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

where is the plus in credit plus the case of chiapas mexico abstractit has become common to try and increase the effectiveness of microfinance programmes by adding supplementary services to the financial product however the added value accruing from this credit plus approach has been little analysed we hypothesise that the extent of added value from credit plus depends on the ability of the credit supplier to cultivate trust or social capital amongst clients applying difference in difference estimation we exploit a natural experiment of two credit plus programmes in mexico the findings suggest that credit plus is not universally effective but that it is at its most effective especially with low income groups where bonding within group social capital exists

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

from correlates and characteristics to causes thinking about poverty from a chronic poverty perspective summary poverty and poverty reduction are currently the central concerns of development discourse and policy despite recent theoretical advances poverty analysis continues to be dominated by an income consumption conception of poverty we argue for understandings of poverty that go beyond measurement led conceptualizations to more adequately expose the causes of poverty chronic poverty is one such concept its focus on poverty duration and dynamics highlights the forms of social relations that produce poverty and which are often embedded within political institutions and economic structures poverty reduction does not simply require good policy it requires creating the capacity of poorer people to influence and hold accountable those who make policies

from maize to haze agricultural shocks and the growth of the mexican drug sector understanding how economic incentives affect illegal drug production is essential for crafting policies in response to the international drug trade policymakers typically face a choice between two strategies targetingcriminalgroupsvialawenforcement andofferingproducersincentivestoengage in alternate activities yet little is known about how the returns to alternate legal activities affect drug supply we contribute to this literature by examining how shocks to legal commodity prices affect the drug trade in mexico our analysis exploits exogenous movements in the mexican maize price stemming from weather conditions in u s maize growing regions as well as exports of other major maize producers using data on over 2200 municipios spanning 1990 2010 we show that lower prices differentially increased the cultivation of both marijuana and opium poppies in municipios

subsistence response to market shocks microeconomic models posit that transaction costs isolate subsistence producers from output market shocks we integrate microeconomic models of many heterogeneous households into a general equilibrium model and show that supply on subsistence farms may respond in apparently perverse ways to changes in output market prices price shocks in markets for staple goods are transmitted to subsistence producers through interactions in factor markets in the case presented a decrease in the market price of maize reduces wages and land rents stimulating maize production by subsistence households however real incomes of subsistence households fall

weighted average source points and distances for consumption origin tools for environmental impact analysis abstract this paper presents two methods to quickly assess how local people s consumption is dependant on sources other than local or domestic weighted average source points wasps or weighted average source distances wasds for consumption origin are calculated and used to illustrate the extent to which the goods consumed come from places other than where the consumer lives two case studies show the practicability of the methods the first is a comparison between the consumption origins of tomatoes and carrots and the second a comparison between grape consumption origins in 1965 and 1992 both the wasp and the wasd methods are easy to use and the results can be communicated in illustrative ways these methods however give only an estimate of possible environmental impacts

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

trade environment and development the issues in perspective abstract this special issue on trade and the environment brings together a number of papers that are constructively critical of the conventional economic wisdom on the topic we think that this criticism is warranted because of the decidely uncritical way in which free trade has been advocated in much of the literature and especially in policy the papers analyse the validity of the underlying assumptions on which the conventional wisdom is based and provide suggestions for ways to facilitate trade that is also adequately protective of the environment sustainability and other social values in this introductory piece we discuss trade the environment and sustainability summarizing arguments in the papers included in this issue and adding a few additional points not covered by them

links between economic liberalization and rural resource degradation in the developing regions this paper examines evidence of the effects of economic liberalization and globalization on rural resource degradation in developing countries the principal resource effects of concern are processes of land use change leading to forestland conversion degradation and deforestation the main trends in globalization of interest are trade liberalization and economy wide reforms in developing countries that have opened up the agroindustrial sectors thus increasing their export orientation such reforms have clearly spurred agroindustrialization rural development and economic growth but there is also concern that there may be direct and indirect impacts on rural resource degradation the direct impacts may occur as increased agricultural activity leads to conversion of forests and increased land degradation from unsustainable production methods however there may also be indirect effects if agroindustrial development displaces landless near landless and rural poor generally who then migrate to marginal agricultural lands and forest frontier regions this paper explores these direct and indirect effects of globalization and agroindustrialization on rural resource degradation both generally plus through examining case study evidence the paper focuses in particular on the examples of structural adjustment trade liberalization and agricultural development in ghana and maize sector liberalization in mexico under north american free trade agreement nafta

