convergence is less dramatic than energy intensity convergence convergence within the end use sectors is more diverse in terms of the rates timing extent and ultimate modal structure of the distributions commercial electricity intensity has more recently converged toward a bell shape distribution by contrast industry electricity intensity is largely converging toward two distinct groups of countries one with relatively high electricity intensity and another one with relatively low electricity intensity different still is related residential electricity consumption per capita where a small group of countries has stopped growing another group has slowed considerably while a third group experienced rapid growth

redistribution income and voting a model that reconciles the positive association between income and voting found in cross sectional studies with the negative correlation between income and turnout over time is developed voting is modeled as a group rational activity voter turnout rates in the united states for the 1948 1960 1968 and 1980 elections are used to test the model voter turnout is found first to fall and then to rise as families move up the income distribution voter turnout also rises as real wages fall as educational attainment increases as elections become closer and as poll taxes and literacy tests are removed

micro equity for sustainable development selection monitoring and exit strategies of micro angels abstract sustainable development requires balancing environmental social and financial concerns this requires investors to select and monitor entrepreneurs who would balance these triple concerns at the same time there has been considerable attention to small is beautiful and micro investors have stepped in to look for such eco entrepreneurs to the classical institutional logic of economic returns they add the logic of social returns as well as the logic of environmental and local safeguards this study looks at investment clubs in france which have been coping with this balance of people planet and profitability for the last three decades we study their preferences in the selection process for investment projects in the entrepreneurs monitoring process as well as their exit strategies using principal components analysis we find that a large number of selection criteria can be regrouped into underlying factors that take into account two out of the three major dimensions of sustainable development at a time we find that four factors lie beneath the criteria used by the micro angels in the monitoring process we have also been able to establish a one to one correspondence between four of the six major exit strategies and four selection factors suggesting a prior relationship between selection process criteria and preferred exit strategies

a new solution to the collective action problem the paradox of voter turnout macy s work offers a potential solution to the paradox of voter turnout the stochastic learning theory of voter turnout kanazawa 1998 posits that citizens perceive a correlation between their behavior voting versus abstention and the outcome of collective action win versus loss for their candidate and that they interpret the outcome as a reinforcer or a punisher the theory can solve the paradox of voter turnout because now p the probability that one s vote is or appears decisive equals approximately 500 in the calculus of voting model instead of p 0 i use general social survey data to test the theory the empirical results indicate that citizens make their turnout decisions according to the win stay lose shift pattern predicted by the stochastic learning theory especially if there are no strong third party candidates

forest owner perceptions of institutions and voluntary contracting for biodiversity conservation not crowding out but staying out although the concepts of institutions in economics and institutional analysis have been integrated in recent writings about payments for ecosystem services pes their joint operationalization and testing have been limited to tackle this integration challenge we empirically explore how finnish non industrial private forest owners perceptions about voluntary biodiversity conservation contracting correspond with the institutional theories about pes further we test whether the perceptions are related to pes contracting in the past or in the future the results of the explorative factor analyses corresponded with the theoretical considerations of both economics and institutional analysis the logistic regression analyses showed that the factors that related to past contracting differed notably from those that explained future intentions to contract most consistently perceptions about positive ecological impacts were positively related to past contracting while social and moral normative perceptions had a negative effect in other words those who would conserve nature for altruistic reasons tended not to have entered a contract but rather stayed out local and social welfare expectations increased the willingness to contract in the future our analysis highlights the importance of normative conservation justifications as well as the expectations regarding non economic benefits and welfare impacts for pes design and analysis

can financial technology innovate benefit distribution in payments for ecosystem services and redd abstract benefit distribution in payments for ecosystem services pes and redd involves the disbursement of cash or in kind incentives to local participants that opt to manage their land in ways that increase or maintain ecosystem service provision for decades existing benefit distribution approaches have been debated by academics and presented challenges for conservation practitioners in passing through long chains of project actors payments incur high transaction costs and are susceptible to elite capture and corruption a new type of financial technology fintech mobile money could offer a novel and available solution to these challenges at what is now a critical stage in pes and redd implementation mobile payments made via cell phones have been used successfully in development projects related to micro credit micro insurance and aid relief and this commentary considers their possible advantages and drawbacks for pes redd schemes several countries e g cambodia china tanzania and the philippines demonstrate both high pes redd uptake and high mobile money penetration in certain circumstances benefit distribution via fintech may lower transaction costs enable higher frequency payments and provide new socioeconomic benefits it could also improve the privacy transparency traceability and security of disbursements contributing to more efficient and equitable pes and redd schemes

