SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Zabel, Astrid; Bostedt, Goran; Engel, Stefanie.

This paper presents a first empirical assessment of carnivore conservation under a performance payment scheme. The Swedish government issues payments to reindeer herder villages based on the number of carnivore offspring certified on their pastures. The villages decide on the internal use and distribution of the payments. It is generally assumed that benefit distribution rules are exogenously given. We develop a model to investigate such rules as endogenous decision. The empirical data reveals that villages’ group size has a direct negative effect on conservation outcomes. However, there is also an indirect positive effect which impacts conservation outcomes through the benefit distribution rule. This result revises the general collective action hypothesis...

Exploiting Common Resources with Capital-Intensive Technologies: The Role of External Forces

Palavras-chave: Conservation performance payments; Wildlife conservation; Collective action; Empirical policy assessment; Sweden; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/115973

Engel, Stefanie; Lopez, Ramon E..

This paper focuses on the interactions between local communities having at least some degree of informal claims over natural resources and external agents, particularly firms interested in commercial resource exploitation. The paper makes three contributions to the existing literature. First, unlike the literature on devolution and communal resource management, rather than concentrating on intra-community decisions, we extend the analysis to examine interactions between the community and outside agents. Second, unlike both the literature on conflict and bargaining, we integrate these two strands of the literature, so that we can endogenously derive the conditions under which community-firm interactions result in conflict or, alternatively, in bargaining...

JOINT FOREST MANAGEMENT IN INDIA: ASSESSMENT OF PERFORMANCE AND EVALUATION OF IMPACTS

Palavras-chave: Resource /Energy Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18720

Damodaran, Appukuttannair; Engel, Stefanie.

This paper is an attempt to critically survey the movement for Joint Forest Management(JFM) in India. The study commences with a description of the policy context in which Joint Forest Management got initiated in India. It considers the 1980s to have effected a paradigm shift in India's forest policy and legislations. The passage of the Forest Conservation Act in 1980 was followed by a host of measures to unleash a forest conservation movement in India based on local community support. The National Forest Policy of 1988 marked the first effort to set the pace for community participation in forest management. In June 1990, the Government of India issued a circular to give effect to the provisions of the National Forest Policy 1988 in this regard. Joint...

Practical Alternatives to Estimate Opportunity Costs of Forest Conservation

Palavras-chave: Resource /Energy Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2003

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18752

Wunscher, Tobias; Engel, Stefanie; Wunder, Sven.

Numerous studies have shown the merits of targeting the costs of conservation besides environmental benefits and aligning payments for ecosystem services with incurred costs. However, cost-effective and precise estimation of site specific opportunity costs is a major challenge. In this paper we test two approaches to estimate opportunity costs of conservation: One approach derives opportunity costs from annual land rents, and the other models regresses opportunity costs on easily obtainable and difficult to manipulate spatial and socio-economic independent variables such as soil quality. None of these approaches appeared to estimate opportunity costs sufficiently well. But since this judgment is based on how well the estimates compare to the reference...

Designing REDD+ Schemes to Address Permanence Concerns: Empirical Evidence from Kenya

Palavras-chave: Resource /Energy Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/115774

Veronesi, Marcella; Schlondorn, Tim; Zabel, Astrid; Engel, Stefanie.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is an important topic in the debate on policies to mitigate climate change. This is the first study to test and compare the environmental impact of different REDD+ payment schemes in the field, and provide some insights on the effectiveness of different policies with respect to the permanence of forest-based emission reductions. This study implements a stated preference experiment of time allocation in the unique setting of the Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project in Kenya, where charcoaling is a major source of forest degradation. The impact on time allocation is analyzed under the presumption that a hypothetical agricultural policy or an eco-charcoaling policy was introduced. We find that a...

Tipo: Presentation

Palavras-chave: REDD; Permanence; Deforestation; Labor; Kenya; International Development; I38; J22; O13; Q18; Q23; Q28; Q56.