national pro poor spending programmes and their effect on income inequality and poverty evidence from vietnam abstractthis article examines the causal effects of the national pro poor targeted programmes ntps on both poverty incidence and inequality in vietnam over the period 2002 2010 while the links between ntps and poverty alleviation and income inequality have previously been analysed independently this study is the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of ntps expenditure on poverty and inequality simultaneously applying the system generalized method of moments estimator to a panel of vietnamese regional data we are unable to establish that ntps have significantly mitigated poverty incidence however we estimate that ntps have significantly increased inequality we offer possible explanations why the ntps have resulted in these unintended outcomes and discuss potential policies which can reduce both poverty and inequality

programs for the poorest learning from the igvgd program in bangladesh abstract this article examines a program that seeks to reach bangladesh s hardcore poor by combining elements of livelihood protection food aid with livelihood promotion skills training and microfinance bangladesh rural advancement committee s income generation for vulnerable group development program has deepened the outreach of its poverty reduction activity and achieved impressive results detailed local level fieldwork revealed however that program practice differed markedly from program plans this is found to have important implications for both future program design and the understanding of who does not benefit from such innovative programs we conclude that while such programs mixing livelihood protection and promotion should be a major focus for anti poverty strategies there will remain a role for more traditional social welfare schemes

borrowing money exchanging relationships making microfinance fit into local lives in kumaon india summary why don t microfinance clients use programs the way development planners and funders expect why do clients change how microfinance projects function in unanticipated ways previous scholarship on microfinance has overlooked the relevance of already existing borrowing practices and norms to how people engage with and use microfinance over 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the kumaon region of eastern uttarakhand state in northern india i found that kumaonis altered the microfinance program of a local ngo to make it fit with their already existing borrowing practices which were intimately tied to their livelihood strategies kumaoni livelihoods were based on exchange relationships with family friends and neighbors through which they could secure the means for physical and financial survival as well as social and emotional survival these relationships were governed by a moral economy that obligated exchange partners to properly assist one another and ensured balance between partners and across multiple social ties rather than abandoning their exchange relationships kumaonis and local fieldworkers who also relied on these ties altered microfinance so that it fit with this moral economy and became another node in the already existing networks of assistance if they had not been able to alter projects kumaonis would likely have stopped participating as other groups in similar circumstances around the globe have done although the microfinance program was a success in the eyes of beneficiaries senior staff members and donors remained unaware of why projects changed on the ground to ensure that development programs can be made relevant to people s lives and cultural values development practitioners must relinquish control over the minutiae of development and allow local level workers to negotiate the details of projects with participants

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

nafta and mexico s maize producers abstract the fall in the producer price of maize that will accompany implementation of trade liberalization and nafta has led to dire predictions of falling incomes and labor displacement in mexican agriculture we use a household survey of the ejido sector to show that a majority of maize producers are in fact not producing for the market and will consequently not be directly affected as producers by a drop in the price of maize while a significant share will benefit as consumers for the net sellers we explore the determinants of two solutions to a falling maize price diversification toward high value crops and modernization of maize production for both of these results show the fundamental importance of reconstructing supportive institutions for marketing credit and technical assistance in replacement of the services formerly offered by government and subsequently discontinued under state contraction