electricity consumption and economic growth in seven south american countries abstract this paper attempts to investigate the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth among seven south american countries namely argentina brazil chile columbia ecuador peru and venezuela using widely accepted time series techniques for the period 1975 2006 the results indicate that the causal nexus between electricity consumption and economic growth varies across countries there is a unidirectional short run causality from electricity consumption to real gdp for argentina brazil chile columbia and ecuador this means that an increase in electricity consumption directly affects economic growth in those countries in venezuela there is a bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth this implies that an increase in electricity consumption directly affects economic growth and that economic growth also stimulates further electricity consumption in that country however no causal relationships exist in peru the documented evidence from seven south american countries can provide useful information for each government with regard to energy and growth policy

an equilibrium model of consumer energy choice using a personal carbon trading scheme based on allowance price abstract changes in consumer behavior due to a personal carbon trading pct scheme are theoretically attractive yet untested in practice in this paper simulations on the basis of an equilibrium model are used to examine the effects of carbon allowance prices on energy use choice under a particular pct scheme it is shown that the equilibrium price of allowances would emerge under the pct scheme considered here further analyses indicate that the quantity of energy consumption under pct is a nonlinear function of the allowance price with a sharp kink at the point of equilibrium when the allowance price is below the equilibrium price consumers would prefer higher carbon energy in contrast when the allowance price is above the equilibrium price consumers would choose lower carbon energy however when the allowance price equals the equilibrium value consumers would purchase lower carbon energy and higher carbon energy simultaneously furthermore it is shown that the initial allowance allocation could also affect energy use choice on the basis of these results one of the main implications is that the allowance price should exceed the breakeven price to stimulate consumers to switch to green energy and progressively live a low carbon lifestyle

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

the political dimensions of payments for ecosystem services pes cascade or stairway this paper aims to advance our understanding of payments for ecosystem services pes as political projects by offering an analytical tool for investigating power relations political decisions place specific ideas and social norms in the construction and operation of pes schemes this proposed analytic tool is based on a revised version of the ecosystem service cascade which we propose to transform into an ecosystem service stairway model as a device to analyse political processes in ecosystem service construction and provision we show that the key to understanding the politics of pes lies in the antagonistic processes between the different steps of the stairway in particular we show that the definition and mobilisation of the ecosystem service potential esp is the stage where the most fundamental political decisions are made here the role of intermediaries is particularly significant as they introduce their own conceptions of society nature relations which function as epistemic selectivities in further defining and mobilising the esp and in generating the resulting ecosystem services ess we illustrate our main conceptual insights and evaluate the usefulness of our political ecosystem stairway model by applying it to two latin american cases one in brazil and the other in bolivia

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

revisiting the concept of payments for environmental services this article revisits the payments for environmental services pes concept and reviews existing pes definitions based on weberian philosophy of science it is argued that an ideal pes type strongly embedded in pes theory is needed to understand their logic many broader empiricist definitions fail to distinguish pes from the larger generic family of positive environmental incentives thus eroding their meaning by excessive vagueness arguably pes definitions should focus on describing a functional tool rather than normatively integrating desirable pes outcomes a modified narrow pes definition is proposed outlining conditionality as the single defining feature avoiding the buyer seller terms and linking pes to offsite externalities extensive explanatory guidelines address many valid conceptual concerns raised in the recent pes literature

why do transaction costs of agricultural policies vary policy related transaction costs tcs is an important issue when evaluating different policy options however tcs are often not taken into account in policy evaluations but may be as important for efficiency as the direct production costs different policies may result in different tcs and the main aim of this article is to explore possible reasons for these differences we compare the level of tcs for 12 different agricultural policy measures in norway and we analyze the causes of the differences along three different dimensions asset specificity frequency and point of policy application at the national level we find that all three dimensions are of importance when explaining the differences while variation in tcs incurred by farmers are mainly due to differences in point of policy application and asset specificity data show that direct price support has the lowest tcs while more direct payments for environmental amenities has the highest

