Paying for the hydrological services of Mexico's forests: Analysis, negotiations and results

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.     

Ecosystem services and agriculture: Cultivating agricultural ecosystems for diverse benefits

Crop and rangelands are over 25% of the Earth's land area, and they are expanding. Agricultural ecosystems rely on a suite of supporting ecosystem services to provide food, fiber and fuel as well as a range of accompanying but non-marketed ecosystem services (ES). Ecosystem services from agriculture include regulation of water and climate systems, aesthetic and cultural services, as well as enhanced supporting services (such as soil fertility). Many of these ES are appreciated by people, but they lack markets, so they lack the incentives for provision that come with prices. For public policy decisions to take them into account, non-market valuation techniques are needed, such as travel cost, contingent valuation, hedonic valuation, and cost-based or factor-income approaches. This article offers an overview of ES from agriculture and non-market valuation methods as it introduces the articles in this special section on “Ecosystem Services and Agriculture.” Understanding how ecological functions generate ES is fundamental to management, but so too is understanding how humans perceive and value those services. Research is required both to design cost-effective incentives to provide ES and to measure which kinds of ES could provide the greatest overall welfare benefits to society. Agricultural ecosystems offer newly recognized potential to deliver more diverse ecosystem services and mitigate the level of past ecosystem disservices. This special section of Ecological Economics conveys both how these are becoming possible and the challenges to science and public policy design of turning that potential into reality.     

Ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture

Agricultural ecosystems are actively managed by humans to optimize the provision of food, fiber, and fuel. These ecosystem services from agriculture, classified as provisioning services by the recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, depend in turn upon a web of supporting and regulating services as inputs to production (e.g., soil fertility and pollination). Agriculture also receives ecosystem dis-services that reduce productivity or increase production costs (e.g., herbivory and competition for water and nutrients by undesired species). The flows of these services and dis-services directly depend on how agricultural ecosystems are managed and upon the diversity, composition, and functioning of remaining natural ecosystems in the landscape. Managing agricultural landscapes to provide sufficient supporting and regulating ecosystem services and fewer dis-services will require research that is policy-relevant, multidisciplinary and collaborative. This paper focuses on how ecosystem services contribute to agricultural productivity and how ecosystem dis-services detract from it. We first describe the major services and dis-services as well as their key mediators. We then explore the importance of scale and economic externalities for the management of ecosystem service provision to agriculture. Finally, we discuss outstanding issues in regard to improving the management of ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture.     

The working for water programme: Evolution of a payments for ecosystem services mechanism that addresses both poverty and ecosystem service delivery in South Africa

A payments for ecosystem services (PES) system came about in South Africa with the establishment of the government-funded Working for Water (WfW) programme that clears mountain catchments and riparian zones of invasive alien plants to restore natural fire regimes, the productive potential of land, biodiversity, and hydrological functioning. The success of the programme is largely attributed to it being mainly funded as a poverty-relief initiative, although water users also contribute through their water fees. Nevertheless, as the hydrological benefits have become apparent, water utilities and municipalities have begun to contract WfW to restore catchments that affect their water supplies. This emerging PES system differs from others in that the service providers are previously unemployed individuals that tender for contracts to restore public or private lands, rather than the landowners themselves. The model has since expanded into other types of ecosystem restoration and these have the potential to merge into a general programme of ecosystem service provision within a broader public works programme. There is a strong case for concentrating on the most valuable services provided by ecosystems, such as water supply, carbon sequestration, and fire protection, and using these as ‘umbrella services’ to achieve a range of conservation goals. The future prospects for expansion of PES for hydrological services are further strengthened by the legal requirement that Catchment Management Agencies be established. These authorities will have an incentive to purchase hydrological services through organisations such as WfW so as to be able to supply more water to their users.     

Institutional incentives for managing the landscape: Inducing cooperation for the production of ecosystem services

Agricultural landscapes hold tremendous potential for producing a diverse stream of ecosystem services. Yet, because the spatial configuration of particular ecosystems is critical to the supply of many services, realizing this potential requires that farms be managed in a coordinated way across landscapes rather than as independent units. Under existing incentive programs, this level of coordination is typically neither required nor encouraged.Here we explore how to achieve such coordination from an institutional perspective using voluntary incentives rather than regulation. We focus on three services operating at contrasting scales, from local to global: pollination, hydrologic services, and carbon sequestration. First, we briefly illustrate how agricultural practices can diminish or enhance their provision. Next, we show how all three services require coordinated, landscape-scale management because provision depends upon particular spatial configurations, of which we provide several stylized examples. Finally, based on these stylized configurations, we evaluate the relative merits of three incentive designs-the “cooperation bonus,” the “entrepreneur,” and the “ecosystem service district”-to promote cross-farm cooperation to enhance service provision.All three incentive systems rely on rational self-interest, have cooperative configurations to promote ecosystem services across different scales, use tiered reward systems, and have a major voluntary element. They are distinct in certain key features. The cooperation bonus system rewards conservation even without cooperation but adds a bonus for cooperation. In the entrepreneur incentive, all tiers of reward are contingent upon cooperation. The ecosystem service district scheme is only partially voluntary and forces cooperation of all landowners once the district is formed. Our analysis of these heuristic alternatives integrates biophysical, economic, and institutional factors with the aim of addressing the suite of institutional barriers for landscape-scale management.     