selling two environmental services in kind payments for bird habitat and watershed protection in los negros bolivia abstract marketing several environmental services from a single area can help access diverse sources of funding and make conservation a more competitive land use in bolivia s los negros valley department of santa cruz bordering the amboro national park 46 farmers are currently paid to protect 2774 ha of a watershed containing the threatened cloud forest habitat of 11 species of migratory birds in this payment for environmental services pes scheme annual contracts prohibit tree cutting hunting and forest clearing on enrolled lands farmer landowners as service providers submit to independent yearly monitoring and are sanctioned for non compliance facilitated by a local ngo fundacion natura bolivia one service buyer is an international conservation donor the us fish and wildlife service interested in biodiversity conservation the second service users are downstream irrigators who likely benefit from stabilized dry season water flows if upstream cloud forests are successfully protected individual irrigators have been reluctant to pay but the los negros municipal government has on their behalf contributed us 4500 to the scheme the negotiated payment mode is annual quid pro quo in kind compensations in return for forest protection predominantly payments are made as contingent project implementation transferring beehives supplemented by apicultural training with regard to service provision environment committees and education programs have increased awareness in downstream communities of the probable water supply reduction effect of continued upstream deforestation external donors have funded subsequent studies providing basic economic hydrological and biodiversity data and covered pes start up us 40 000 and running transaction costs us 3000 per year over the last three years the greatest challenges in the development of the pes mechanism have been the slow process of building trust between service buyers and providers and in achieving clear service provision additionality

volunteer and satisfied rural households participation in a payments for environmental services programme in inner mongolia using survey data from inner mongolia this paper explores the role of stakeholder engagement in the implementation of the sloping land conversion programme a payments for environmental services pes programme designed to restore forest in degraded land based on the idea that volunteerism and satisfaction with the programme s outcome are two important components of the programme s viability we successively analyse the intensity of households participation in the programme and their reported satisfaction with its economic achievement which we relate to their stated volunteerism we show that households participation intensity in the slcp is primarily driven by land and location characteristics and that these findings hold true whether or not the households voluntarily enrolled in the programme moreover as far as participants satisfaction can be interpreted as an indicator of potential long term support for the programme our findings also support plausible sustainability for the programme

poverty and environmental degradation a review and analysis of the nexus abstract there is much controversy surrounding the poverty environmental degradation nexus the predominant school of thought argues that poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation and if policy makers want to address environmental issues then they must first address the poverty problem another school of thought argues that a direct link between poverty and environmental degradation is too simplistic and the nexus is governed by a complex web of factors in this paper a formal structure for analyzing the complex web of factors is formulated and used to review the existing literature on the links between poverty and the degradation of four natural resource sectors the analysis highlights the important role institutional and market failure in encouraging agents from various income groups to exhibit unsustainable activities which in turn forces some of the agents to fall into poverty another important factor is the role of conflicts between different agents income groups in the povertyenvironmental degradation nexus the analysis also highlights the presence of feedback loops between environmental degradation and poverty

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

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

disaggregated rural economywide models for policy analysis summary this paper presents a disaggregated rural economywide modeling drem approach to explore how agricultural and trade policy reforms play out within rural economies of less developed countries ldcs drems combine the strengths of aggregate computable general equilibrium cge and microagricultural household models we calibrate our model with new microsurvey data from central mexico and we use the model to explore the impacts of policy changes on individual rural household groups as well as on the rural economy as a whole simulations highlight how rural market constraints and heterogeneous household responses shape the outcomes of policy reforms

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

evaluating the long run impact of an innovative anti poverty programme evidence using household panel data using a four round panel data set from the first phase of the challenging the frontiers of poverty reduction targeting the ultra poor cfpr tup programme of brac we investigate whether a one off transfer of livestock assets improves well being of the very poor women in bangladesh programme impact is assessed on a wide range of monetary and nonmonetary measures of well being using difference in difference dd as well as matching methods we find significant positive long term impact on food security household savings assets and participation in microfinance participant women are less likely to be in distress occupation and more into self employment however the long term effect is much smaller for most outcomes when compared to short and medium run impacts we conclude by discussing the significance of the institutional and regional context for the observed time path of estimated programme effect