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

payments for ecosystem services and agricultural intensification evidence from a choice experiment on deforestation in zambia agriculture is considered to be one of the major drivers of deforestation worldwide in developing countries in particular this process is driven by small scale agriculture at the same time many african governments aim to increase agricultural productivity empirical evidence suggests however that win win relationships between agricultural intensification and forest conservation are the exception payments for ecosystem services pes could be linked to agriculture support programmes to simultaneously achieve both goals due to potentially higher profits from intensified agriculture than from pure cash transfers potential payment recipients may prefer in kind over conventional cash payments nevertheless little scientific evidence exists regarding the preferences of potential pes recipients for such instruments we report from a discrete choice experiment in zambia that elicited preferences of smallholder farmers for pes contracts our results suggest that potential pes recipients in zambia value in kind agricultural inputs more highly than cash payments even when the monetary value of the inputs is lower than the cash payment highlighting that pes could potentially succeed in conserving forests and intensifying smallholder agriculture respondents who intended to clear forest within the next three years were found to require higher payments but could be motivated to enrol in appropriately designed pes

protected areas local governments and strategic interactions the case of the icms ecologico in the brazilian state of parana various conservation initiatives have been implemented in developing countries with increasing involvement on the part of local governments a concern in entrusting decisions to local governments is that the effectiveness of the conservation instrument can be threatened by interactions among these local governments we examine this concern with respect to an ecological fiscal transfer mechanism the icms ecologico implemented in brazil in the early 1990 s in order to reduce biodiversity loss the mechanism enables states to reward municipalities for the creation and management of protected areas we describe this mechanism present a conceptual framework aimed at understanding the potential sources and consequences of interactions among local governments on the effectiveness of a decentralized mechanism aimed at promoting the creation of protected areas and propose an empirical application using a bayesian spatial tobit model our empirical investigation on the creation of protected areas in the state of parana between 2000 and 2010 reveals strategic substitutability in municipalities conservation decisions this finding also leads us to discuss the issue of identification of a negative spatial lag coefficient when there is a positive spatial error correlation

china s sloping land conversion program institutional innovation or business as usual abstract china s sloping land conversion program slcp is the largest land retirement reforestation program in the developing world having the goal of converting 14 67 million hectares of cropland to forests by 2010 4 4 million of which is on land with slopes greater than 25 and an additional soft goal of afforesting a roughly equal area of wasteland by 2010 pending successful completion it could represent a 10 20 increase in china s national forest area and a 10 decrease in current cultivated area in contrast to china s other forest sector policies slcp uses a public payment scheme that directly engages millions of rural households as core agents of project implementation and has the stated principals of volunteerism thus insofar as current or future de facto program implementation involves decentralized voluntary grassroots participation slcp represents an important departure from business as usual in how china manages its forest resources this work draws upon current available research of the program and uses a 2003 household and village level survey conducted by the center for chinese agricultural policy cas to examine program design implementation and outcomes to date results indicate that significant problems in design and implementation exist with these including shortfalls in subsidies delivered lack of respect of the principals of volunteerism and insufficient technical support and budgeting for local implementation costs more fundamentally some program goals appear to be based on common misperceptions regarding the linkages between forests and watershed services overall slcp contains both innovative elements volunteerism and the direct engagement of farmers as well as components that hark back to policies and mindsets of decades past the program s top down simplified contract structure lack of sufficient consultation with local communities and rural households and campaign style mobilization the paper concludes by providing four main suggestions to improve the program 1 increase local community input in design and implementation and ensure that households have full autonomy in participation choice 2 improve technical support and budgeting for local administrative costs and capacity building 3 clarify the environmental services targeted and verify the measures needed to acquire these services and 4 integrate slcp into an overall package of complementary policies aimed at the rural sector

credit based payments for ecosystem services evidence from a choice experiment in ecuador the original conceptualization of payments for ecosystem services pes promoted direct payments to motivate the provision of environmental public goods but market imperfections and behavioral considerations can mean that pes that reduce market constraints are preferred the main issue with the latter is how to include conditionality we propose credit based pes cb pes as an incentive that links an environmental condition with the reduction of a key market constraint through a choice experiment in ecuador cb pes was found to be a promising form of pes with multiple desirable qualities of an incentive as cited in the behavioral economics and pes literatures

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

the viability of local payments for watershed services empirical evidence from matiguas nicaragua abstract using both qualitative and quantitative approaches this article investigates the under researched demand side of locally financed payments for environmental services pes it assesses downstream users willingness to pay wtp for improved tap water quality in a setting where upstream landowners are clearing watersheds the research findings are indicative of a considerable wtp for improved drinking water services and a definite local awareness of upstream downstream interdependencies suggesting potential for successful pes contingent valuation cv however found a substantially lower wtp under a pes scenario than under an alternative scenario involving infrastructure investments the qualitative research angle indicates that the feasibility of a locally financed pes system may have been negatively affected by the prevailing discursive framing of agricultural externalities and entitlements raising issues about the fairness of such payments moreover low levels of mutual trust were found to undermine the credibility of the pes framework these results confirm that institutional failures contribute to environmental degradation and that pes should not be viewed as a market panacea transcending the local institutional context but rather as a potentially complementary instrument within a broader rearrangement of environmental governance

