Sense of ownership is often advocated as an argument for local participation within the epistemic development and nature conservation communities. Stakeholder participation in initiating, designing or implementing institutions is claimed to establish a sense of ownership among the stakeholders and subsequently improve the intended outcomes of the given institution. Theoretical and empirical justifications of the hypothesis remain scarce. A better understanding of the effects of local participation can motivate more extensive and stronger participation of local stakeholders and improve institutional performance. This paper applies theories from psychology and behavioral economics to sense of ownership. The empirical investigation is a framed field experiment in the context of tropical forest conservation and payments for environmental services in Tanzania. The results lend little support to the hypothesis in this context. The participation treatment in the experiment is weak, and a possible explanation is that sense of ownership is sensitive to the participation form.

This paper applies a household production framework (Becker, 1971) to infer the economic value of a cultural heritage site, namely, the Petroglyph National Monument, situated in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. The empirical analysis uses benefit-transfer techniques from three source studies: those of Bergstrom and Cordell (1991) and Boxall et al. (2003), which concern willingness-to-pay to hike and view rock art sites; and those of Rolfe and Windle (2003, 2006), which concern willingness-to-pay by Aboriginal and general populations to preserve a cultural heritage site containing rock art. The benefit-transfer analysis estimates recreational values between 3.75 million and 7 million dollars per year (depending on perceptions of the cultural attribute quality) and a nonuse value of approximately 12.5 million dollars per year. By comparison the annualized costs of developing/operating the study site are 8.5 million dollars per year. Thus a partial cost-benefit analysis suggests the study site yields net economic benefits upwards of 7.8 million dollars per year.

Plant pathogens are quite destructive to cash crops throughout the world, resulting in potentially devastating financial losses. This work expands recently developed optimal control theory for an integrodifference model to a mathematical system which includes an integrodifference component. This system models a highly simplified plant pathogen system for which the optimal harvesting scheme is derived. An adjoint system is introduced to characterize the optimal harvesting pattern. This analysis shows that, while it may not be possible to prevent losses upon discovery of the pathogen in an area, it is theoretically possible to significantly cut those losses by culling an area around the initial infection.

This paper attempts to develop a dynamic model of optimal biodiversity preservation in a stylized ecosystem. Species richness (number of species) is used as a measure of diversity and its interactions with the resource stock, consumptive extraction and preservation efforts are explored using a two-state variable optimal control model. The analysis extends to the implications of a random threshold in species richness and the relationship between ecological and economic stability conditions. Dynamic paths and equilibrium characteristics are illustrated using numerical techniques.

I am in agreement with the main thesis of the paper by Levin et al., namely that complex, non-linear systems, whether ecological or socioeconomic, do not lend themselves to management protocols based on assumptions of linear, globally stable, single equilibrium systems. As the authors point out, policy makers need a better understanding of the concept of resilience. Furthermore, it is especially important for them to understand the crucial elements for maintaining resilience in the integrated ecological-socioeconomic resource use systems (the forests, rangelands, and agro-ecosystems) on which most human welfare depends.

Fossil fuel combustion generates both CO2 and SO2. CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas; SO2 can cause serious local pollution. But it can alleviate the potential global warming because of negative radiative forcing. Such a phenomenon can be characterized as negatively correlated local and global stock externalities. In this paper, we set up an optimal control problem of negatively correlated local and global stock externality provision. The efficiency conditions for this problem are derived. These conditions modify the Samuelson rules for optimal provision of externalities. In addition, we examine several policy related scenarios of negatively correlated local and global stock externality provisions. Finally, we discuss policy implications and limitation of the theoretical results derived in this paper. We also indicate applications of the theoretical results here to empirical research, particularly to economic analysis of multiple-gas issues in climate change.

The paper examines how recent trends in agricultural productivity in Brazil, occurring both inside and outside the Amazon, affected deforestation and agricultural incomes. The analysis uses a computable general equilibrium model adapted to capture regional economic structures, and accounts for uncertainty concerning productivity improvements. Due to countervailing effects on deforestation of innovation inside and outside the Amazon – respectively, increasing and decreasing it – innovation in Brazilian agriculture in the period from 1985 to 1995 has not altered substantially deforestation rates. However, innovation inside the Amazon has to be reckoned as a driving force behind the continuing high levels of deforestation rates.