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

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

maize and the free trade agreement between mexico and the united states setting the price of maize in rural mexico above the world price is inefficient and likely to have negative distributional effects because many subsistence producers and all landless workers are net buyers in fact it screens out the relatively poor rather than the relatively rich the policy objective therefore should be to move toward free trade this would yield large gains in efficiency the free trade agreement provides an ideal opportunity to pursue this objective it will provide freer entrance into the united states for other agricultural products as well as a broad range of manufactured products ensuring secure and sustained access for labor intensive agricultural and manufactured products can help ease the impact on the labor market of a transition away from subsistence maize cultivation

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

how much can asset transfers help the poorest evaluating the results of brac s ultra poor programme 2002 2008 abstract the impacts of an innovative programme in rural bangladesh which has assisted extremely poor households literally the poorest of the poor were assessed over a six year period 2002 2008 the provision of a substantial dose of assets has helped produce very positive results by and large vulnerability to downturns on account of negative events such as illnesses and house damage has resulted in asset losses for several assisted households additional measures that reduce vulnerability and risk will help complete the good work commenced by the asset transfer plan

the demand side of social protection lessons from cambodia s labour rights experience summary in fragile states recent efforts to advance the social protection agenda have focused primarily on loosening supply side constraints but the resulting kaleidoscope of donor driven projects has often overlooked the need to create a sense of ownership by beneficiaries in part this is because it is unclear what political and social structures effectively facilitate activism in situations where state society relations are contentious we use cambodia s unusual success creating and sustaining a labor rights regime to illustrate the dynamics behind one type of social regime change that has opened up governance over worker protections in a sustainable and potentially replicable way

shadow vs market prices in explaining land allocation subsistence maize cultivation in rural mexico prices may fail to explain farmers land allocation if the relevant decision prices are shadow prices that deviate from market prices this may be the case for farmers who attach significant non market values to their crops i theoretically explain why land allocation may not respond to market signals even if transaction costs are not binding i use nationally representative rural household data from mexico to show that shadow prices better explain the land subsistence farmers allocate to traditional maize in this center of maize diversity i discuss the importance of non market values in understanding supply response and on farm conservation of traditional crops c 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

applying cointegration and error correction to measure trade linkages maize prices in the united states and mexico the impact of u s grown maize on mexican markets is a subject of heated debate and is complicated by limited substitution between white and yellow maize as well as regional price differences within mexico this article improves on previous analyses using a detailed data set of white maize prices reported weekly in 11 states across mexico from 1998 through 2005 using cointegration analysis and the error correction model we find that prices between the united states and mexico do not share a common long run relationship within mexico prices in michoacan and oaxaca are only weakly related with prices in neighboring states whereas prices in sinaloa and jalisco exert considerable influence on prices elsewhere in mexico we conclude that despite north american free trade agreement nafta white maize prices in mexico are determined by local conditions including particularly the degree of integration to other regions within mexico

failure vs displacement why an innovative anti poverty program showed no net impact in south india abstract we analyze a randomized trial of an innovative anti poverty program in south india part of a series of pilot programs that provide ultra poor households with inputs to create new sustainable livelihoods often tending livestock in contrast with results from other pilots we find no lasting net impact on income or asset accumulation in south india we explore concerns with program implementation data errors and the existence of compelling employment alternatives the baseline consumption data contain systematic errors and income and consumption contain large outliers steps to address the problems leave the central findings largely intact wages for unskilled labor rose sharply in the area while the study was implemented blunting the net impact of the intervention and highlighting one way that treatment effects depend on factors external to the intervention itself such as broader employment opportunities

travel patterns and environmental effects now and in the future implications of differences in energy consumption among socio economic groups travel patterns among different socio economic groups in sweden are investigated it is shown that elderly persons persons with low incomes and women in general do not travel extensively middle aged persons persons with high incomes and men travel much farther cars are the dominant transportation mode for all population groups aeroplanes are used mostly by high income earners and men while public transportation is mostly used by young people and women energy consumption for the different travel patterns differs substantially men with high incomes consume the most energy with 94 000 mj during one year while elderly women consume 12 000 mj when compared to a calculated sustainable level of energy consumption for travel most population groups are in excess the level for sustainable energy consumption is calculated based on an assumed global potential for renewable energy of 360 ej per year divided equally among the global population a certain share of this energy potential is supposed to be used for travelling a scenario for 2020 is presented in which vehicle energy efficiency has increased and travel patterns have changed from what they are today sustainability can only be reached when both travel patterns and vehicle technology have changed radically differences in energy consumption for travel due to age and gender are likely to remain in the future scientific knowledge from the social domains seems to be important for devising efficient strategies for a sustainable society current focus on policy measures has been mainly on technical issues