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

environmental policy fuel prices and the switching to natural gas in santiago chile abstract in this study i analyzed the role of environmental policies and energy cost savings on the pattern of switching to natural gas by stationary sources in chile according to the data most of the switching was induced by the lower cost of natural gas although environmental policies played a small role and showed that sources were more sensitive to the cost of energy than to the environmental regulation

how funding source influences the form of redd initiatives the case of market versus public funds in brazil abstract the mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd which is being implemented by the united nations framework convention on climate change is considered essential to provide economic incentives for the adoption of forest based mitigation measures against global climate change this article analyses the key characteristics of redd pilot initiatives in brazil from different perspectives concerning the concept of payment for environmental services while exploring how these characteristics relate to the funding models adopted regardless of whether they are sourced from public funds or via the carbon market data collected from publicly available databases are analysed using hypothesis tests ten variables from 89 pilot initiatives approved by the voluntary carbon market or the fundo amazonia amazon fund are examined findings show that initiatives under each funding model have distinct characteristics in terms of stakeholders criteria for incentive concession time frames geographical reach as well as measurement report and verification mrv practices differences are consistent with distinct theoretical conceptions on incentive based economic instruments

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

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

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

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

an evidential decision theory of turnout according to the standard analysis which is grounded in causal decision theory the rational decision to participate in mass elections depends on the probability of affecting the outcome the resulting prediction of abstention is clearly mistaken according to the alternative evidential decision theory voters calculate the conditional expected utility of participating rather than its causal consequences a version of this theory is introduced into a game theoretic model of electoral participation under plausible conditions the model yields positive turnout at equilibrium even as the size of the electorate increases without bound the paper also considers the model s utility in explaining group influences on political behavior and the supply of collective goods

rational turnout the neglected role of groups rational choice theories have difficulty accounting for individual participation in collective action voting is among the acts hardest to explain consumption benefits have been proposed to account for nonzero turnout the model presented here establishes a political investment basis for these benefits i argue that voters often act not in isolation but as part of groups with shared interests while individuals still vote because of consumption benefits arising from the act of voting some of these consumption benefits are provided by group leaders out of collective benefits received by the group in return for its votes the collective benefit comes from a candidate adopting policy positions closer to those of the group in passing i show that the widespread availability of public opinion polling increases the candidate s incentive to shift position finally some data from recent off year elections are shown to be consistent with the model

the campfire programme in zimbabwe payments for wildlife services abstract payments for environmental services pes have been distinguished from the more common integrated conservation and development projects on the grounds that pes are direct more cost effective less complex institutionally and therefore more likely to produce the desired results both kinds of schemes aim to achieve similar conservation outcomes however and generally function in analogous social political and economic environments given the relative novelty of pes what lessons can be learnt and applied from earlier initiatives in this paper we describe the evolution over the first 12 years 1989 2001 of zimbabwe s communal areas management programme for indigenous resources campfire a community based natural resource management programme in which rural district councils on behalf of communities on communal land are granted the authority to market access to wildlife in their district to safari operators these in turn sell hunting and photographic safaris to mostly foreign sport hunters and eco tourists the district councils pay the communities a dividend according to an agreed formula in practice there have been some underpayments and frequent delays during 1989 2001 campfire generated over us 20 million of transfers to the participating communities 89 of which came from sport hunting the scale of benefits varied greatly across districts wards and households twelve of the 37 districts with authority to market wildlife produced 97 of all campfire revenues reflecting the variability in wildlife resources and local institutional arrangements the programme has been widely emulated in southern and eastern africa we suggest five main lessons for emerging pes schemes community level commercial transactions can seldom be pursued in isolation non differentiated payments weaken incentives start up costs can be high and may need to be underwritten competitive bidding can allow service providers to hold on to rents and schemes must be flexible and adaptive

in markets we trust setting the boundaries of market based instruments in ecosystem services governance abstract a growing tendency to frame environmental problems as a failure to price ecosystem services has coincided with the rise of so called market based instruments mbis the aim of this introductory article to the special section in markets we trust contrasting views on the performance and legitimacy of market based instruments in global environmental governance is to promote critical reflection about the nature scope and limits of mbis in ecosystem services governance and to provide guidance on where the boundaries for the application of markets ought to be set first we examine the role that methodological assumptions and implicit normative positions play in shaping academic perception of the effectiveness and legitimacy of mbis second we examine mbis in the broader ideological context and socio political processes that have favored their development and implementation third we test claims of the literature on mbis against insights and data from case studies presented in the special section fourth we discuss the scope and limits of markets in ecosystem services governance in the light of biophysical institutional and normative boundaries we end with a summary of concluding remarks from the special section and by identifying critical tasks for the scientific and policy agenda on ecosystem services governance

