Environmental conditional cash transfers, or "payments for ecosystem services" are a centerpiece of global efforts to protect biodiversity, safeguard watersheds, and mitigate climate change by reducing forest loss.
... See More + This paper evaluates the impacts of Mexico's national payments for ecosystem services program, which provides five years of payments to landowners in exchange for maintaining and managing natural land cover. Using a regression discontinuity design, the paper studies impacts on environmental, socioeconomic, and social capital outcomes for the 2011-14 program cohorts. The analysis finds that treated communities increased management activities to protect land cover, such as patrolling for illegal conversion or combatting soil erosion (by 48 percent compared to controls). The program reduced the loss of tree cover in areas at high risk of deforestation (by 29 percent compared to controls), with effects being larger for those that have been in the program the longest (38 percent compared to controls). These results are similar to estimates of impact for earlier program cohorts and continue to highlight the importance of targeting the program to areas of high risk of land cover loss to increase environmental effectiveness. The program continued to reach poor communities and households, but estimated impacts on household wealth indicators are small in magnitude and not statistically significant. These results indicate that community-level conditional payments did not harm household-level socioeconomic indicators, a key safeguard requirement of conservation policies of the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The data also show that payments for ecosystem services significantly increased community social capital -- the institutions, attitudes, and values that govern human interactions -- (by 9 percent compared to controls), and these externally provided incentives did not crowd out household contributions to other community work.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8707 JAN 17, 2019
Alix-Garcia,Jennifer M.; Sims,Katharine R. Emans; Orozco Olvera,Victor Hugo; Costica,Laura Elena; Fernandez Medina.Jorge David; Romo-Monroy,Sofia; Pagiola,Stefano P.Disclosed
Cost-effective allocation of conditional cash transfers (CCT) requires identifying recipients with low opportunity costs who might change behavior.
... See More + This paper develops a low-cost approach for improving program implementation by using a stated preference, referendum-style survey question to calculate willingness to accept (WTA) for CCT contracts. This is illustrated in the context of Mexico's Payments for Ecosystem Services Program, with the paper finding that the estimated social cost based on WTA is substantially lower than actual payments. Simulation of three geographic targeting approaches shows that joint selection using deforestation risk and WTA could increase program impact under the same budget. The paper also simulates modified payment schedules based on predicted WTA and demonstrates that these could reduce program cost.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8708 JAN 17, 2019
Alix-Garcia,Jennifer M.; Sims,Katharine R. Emans; Phaneuf,Daniel J.Disclosed
Benefit sharing is an essential aspect of emission reductions programs (ER Programs) under both the forest carbon partnership facility (FCPF) and BioCarbon fund initiative for sustainable forest landscapes (BioCF ISFL).
... See More + Benefit sharing plans for these ER Programs incorporate benefit sharing arrangements and other elements, the requirements for which are outlined in the FCPF methodological framework1 and ISFL ER program requirements. The FCPF methodological framework and ISFL ER program requirements were not intended to be overly prescriptive in order to allow flexibility for Benefit sharing plans to develop according to the unique context of each ER Program. However, technical issues related to Benefit sharing can be complex. Therefore, this note intends to provide program entities with recommendations and additional information to consider when developing benefit sharing arrangements and benefit sharing plans
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The development objective of Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) REDD Readiness Project is to support Nigeria design a socially and environmentally sound strategy to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
... See More + This paper requires the additional financing (AF) that will support Nigeria to: (i) finalize a socially and environmentally sound national strategy to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation; (ii) complete the REDD readiness process as initially planned in its readiness preparation proposal (R-PP) and in line with the evaluation criteria of the FCPF REDD readiness assessment framework ; (iii) mobilize funding ; (iv) scale-up REDD readiness activities to additional states; and (v) prepare for the future implementation of the National REDD strategy of Nigeria. The activities under the AF would be implemented over a period of eighteen months until June 30, 2020.
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The development objective of the Integrated Forest Landscape Management Project in Atalaya, Ucayali for Peru is to strengthen sustainable management and use of forest landscapes in the Raimondi, Sepahua, and Tahuanía districts of the Atalaya province.
... See More + The project comprises of three components. The first component, institutional strengthening for forest conservation consists of following sub-components: (i) provision of land use rights in forest landscapes and promoting community-level land-use planning; and (ii) strengthening enabling conditions for forest management. The second component, strengthening sustainable forest landscape management and use consists of following sub-components: (i) strengthening technical and business capacities of forest communities and small producers to better manage forests; and (ii) investing in forest landscapes. The third component, project management, monitoring and evaluation will finance the operating costs of a project management team (PMT) within Ministry of Environment (MINAM’s) national program of forest conservation for climate change mitigation (programa nacional de conservación de bosques para la mitigación del cambio climático, PNCBMCC) to carry out project oversight and management functions for components 1 and 2.
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