estimating the average treatment effect of social safety net programmes in bangladesh since the famine in 1974 the bangladesh government and some national and international agencies have been providing food or cash or both to poor households through the social safety net programmes i seek to estimate how much these programmes affect the well being of poor households most previous studies have estimated impacts of these programmes on calorie consumption simply computing the raw differential however both observed and unobserved characteristics bias this treatment effect using fuzzy regression discontinuity rd design i control for these selection effects

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

smallholder livelihood adaptation in the context of neoliberal policy reforms a case of maize farmers in southern veracruz mexico governments around the world have embraced trade liberalisation as a means of enhancing efficiency to realise economic growth and alleviate poverty likewise the mexican government implemented neoliberal policy reforms the nafta in particular to stimulate sustainable development using the mexican maize sector as illustration this article describes the adaptation process of smallholders to market changes shaped by these reforms going beyond the aggregated level we have investigated smallholders livelihood strategies contrary to what economic models estimated our data suggests that farmers intensified the cultivation of maize rather than switch to sectors in which mexico has a comparative advantage

how effective is a big push to the small evidence from a quasi experiment summary this paper investigates whether a big push to the extreme poor in terms of a one off large grant enables them to participate in the microfinance program the analysis uses data from a quasi experiment on brac s ultra poor program in bangladesh the results for the baseline and repeat survey data for the treatment and comparison groups show that such a big push does make a significant impact on graduation to the microfinance program the results are robust to correction for self selection bias social capital and awareness also play important role in their decision on ngo membership and borrowing

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

design and development of a measuring method for environmental sustainability in food production systems abstract these days sustainability is a key issue for many private companies that address their sustainable corporate performance scp the perspective is essential for their license to operate and forms the basis for business principles and practices the lack of internationally accepted reporting standards on what when and where to report makes it difficult to assess sustainability however moreover measuring tools providing information on scp are only the first step towards sustainability to prevent negative effects of operations being transferred from one company to another the second step is the development of a system based approach for all companies that contribute to an end product this paper presents the findings of a study about the use of environmental indicators for food production and proposes a measuring method for environmental sustainability in food production systems the study shows that environmental scp often focuses on events at a local level the enormous number of indicators found in the literature generates too much data that often provide no additional knowledge on the environmental sustainability of a system moreover although environmental research has addressed many aspects of sustainability it has often ignored interactions overall environmental implications of food production are therefore poorly understood the proposed measuring method uses three indicators that address global environmental issues the use of energy from both fossil and renewable sources land and water the systemic approach can calculate trade offs along supply chains that make up a production system the use of the method implies an extension of environmental scp towards the overall performance of a production system the final outcome is expressed in three performance indicators the total land energy and water requirement per kilogram of available food for companies the data generated can be used to compare trends over time to compare results with targets and to benchmark a company against others for consumers data can be used to compare the environmental effects of various foods the method is also applicable to other business sectors the study is part of a multidisciplinary project on the scientific modeling and measuring of scp involving economic social and environmental dimensions acceptance of the measuring methods developed may be a powerful contribution towards creating sustainable business practices

cropland allocation effects of agricultural input subsidies in malawi summary we measure the impacts of malawi s farm input subsidy program on the cropland allocation decisions of farmers in kasungu and machinga districts in central and southern malawi using a two step regression strategy to control for endogenous selection into the program we find positive correlations between participation in the program and the amount of land planted with maize and tobacco furthermore results suggest that participating households simplified crop production by allocating less land to other crops e g groundnuts soybeans and dry beans our findings have implications for policies aimed at promoting both food self sufficiency and crop diversification in low income settings 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

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