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

mainstream economics toolkit within the ecological economics framework abstract development of ecological economics was a response to the environmental crisis born by the economic growth ecological economics in contrast to mainstream economics is characterized by value pluralism and interdisciplinary approach that makes it hard to achieve methodological unanimity this paper considers if the mainstream methods could be used to tackle environment problems effectively to this purpose the integrated macro model is proposed it suggests that all environment externalities could be accounted in the existing production consumption system so using the new ideology based on ecological economics priorities and applying the toolkit of mainstream economics we could transform the existing pricing system and provide effective institutional reforms to ensure sustainable development

residential mobility and voter turnout we examine the characteristics of a largely ignored low turnout group people who have recently moved we find that neither demographic nor attitudinal attributes explain their lower turnout instead the requirement that citizens must register anew after each change in residence constitutes the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls since nearly one third of the nation moves every two years moving has a large impact on national turnout rates we offer a proposal to reduce the effect of residential mobility on turnout and estimate that turnout would increase by nine percentage points if the impact of moving could be removed the partisan consequences of such a change would be marginal

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

between economic loss and social identity the multi dimensional cost of avoiding deforestation in eastern madagascar this paper exhibits the multiple dimensions of the cost of stopping the main driver of deforestation in madagascar slash and burn agriculture tavy as well as being a major component of the economic livelihoods of most local households living at the edge of forests tavy has been described by anthropologists as an important cultural practice in this paper we show that stopping tavy does not only entail an economic cost for local households the loss of the cultural dimension of tavy would come at an additional cultural cost for some our results suggest that a viable cessation of deforestation in madagascar would require going beyond simple compensation of the opportunity costs of avoiding deforestation

unraveling the effects of payments for ecosystem services on motivations for collective action this paper addresses the differential impacts on decisions towards collective action in the context of payments for ecosystem services pes where individual and collective rewards are conditional on a minimum collective conservation level being achieved interactions between the different reward types farmers social preferences social ties and communication are identified a field game experiment is conducted with andean farmers in peru and framed around their decisions to conserve agrobiodiversity as an impure public good the main results are that pes schemes could be effective in motivating collective action for agrobiodiversity conservation and that individual rewards are likely to be more effective and less sensitive to social factors than collective rewards the latter might have a positive effect on conservation when they are shared within socially closely related groups or in situations where communication and deliberation about collective action are possible

climate change and energy policy in chile up in smoke this paper provides an ex post assessment of the climate and energy policy developments in chile emerging from a neoliberal economic model during the period 1971 2007 first correlation and regression analyses were performed to analyse historical co2 emissions as a product of demographic economic and energy wide drivers then i estimate indicators related to co2 emissions energy use and economic activity in the light of empirical results i identify policy instruments and structural issues finally i present a comparative analysis of chile and other latin american countries statistical tests show that variability of co2 emissions is explained mostly by gdp per capita affluence than any other tested variable indicators show that the diversification and decarbonisation of the energy mix has been a major policy challenge with two notable exceptions hydro and natural gas the co2 intensity of the energy supply mix suggests no effective policies while energy security crises triggered negative carbon effects and increased prices no clear policies to promote energy efficiency can be identified until 2005 explicit policy instruments to promote renewable energy are only recognized after 2004 the results strongly suggest that chile lacked of policies to effectively decarbonise its energy economy system

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

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

biofuel as social fuel introducing socio environmental services as a means to reduce global inequity the increasing cultivation of energy crops for biofuel production has significantly altered the focus of the agricultural sector but the impact of biofuel production and use is not merely an agricultural one even more importantly it is an issue which likely promotes inequitable conditions and the social conflict of different basic needs within this context the dominant argument criticizes the growing demand for biofuels in the north to compromise food security and sovereignty in the south in order to address these trade offs and conflicts the objective of this paper is the introduction of a conceptual framework of socio environmental services by expanding the construct of environmental services to explicitly include the social dimension it shall accommodate for the fact that the provision of environmental services is often embedded in a complex system of global economic ecological as well as social interdependencies recently the concept of payments for environmental services pes has received much attention with respect to its potential contribution to both environmental sustainability and the economic alleviation of poverty by linking the idea of payments for socio environmental services pses to the three functions of justice its beneficial impact may be more fully tapped