Selling two environmental services: In-kind payments for bird habitat and watershed protection in Los Negros, Bolivia

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 Amboró 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, Fundación 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.     

Ecological services to and from rangelands of the United States

The over 300 million ha of public and private rangelands in the United States are characterized by low and variable precipitation, nutrient-poor soils, and high spatial and temporal variability in plant production. This land type has provided a variety of goods and services, with the provisioning of food and fiber dominating through much of the 20th century. More recently, food production from a rangeland-based livestock industry is often pressured for a variety of reasons, including poor economic returns, increased regulations, an aging rural population, and increasingly diverse interests of land owners. A shift to other provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services is occurring with important implications for carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and conservation incentives. There are numerous goods and services possible from rangelands that can supply societal demands such as clean water and a safe food supply. The use of ecologically-based principles of land management remains at the core of the ability of private land owners and public land managers to provide these existing and emerging services. We suggest that expectations need to be based on a thorough understanding of the diverse potentials of these lands and their inherent limits. A critical provisioning service to rangelands will be management practices that either maintain ecological functions or that restore functions to systems that have been substantially degraded over past decades. With proper incentives and economic benefits, rangelands, in the U.S. or globally, can be expected to provide these historical and more unique goods and services in a sustainable fashion, albeit in different proportions than in the past.     

生态系统服务:能否形成一种新的产业?

对不同类型、不同尺度生态系统的服务功能进行的经济价值估算的结果表明，生态系统服务的经济价值是巨大的，如果将各种服务功能通过一定的形式“包装”成为可以在市场上销售的“商品”，那么这种具有巨大经济价值的特殊的“商品”将带来一种新的生态产业的发展。本文初步提出了生态系统服务形成生态产业的模式，并对其进行一定的阐述，以期为生态系统的可持续管理提供一种新的模式。     

Procurement as innovation policy and its distinguishing effects on innovative efforts of the Brazilian oil and gas suppliers

This paper aims to assess the effect of public procurement for innovation (PPI) in the Brazilian oil and gas sector on the innovative behavior of suppliers. It emphasizes the role PPI may play in developing countries due to its ability to target a wide range of firm sizes and to contribute to a more even diffusion of technical progress. Using microdata from RAIS and coarsened exact matching, results show that treated firms present on average a higher intensity of innovative efforts than the control sample. In small firms, PPI has a positive effect on the probability of carrying out innovative activities. Once small firms have decided to carry out these activities, treated and control samples have similar innovative effort intensities. The treatment’s effect on large firms’ probability of performing innovative activities is positive but lower than small firms. Nonetheless, there is a significant and positive effect on the intensity of these efforts. The paper suggests that, due to its effects over a wide range of firm sizes, PPI may be a worthwhile policy to implement for the reduction of structural heterogeneity present in developing countries.     

我国海洋生态系统服务非市场价值评估研究特征及态势

海洋生态系统服务非市场价值评估,将生态系统服务无法由市场直接体现的效用价值量化为货币价值,是实现生态资源可持续发展的重要手段,同时也为资源合理利用和补偿、环境价值核算等提供了必要的决策依据。本文基于我国现有研究,分别从生态系统类型、时空分布、评估类别、评估技术以及信度和效度检验五个方面,系统地分析了我国海洋生态系统服务非市场价值评估研究现状,识别出当前的研究特征。研究结果显示近年来我国海洋生态系统服务非市场价值评估研究增长迅速,尤其以上海、山东、辽宁等沿海区域为主要研究对象;湿地和海湾海滨生态系统的研究最为密集,其中对使用价值的研究远远超过非使用价值;条件价值法和旅行成本法是主要研究方法,两种方法都以游憩价值评估为主;评估结果的信度与效度检验是当前研究的薄弱环节,也是未来研究的重点发展方向。     

Designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice: An overview of the issues

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.     

辽东湾、渤海湾、莱州湾三湾生态系统服务价值评估

海洋生态系统服务价值对海洋资源开发和海洋综合管理具有重要的意义。研究应用联合国千年生态系统评估框架,构建了食品生产、原料生产、基因资源、氧气生产和气候调节、废弃物处理、生物控制、休闲娱乐、科研文化、初级生产以及物种多样性维持等10项服务价值的评估方法。对辽东湾、渤海湾和莱州湾进行了上述10项生态系统服务价值的评估,结果表明,三个海湾服务功能的总价值量为1 485.11×108元,单位面积价值为4.52元/(m2 a)。其中,辽东湾价值量最大,占三个海湾总价值量的56.7%,其次是莱州湾,占总价值量的23.3%,渤海湾最小,占总价值量的20%。各项服务中,食品生产的价值量最大,占总价值量的71.0%。食品生产、氧气生产和气候调节、初级生产这三项服务价值之间表现出显著相关性,主要是由于三项服务有着共同的初级生产者。研究结果可为相关管理部门制定生态补偿政策提供理论依据。     