Innovation rates for livestock activities, inside and outside the Amazon, prove crucial in determining deforestation and agricultural income. Technological improvements outside the Amazon for small farm production systems and for farms in general in the North-East increase agricultural income, improve income distribution, and limit deforestation rates.

To guide investments in ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) in developing countries, numerous stated preference valuation studies have been implemented to assess the value of ecosystem services. These studies increasingly use time payments as an alternative to money. There is limited knowledge, however, about how to convert time to money and how the type of payment affects willingness to pay (WTP). In this study, the results of choice experiments using time and money payments are compared in the context of EbA measures in Vietnam. Six, of which five individual-specific, conversion rates are applied. WTP estimates are found to be higher for time payments. Moreover, the type of payment vehicle as well as the conversion rate has substantial effect on mean WTP and WTP distributions. We discuss implications of these results for the conversion of time to money and the use of resulting WTP estimates in cost benefit analyses in developing countries.

Development agencies spend approximately US$ 400 million per year on landmine clearance. Yet many cost–benefit evaluations suggest that landmine clearance is socially wasteful because costs appear to far outweigh social benefits. This paper presents new estimates of the benefits of clearing landmines based on a contingent valuation survey in two provinces in rural Cambodia where we asked respondents questions that elicit their trade-offs between money and the risk of death from landmine accidents. The estimated Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) is US$ 0.4 million. In contrast, most previous studies of landmine clearance use foregone income or average GDP per capita, which has a lifetime value of only US$ 2,000 in Cambodia. Humanitarian landmine clearance emerges as a more attractive rural development policy when appropriate estimates of the VSL are used.

In the mid-hills of Nepal, as in many developing countries, gradually developing urban centers and increasing demand for agricultural produce, due to population growth and early development activities, have persuaded farm households to reorient their subsistence farming to become farm systems growing surplus food to be sold in the markets. To cope with these changes, institutions play an important role and, for these institutions to be effective, farmers must perceive their participation as not being coerced. Their participation is influenced by individual household characteristics and proximity to support services and markets. Our main findings from the analysis of household surveys based on the level of market participation included: (1) the education level and amount of training attended by family members are influencing social variables, while farm size and gross farm income are dominant economic variables influencing household participation and perceived institutional effectiveness; (2) these variations revealed significant differences in the levels of market economy for household participation and institutional effectiveness within the watershed; and (3) the factor analysis further categorized several socioeconomic variables into three major factors explaining household participation and institutional effectiveness; these included labor quality and resources, supplementary income coming from migration and off-farm activities, and awareness and modern skills acquired by farm household members living within the watershed.

The operation of a number of non-contiguous parcels of land as a single farming unit is known as land fragmentation. It is a widespread and persistent phenomenon and, at the same time, widely criticized by development agencies. Available evidence clearly suggests that the unqualified faith in the merit of consolidation is not justified; fragmentation may have some rationale. This paper substantiates the latter position with a case study of an irrigated agricultural system. Thereafter, it locates fragmentation within the broader context and analyses its role within a hierarchy of phenomena in the linked social and ecological local system. For this analysis an evolutionary game model is used. It is shown that fragmentation increases the resilience of the system of cooperation. The study concludes by suggesting an appropriate strategy for resilience management.

Adaptation has the attributes of a private good that aims to protect a country from climate change, while mitigation, which contributes to the reduction of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, has the properties of a public good. This paper attempts to investigate how the innovation of adaptation technology by a developed country (the North) may affect a developing country (the South) as well as the North through changes of mitigation in both countries. We show that the efficacy of adaptation determines the level of both countries' mitigation, and thereby causes them to be better or worse off. For both countries to be better off, it is required that the innovation be neither very effective nor very ineffective. Furthermore, we demonstrate that by introducing an international transfer system in which the North is taxed according to the level of adaptation, both countries can be better off even if the innovation is highly effective.