community conservation and a two stage approach to payments for ecosystem services recent revisions to the theory and definition of payments for ecosystem services pes challenge the generally accepted dominance of direct incentives provided in a buyer seller relationship the revisionist thinking insists indirect incentives and a cooperative reciprocal relationship are often more appropriate those characteristics however hark back to the indirect cooperative interventions that constitute community conservation which pes was originally designed as an improvement over in that context this study revisits the criticisms and potential benefits of community conservation we analyze a case study of community conservation in peru and find that it supported an uptake of forest friendly behaviors we take up the suggestion of a two stage approach to pes but refine it based on our results that indicate an important role for cognitive e g education alongside structural interventions e g provision of alternatives and a strong role for social consensus to support conservationist behavior community conservation can provide these elements in a first stage of pes to create a social context conducive to conservation without creating that context first pes could destabilize local resource management norms rather than improve on them with the social context established however a market mechanism can be implemented in the second stage to reinforce the new conservationist behavior

contrasting rational and psychological analyses of political choice we contrast the rational theory of choice in the form of expected utility theory with descriptive psychological analysis in the form of prospect theory using problems involving the choice between political candidates and public referendum issues the results showed that the assumptions underlying the classical theory of risky choice are systematically violated in the manner predicted by prospect theory in particular our respondents exhibited risk aversion in the domain of gains risk seeking in the domain of losses and a greater sensitivity to losses than to gains this is consistent with the advantage of the incumbent under normal conditions and the potential advantage of the challenger in bad times the results further show how a shift in the reference point could lead to reversals of preferences in the evaluation of political and economic options contrary to the assumption of invariance finally we contrast the normative and descriptive analyses of uncertainty in choice and address the rationality of voting

the cost effectiveness of conservation payments international donors invest billions of dollars to conserve ecosystems in low income nations the most common investments aim to encourage commercial activities such as ecotourism that indirectly generate ecosystem protection as a joint product we demonstrate that paying for ecosystem protection directly can be far more cost effective although direct payment initiatives have imposing institutional requirements we argue that all conservation initiatives face similar challenges thus conservation practitioners would be well advised to implement the first best direct payment approach rather than a secondbest policy option an empirical example illustrates the spectacular cost savings that can be realized by direct payment initiatives

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

walking away from a low carbon economy recent and historical trends using a regional decomposition analysis using the latest available data this brief article attempts to provide the first regional decomposition analysis of co2 emissions from fuel combustion covering eight regions of the world determinants are estimated in relative and absolute terms for the period 1971 2010 we take the 2010 global surge in co2 emissions as an entry point for the analysis overall results show that most regions have recently performed worse than their historical trends and lack of meaningful progress is identified whereas specific drivers for certain regions suggest some level of continuous improvement e g reduced energy intensity in asia they are incapable of offsetting the effects of economic growth and energy use with the exception of africa most regions appear to have missed the low carbon economy opportunity provided by the 2008 2009 global financial crisis results suggest a lack of serious environmental effectiveness of regional policy portfolios aiming at reducing co2 emissions highly ambitious energy efficiency and renewable energy policies across all regions are immediately needed additionally absolute reductions in co2 emissions and energy use from fossil fuels are urgently required in rich regions if we are to align production and consumption patterns with maintaining global warming below the 2 c threshold

consumer efficiency in conflict with gdp growth abstract during the recent couple of decades some attention has been devoted to the potential for utilizing energy more efficiently most of this debate has not concentrated on the energy efficiency of the economy as a whole but merely addressed options for implementing more energy efficient technology this paper is an attempt to unfold the whole economy chain stretching from extraction of resources from nature to satisfying human needs ways are suggested to analyze the energy efficiencies of the various links in the chain mainly seen from the point of view of the consumers and for the three standard categories of consumption durable goods services and non durable goods real life cases illustrate the huge potential for overall energy efficiency improvement longevity of durable goods makes up one case another case is the often mentioned potential for more energy efficient end use technologies most discussion is however devoted to the third case the options for improving overall efficiency by satisfying people s wants through other means than economic throughput of energy etc such as by leisure time barriers for implementing efficiency options are discussed pointing out the inherited conflict in affluent regions between efficiency especially at the side of the consumers and the quest for increasing gdp

