Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

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

Contents:

Author Info

  • Asquith, Nigel M.
  • Vargas, Maria Teresa
  • Wunder, Sven
Registered author(s):

    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 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.

    Download Info

    If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VDY-4RW4S2G-1/1/53766e5999bc7017f7063130934bc4df
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

    Bibliographic Info

    Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Ecological Economics.

    Volume (Year): 65 (2008)
    Issue (Month): 4 (May)
    Pages: 675-684

    as in new window
    Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:65:y:2008:i:4:p:675-684

    Contact details of provider:
    Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon

    Related research

    Keywords:

    References

    References listed on IDEAS
    Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
    as in new window
    1. Umbeck, John, 1977. "The California gold rush: A study of emerging property rights," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 197-226, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as in new window

    Cited by:
    1. Rodríguez, Luis C. & Pascual, Unai & Muradian, Roldan & Pazmino, Nathalie & Whitten, Stuart, 2011. "Towards a unified scheme for environmental and social protection: Learning from PES and CCT experiences in developing countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 2163-2174, September.
    2. Sylvie Démurger & Haiyuan Wan, 2012. "Payments for Ecological Restoration and Internal Migration in China : The Sloping Land Conversion Program in Ningxia," Working Papers halshs-00761163, HAL.
    3. Rajesh Kumar Rai & Helen Scarborough, 2012. "Non-market Valuation in Developing Countries: Estimating Benefits of Managing Invasive Plants Using Choice a Choice Experiment," Economics Series 2012_8, Deakin University, Faculty of Business and Law, School of Accounting, Economics and Finance.
    4. Whittington, Dale & Pagiola, Stefano, 2011. "Using contingent valuation in the design of payments for environmental services mechanisms: a review and assessment," MPRA Paper 32730, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Clements, Tom & John, Ashish & Nielsen, Karen & An, Dara & Tan, Setha & Milner-Gulland, E.J., 2010. "Payments for biodiversity conservation in the context of weak institutions: Comparison of three programs from Cambodia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 1283-1291, April.
    6. Giannetti, B.F. & Ogura, Y. & Bonilla, S.H. & Almeida, C.M.V.B., 2011. "Emergy assessment of a coffee farm in Brazilian Cerrado considering in a broad form the environmental services, negative externalities and fair price," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 104(9), pages 679-688.
    7. Julia Martin-Ortega & Elena Ojea & Camille Roux, 2012. "Payments for Water Ecosystem Services in Latin America: Evidence from Reported Experience," Working Papers 2012-14, BC3.
    8. Wunder, Sven & Engel, Stefanie & Pagiola, Stefano, 2008. "Taking stock: A comparative analysis of payments for environmental services programs in developed and developing countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(4), pages 834-852, May.
    9. Gómez-Baggethun, Erik & de Groot, Rudolf & Lomas, Pedro L. & Montes, Carlos, 2010. "The history of ecosystem services in economic theory and practice: From early notions to markets and payment schemes," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 1209-1218, April.
    10. Kemkes, Robin J. & Farley, Joshua & Koliba, Christopher J., 2010. "Determining when payments are an effective policy approach to ecosystem service provision," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 2069-2074, September.
    11. Sylvie Démurger & Haiyuan Wan, 2012. "Payments for ecological restoration and rural labor migration in China: The Sloping Land Conversion Program in Ningxia," Post-Print halshs-00763147, HAL.
    12. Fisher, Brendan & Kulindwa, Kassim & Mwanyoka, Iddi & Turner, R. Kerry & Burgess, Neil D., 2010. "Common pool resource management and PES: Lessons and constraints for water PES in Tanzania," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 1253-1261, April.
    13. Engel, Stefanie & Pagiola, Stefano & Wunder, Sven, 2008. "Designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice: An overview of the issues," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(4), pages 663-674, May.
    14. World Bank, 2009. "Rethinking Forest Partnerships and Benefit Sharing : Insights on Factors and Context that Make Collaborative Arrangements Work for Communities and Landowners," World Bank Other Operational Studies 12435, The World Bank.

    Lists

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:65:y:2008:i:4:p:675-684

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.