The debt-resource-hypothesis suggests that high indebtedness leads to increased natural resource exploitation as well as more unsustainable patterns of resource use. Countries with high debt burdens supposedly increase their extraction of fossil fuels and mineral resources as well as their production of so-called cash crops in order to service their debt obligations. In spite of its popularity, there have been few attempts to systematically test the hypothesis. Existing analyses refer to deforestation only and come to mixed results. This study fills a gap in testing the hypothesis more comprehensively for 23 natural resources and cash crops. It uses first differencing, period-specific time dummies, and a lagged dependent variable to mitigate omitted variable bias. No evidence is found that would support the debt-resource-hypothesis.

This paper aims at identifying whether and how sustainable land management practices and livelihood diversification strategies have contributed to moderating the impacts of the El Niño-related drought in Zambia. This is done using a specifically designed survey called the El Niño Impact Assessment Survey, which is combined with the Rural Agricultural Livelihoods Surveys, as well as high resolution rainfall data at the ward level over 34 years. This unique panel data set allows us to control for the time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity to understand the impacts of shocks like El Niño, which are expected to become more frequent and severe as a result of climate change. We find that maize yields were substantially reduced and that household incomes were only partially protected from the shock thanks to diversification strategies. Mechanical erosion control measures and livestock diversification emerge as the only strategies that provided yield and income benefits under weather shock.

Using individual travel diary data collected before and after a rail transit expansion in urban Beijing, the impact of urban rail accessibility improvement on the usage of rail transit, automobiles, buses, walking and bicycling, as well as the cross-area externality induced by congestion alleviation, is estimated. The results show that rail transit usage significantly increased for commuters residing in the affected areas and that the additional rail passengers were previously auto users, rather than bus passengers. The cross-area externality is estimated as small, which implies that the congestion alleviation was not large enough (yet) to change the travel mode choices of commuters residing in areas that did not experience the improvement. Furthermore, the results show that neither the number of commute work trips nor their length increased, indicating that the quantity of travel was not increased by the rail transit expansion.

The European Union (EU) is now discussing a legislation proposal to ban illegal timber from the EU market. We use the ICES model to estimate the reallocation of global demand and timber imports following the EU legislation. We aim to assess the economic impacts and measure the potential emission reduction resulting from the introduction of this policy. Results show that an EU ban targeting only log imports is not effective in reducing illegal logging, but its main effect is the removal of illegal logs from international markets. Additionally, the unilateral EU ban increases secondary wood production in illegal logging countries as their exports become relatively more competitive. Through this mechanism, part of the banned illegal timber will re-enter international trade flows ‘hidden’ as processed wood. Extending the ban to timber processed products eliminates this effect and reinforces direct carbon emissions reduction from logging activities.

We investigate the consequences of remittances inflows on the macroeconomic performance of West African countries over the 1985–2007 period. We take into account the exposure of those countries to climate variability by estimating a PCHVAR model which allows heterogeneity between countries’ responses to rainfall shocks. Our results show that the impact of remittances on macroeconomic performance is highly sensitive to those shocks. In particular, when drought conditions prevail, remittances no longer exert any short-term spillover effects on growth and may increase a situation of economic dependence, by spurring agricultural imports.

An environmental accounting approach is adopted to adjust current measures of national income and net savings in SA for the value of net accumulation in timber and carbon stocks as well as for the value of water abstraction externality of cultivated forests. Results indicated that the said values missing from current measures of income and capital formation are substantial, amounting to about 0.6 per cent of NNP, on average over the study period. Potential VAD lost to agriculture due to water abstraction by cultivated forests was estimated at R104 million per annum, on average since 1981. This estimate, however, did not account for the social costs associated with potential losses of environmental services from affected ecosystems.

This paper presents an adoption model of a resource management technology derived from a three-step decision process (information, adoption, and intensity of adoption).

From the theoretical results it is found that while the levels of technical parameters such as duration and regeneration rate of soil fertility by improved fallow are relevant for adoption, it is misleading to ignore economic and social factors as they are reflected in the discount rate, risk, information, and prices of inputs and outputs.

It is also shown that models that do not take account of the problems of self-selection due to the ability of the potential adopters to acquire and process the relevant information about a technology, lead to biased estimators.

Empirical estimations generally confirm the theoretical results. It is found that the acquisition of information about resources management technology is influenced by age of farmers and actions of official extension services; the adoption decision is influenced by prior utilization, the bundle of land property rights owned, and the level of financial liquidity; and the intensity of adoption is influenced by the percentage of the farm that is degraded.