Ano: 2012

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/124131

Migration due to the tsunami in Sri Lanka - Analyzing vulnerability and migration at the household level

Grote, Ulrike; Engel, Stefanie; Schraven, Benjamin.

To achieve a better understanding of the diverse vulnerabilities of different social groups affected by the tsunami in December 2004 in Sri Lanka, a survey of 500 households in the Sri Lankan urban area of Galle has been conducted in cooperation with several institutes under the direction of the Institute of Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University (UNU-EHS). An important aim of the project is to analyze the determinants and effects of the migration decision at the household level to be able to support the development of appropriate prevention, assistance and resettlement policies. In this paper, we first develop a framework for analyzing the factors which have an impact on the household's decision to stay in or migrate from a...

Opportunity Costs as a Determinant of Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Service Schemes

Palavras-chave: Consumer/Household Economics; Labor and Human Capital.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/7117

Wunscher, Tobias; Engel, Stefanie; Wunder, Sven.

Landholders are generally assumed to be willing to participate in payments for ecosystem service (PES) schemes if the offered payment exceeds the opportunity cost of participation. The calculation of opportunity costs is often based on historic financial data such as net returns of the formerly practiced land use. Reliable estimates of opportunity costs are required especially in flexible, cost-aligned payment schemes with differentiated payments at the farm scale. We question whether opportunity cost estimates that do not consider personal landholder characteristics such as risk considerations, information access and non-monetary personal preferences (e.g. for traditional land use practices) are sufficient to explain a landholder's decision to enrol land...

Improved Water Supply in the Ghanaian Volta Basin: Who Uses it and Who Participates in Community Decision-Making?

Palavras-chave: Resource /Energy Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/115779

Engel, Stefanie; Iskandarani, Maria; Useche, Pilar.

We examine access to, use of, and participation in decisions on improved water supply in the Volta basin of Ghana, one of the first countries to introduce a community-based approach to rural water supply on a large scale. While 71 percent of the households interviewed have access to improved water, 43 percent of these continue to use unsafe sources as their main domestic water source. Our results indicate that quality perceptions and opportunity costs play an important role in households’ choice of water source. The effect of prices and income levels on this choice differs according to the pricing system used. Given that supply characteristics such as the location and pricing system affect household decisions to use the improved source, households may try...

ENVIRONMENTAL AND FOOD SAFETY STANDARDS IN THE CONTEXT OF TRADE LIBERALIZATION: ISSUES AND OPTIONS

Palavras-chave: Water safety; Water use; Community participation; Community-based resource management; Water resource allocation; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/59243

Grote, Ulrike; Engel, Stefanie.

The current debate on trade liberalization is accompanied by an increased concern about environmental and food safety issues leading to frictions of different country groups under the World Trade Organization (WTO). This discussion paper aims at shedding more light on some of the issues in the "trade and environment" debate. It describes the complex process of setting standards, the relevant WTO agreements dealing with technical as well as sanitary and phytosanitary standards and potential outcomes of setting environmental standards-outcomes for the environment, for international trade relations and the competitiveness of countries. The theoretical part shows that under certain assumptions, not only protectionist but also environmental concerns may lead to...

The Design of Payments for Avoided Deforestation Under Uncertainty: Insight from Real Option Theory

Palavras-chave: Environmental Economics and Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; International Relations/Trade.

Ano: 2001

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18725

Engel, Stefanie; Palmer, Charles; Taschini, Luca; Urech, Simon.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the implications of landowners’ option values in land allocation and derive policy recommendations for payments for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). We examine the determinants of landowner participation in REDD implementation and consider particularly the effect of alternative designs of REDD payment schemes on permanence of emission reductions. It is shown that the common practice of making either fixed payments per hectare or linking payments to carbon markets is not a cost-effective approach. A given level of permanence can be achieved at considerably lower cost to the REDD service buyer if REDD payments are linked to an agricultural commodity index that correlates with...