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

the vermont common assets trust an institution for sustainable just and efficient resource allocation both private and public sectors have failed to adequately provide critical ecosystem goods and services or an equitable distribution of wealth and income to address this problem the vermont legislature is considering the creation of a vermont common assets trust vcat that would make the state s atmosphere aquifers and other resources created by nature or by society as a whole the common property of all vermonters present and future under the trust a board of trustees would have the legal obligation to manage these assets for the benefit of all vermonters including future generations this paper first explains why certain resources are likely to be managed more sustainably fairly and efficiently as common property than as private property it then discusses mechanisms for integrating assets into the trust estimates of potential revenue from a vcat suggest that it could eliminate the state budget deficit contribute to a better distribution of wealth and resources and help address critical ecological problems survey results suggest that a vcat is politically feasible the vcat promises to be an important pilot project that could later be scaled up to a national or global level

the effectiveness of payments for environmental services we adopt a theory based approach to synthesize research on the effectiveness of payments for environmental services in achieving environmental objectives and socio economic co benefits in varying contexts our theory of change builds on established conceptual models of impact pathways and highlights the role of 1 contextual dimensions e g political institutional and socio economic conditions spatial heterogeneity in environmental service values and provision costs and interactions with pre existing policies and 2 scheme design e g payment type and level contract length targeting and differentiation of payments in determining environmental and socio economic outcomes to shed light on the overall effectiveness of payment schemes and its determinants we review counterfactual based empirical evaluations comparative analyses of case studies and meta analyses our review suggests that program effectiveness often lags behind the expectations of early theorists however we also find that theory has advanced sufficiently to identify common reasons for why payment schemes fail or succeed moreover payment schemes are often rolled out along with other policy instruments in so called policy mixes advances in theory and evaluation research are needed to improve our understanding of how such policy mixes interact with the targeted social ecological systems 2017

the pes conceit revisiting the relationship between payments for environmental services and neoliberal conservation payments for environmental services pes has become a popular means to neoliberalize biodiversity conservation throughout the world yet research on pes is increasingly focused on debating exactly how neoliberal programmes really are documenting complexities in pes implementation and concluding that few programmes are very market based in practice while we agree that ideal neoliberal implementation of pes does not and cannot exist we argue that focusing only on micro politics misunderstands the importance of analysing pes as a form of neoliberal conservation the question is not just whether pes is innately neoliberal but how it functions within a broader neoliberal political economy by focusing on the overarching governance and power structures that gave rise to pes in the first place we more clearly see what we call the pes conceit namely that the approach implicitly accepts neoliberal capitalism as both the problem and the solution to the ecological crisis this strategy is not only contradictory but also commonly fails to achieve intended outcomes falling far short of conservation objectives while also often exacerbating socioeconomic inequality this problematic conceit we conclude cannot be addressed through only micro oriented studies it demands connecting micro and macro political economic analyses to confront broader neoliberal power structures

global mechanisms for sustaining and enhancing pes schemes article i nfo an international payment for ecosystem service ipes schemes may be one of the only mechanisms available to stimulate the provision of vital non marketed ecosystem services at the global level as those nations that benefit from global ecosystem services ges cannot readily force other sovereign nations to provide them currently international trade offers trillions of dollars in incentives for countries to convert natural capital into marketable goods and services and few payments to entice countries to conserve natural capital in order to sustain critical non marketed ecosystem services we examine the biophysical characteristics of climate change and biodiversity to understand the obstacles to developing effective ipes schemes we find that none of the existing schemes for providing ges are adequate given the scale of the problem a cap and auction scheme for co2 emissions among wealthy nations could fund ipes and simultaneously deter carbon emissions to disburse funds we should adapt brazil s icms ecologico and apportion available funds to targeted countries in proportion to how well they meet specific criteria designed to measure the provision of ges individual countries can then develop their own policies for increasing provision of these services ensured of compensation if they do so indirect ipes should include funding for freely available technologies that protect or provide ges such as the low carbon energy alternatives that will be essential for curbing climate change markets rely on the price mechanism to generate profits which rations technology to those who can afford it reducing adoption rates innovation and total value

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

why and how much are firms willing to invest in ecosystem services from tropical forests a comparison of international and costa rican firms abstract in recent years schemes for payment for ecosystem services pes have emerged in tropical countries besides public demand the private demand offers the opportunity to develop pes the goal of this paper is to investigate the potential demand by firms for four ecosystem services from tropical forests biodiversity conservation carbon sequestration scenic beauty and watershed protection those are the four granted in the forest legislation and rewarded for in the pes scheme in costa rica to explain stated willingness to invest wti we assess influential factors expectations with respect to financial and non financial benefits of investing in ecosystem services experience with forest ecosystem services firm attributes like origin sector membership and size and finally perceived behavioral control we sent a questionnaire to over 900 international and costa rican firms from different sectors the low response rate of the survey of overall 6 can be explained by in a business context rather new topic of ecosystem services from tropical forests the analysis showed that a firm s willingness to invest wti depends on the origin of the firm international firms are interested in buying certificates mainly for carbon sequestration costa rican firms for all four ecosystem services in the following order watershed protection biodiversity conservation carbon sequestration and scenic beauty indirect and non financial benefits are surprisingly important and can impede the development of ecosystem service markets at the same time the activities of intrinsically motivated green entrepreneurs in a financially oriented firm setting might be a prerequisite within a firm context for bringing such innovative topics as ecosystem services from tropical forests to the table