An interdisciplinary model of soybean yield in the Amazon Basin: The climatic, edaphic, and economic determinants

Soybean production is one of the main economic forces driving the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the Brazilian Amazon. To assess the potential for expansion we estimate a model of soybean yield that integrates the major climatic, edaphic, and economic determinants in the Amazon Basin. Yield is modeled as a function of yield as simulated by a crop physiology model that captures the effects of climate and physical attributes on the development of soybean plant; fertilizer applications; and economic/spatial parameters such as credit, transports costs and latitude. Current values of these determinants indicate that roughly 20% of Amazon Region or ∼ 1,000,000 km² (excluding protected areas) can generate yields greater than 2000 kg/ha. Soybean production may be possible over a wider area of Amazon, but realizing this potential requires improvements in economic determinants such as the transportation infrastructure.     

人工湿地生态系统服务分类及其价值评估——以临沂市武河湿地为例

湿地生态系统为人类的存在和发展提供了大量的必需品和服务。很多国家把发展人工湿地作为净化城市污水的一种途径。文章以临沂市武河湿地为例,根据国内人工湿地的建设目标和湿地生态系统的特点,重新划分人工湿地生态系统服务,建立了评价各个生态系统服务价值的评价方法。评价结果发现,武河湿地不仅实现了净化城市污水、改善当地居民健康、发展湿地旅游等设计目标,还带来了生物多样性增加等生态和社会经济效益。     

Taking stock: A comparative analysis of payments for environmental services programs in developed and developing countries

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.     

Explaining informal payments for health services in Central and Eastern Europe: an institutional asymmetry perspective

The aim of this paper is to propose and evaluate a new institutional theory explanation for patients making informal payments for health services in Central and Eastern Europe. This views informal payments by patients to healthcare professionals as arising when formal institutional failures lead to an asymmetry between the laws and regulations of formal institutions and the unwritten rules of informal institutions. Reporting a 2013 Eurobarometer survey of the prevalence of informal payments by patients in Central and Eastern European countries, a strong association is revealed between the level of asymmetry between the formal and informal institutions, and the propensity to make informal payments. The association between informal payments and various formal institutional imperfections is then explored to evaluate which structural conditions might reduce this institutional asymmetry, and thus the propensity to make informal payments. The paper concludes by exploring the implications for tackling such informal practices.     

The approach to transforming the traditional agricultural economy: a research on the multiple paths of poverty alleviation and transformation in rural China

Transforming a traditional agricultural economy into a modern economy is one of the main themes in economic development. Through theoretical and empirical analysis, this paper finds out that the key to transformation is to raise the economic value of people, to improve human capital investment and to match the stocks of physical and human capital. China’s rural economy is on the edge of economic take-off, and different zones may pursue different paths for transformation. The source of rural poverty is not the scarcity of income or consumption, but the deficiency of education, social security, medical care and economic opportunity, which we define as “capability poverty”. __________ Translated from The Journal of World Economy (世界经济), 2005,(2) (in Chinese)     

Broadening the picture: Negotiating payment schemes for water-related environmental services in the Netherlands

This paper explores how the development of payment schemes for water-related environmental services can be understood and supported. Currently, the development of such payment schemes is perceived mainly through theoretical lenses offered by economists and hydrologists. Notwithstanding the usefulness and appropriateness of these theoretical lenses, they have difficulties to accommodate certain aspects of the development of payment schemes for water-related environmental services. Specifically, the discussion of negotiation aspects remains relatively isolated and superficial, even though it is generally acknowledged that the development of payment schemes is often significantly influenced by political negotiations. This paper addresses this limitation. It shows how the main elements of negotiation analysis can provide a theoretical underpinning for important drivers behind the development of specific payment schemes, which are beyond the scope of hydrological or economic rationality. Four cases of water-related payment schemes in the Netherlands are studied, employing one of the key insights offered by negotiation analysis: the importance of the underlying interests and values of the parties involved. The findings of these four cases show the potential of negotiation analysis as a useful complement for understanding and supporting the development of payment schemes for environmental services.     

Using resources in R&D policy planning: Brazil, the Amazon and biotechnology

Brazil's research and development (R&D) policies are examined in light of changes in economic direction especially as it pertains to competition. In a competitive environment, regions should develop industrial applications and expertise in areas that coincide with their resources. These could be human resources but could, as in the focus of this paper, be useful resources that differentiate the region from others in the world. This differentiation provides an advantage to the region. Brazil and its Amazon region has the large majority of the world's rare genes. In biotechnology, genes are “green gold,” and Brazil is slowly developing a biotechnology industry and beginning to tap into the Brazilian Amazon region's economic biotech potential. This region has enormous potential for the development of biotech-related technologies and products. This paper discusses the relationship between resources and an R&D strategy using as an example the recent developments in biotechnology research in Brazil and the role of the Amazon region in the development of a Brazilian biotechnology industry. It recommends a number of policy initiatives that will enhance Brazil's focus on biotechnology.