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

assessing the cost effectiveness of a biodiversity conservation policy a bio econometric analysis of natura 2000 contracts in forest abstract in france the implementation of the eu biodiversity conservation policy within the natura 2000 network combines regulatory tools and voluntary contracting in this article we empirically assess the cost effectiveness of natura 2000 contracts in forest areas we simultaneously estimate a cost function for biodiversity conservation and the production set of biodiversity output and timber while controlling for conservation measures we show strong substitutability between biodiversity conservation and timber production estimate results on the cost elasticity of biodiversity conservation also suggest the possibility of more ecologically ambitious contracts with lower average costs results also show that public owners are able to bear higher opportunity costs than private owners our findings may help to formulate policy recommendations in terms of contracts targeting likely to enhance the cost effectiveness of the incentive scheme

investing in human and natural capital an alternative paradigm for sustainable development in awassa ethiopia article ethiopia remains underdeveloped due to limitations in natural human social and built capital a 2006 scientific atelier conducted in the city of awassa ethiopia investigated investments in human and natural capital as a sustainable development strategy local stakeholders identified firewood shortages degradation of croplands rising lake levels encroaching on croplands and poor water quality as major impediments to development they further identified ecological degradation as a key component of these problems and they acknowledged multiple vicious cycles compounding the environmental and economic threats to the awassa community proposed solutions included investment in natural capital in the form of reforestation activities investment in human capital in the form of promoting more efficient wood stoves along with increasing public awareness of environmental threats and investments in social capital in the form of inter institutional coordination to address environmental problems all recommended investments rely primarily on national resources in distinct contrast to the extensive imports required for most built capital investments unfor tunately awassa lacks the surplus necessary for major capital investments of any kind the atelier therefore helped local participants identify potential funders and write grant proposals for various projects though none have been funded so far reversing the ecological degradation on the scale necessary for sustained economic development in ethiopia however will require a steady flow of substantial investments and cannot rely solely on the short term generosity of funders international payments for carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services could help provide the necessary resources

how can chile move away from a high carbon economy abstract this paper quantitatively evaluates the performance of chile s co2 emissions between 1991 and 2013 using a complete decomposition technique to examine emissions and their components a decomposition analysis based on log mean divisia index method lmdi i was conducted six decomposition factors were considered carbon intensity effect ci res penetration effect res energy intensity effect ei economy structure effect es income effect yp and population effect p to know how these factors could influence each other in the future the innovative accounting approach iaa was used including forecast error variance decomposition and impulse response functions irfs these two methodologies allow us to identify the drivers of co2 emission changes in the past 1991 2013 test policy measures and learn how these drivers could influence each other in the future to evaluate whether the current measures meet the paris commitments the lmdi analysis results show that the energy intensity factor is the main compensating factor of chile s co2 emissions and the only effect with a clear trend to aid the economy s decoupling iaa and ifrs results react similarly and confirm that carbon intensity reacts to shocks more significantly in the short term the reaction to res has the same and opposite behavior to shocks in es and yp to disappear in the long term

towards a sustainable growth in latin america a multiregional spatial decomposition analysis of the driving forces behind co2 emissions changes abstract this paper aims to understand the driving forces behind the growth of co2 emissions in latin america as a region by groups of countries according to their behaviour in terms of growth of income and co2 emissions per capita and by countries during 1990 2013 the main drivers for the latin america region are the activity and the population effects followed by the fossil fuel and the carbonisation effects while the intensity effect is revealed as the only inhibitor the lessons from latin america s group of countries are the following first the necessary decoupling between the growth of co2 emissions and the economic activity has not taken place the population growth also being an important driver effect second the groups of countries with the highest co2 emissions growth show the highest population and fossil fuel effects this latter confirms the scant efforts made to reduce the weight of fossil fuels in the total primary energy supply third the energy intensity has become the most important inhibitor of co2 emissions for those countries that are not able to substitute fossil fuels so easily finally the desirable increase of less pollutant fossil fuels or even the increase of renewable energies has not yet been achieved

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