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Category: Secondary Data

A diverse portfolio of marine protected areas can better advance global conservation and equity

Published January 1, 2024 by Alex Pfaff
David A. Gill, Sarah E. Lester, Christopher M. Free, Alexander Pfaff, Edwin Iversen, Brian J. Reich, Shu Yang, Gabby Ahmadia, Dominic A. Andradi-Brown, Emily S. Darling, Graham J. Edgar, Helen E. Fox, Jonas Geldmann, Duong Trung Lea, Michael B. Mascia, Roosevelt Mesa-Gutiérrez, Peter J. Mumby, Laura Veverka, and Laura M. Warmuth
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 121 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2313205121

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Marine protected areas (MPAs) are widely used for ocean conservation, yet the relative impacts of various types of MPAs are poorly understood. We estimated impacts on fish biomass from no-take and multiple-use (fished) MPAs, employing a rigorous matched counterfactual design with a global dataset of >14,000 surveys in and around 216 MPAs. Both no-take and multiple-use MPAs generated positive conservation outcomes relative to no protection (58.2% and 12.6% fish biomass increases, respectively), with smaller estimated differences between the two MPA types when controlling for additional confounding factors (8.3% increase). Relative performance depended on context and management: no-take MPAs performed better in areas of high human pressure but similar to multiple-use in remote locations. Multiple-use MPA performance was low in high-pressure areas but improved significantly with better management, producing similar outcomes to no-take MPAs when adequately staffed and appropriate use regulations were applied. For priority conservation areas where no-take restrictions are not possible or ethical, our findings show that a portfolio of well-designed and well-managed multiple-use MPAs represents a viable and potentially equitable pathway to advance local and global conservation.

 

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Forest Concessions and Eco-Certifications in the Peruvian Amazon: deforestation impacts of logging rights and logging restrictions

Published February 1, 2023 by Alex Pfaff
Jimena Rico-Straffon, Zhenhua Wang, Stephanie Panlasigui, Colby J. Loucks, Jennifer Swenson, Alexander Pfaff
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 118 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102780

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Concessions that grant logging rights to firms support economic development based on forest resources. Eco-certifications put sustainability restrictions on the operations of those concessions. For spatially detailed data, including many pre-treatment years, we use new difference-indifferences estimators to estimate 2002–2018 impacts upon Peruvian Amazon forests from both logging concessions and their eco-certifications. We find that the concessions — which in theory could raise or reduce forest loss — did not raise loss, if anything reducing it slightly by warding off spikes in deforestation pressure. Eco-certifications could reduce or raise forest loss, yet we find no significant impacts.

 

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Does the Selective Erasure of Protected Areas Raise Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon?

Published February 1, 2022 by Alex Pfaff
Derya Keles, Alexander Pfaff, Michael B. Mascia
Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (2022) https://doi.org/10.1086/723543

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Protected areas (PAs) are the leading policy to lower deforestation. Yet resistance by land users leads PAs to be created in remote sites, lowering impact. Resistance continues after PA creation, with both illegal deforestation and advocacy for PADDD, that is, reducing PA status (downgrading) or PA size (partial or full erasure, downsizing or degazettement). For the Brazilian Amazon, we estimate 2010–15 forest impacts of 2009–12 PA erasures, on average and for distinct states. Before panel-DID regression, to find similar controls we matched using static characteristics and 8–10 years of pretreatment deforestation. PA erasures should raise deforestation if erased PAs faced and blocked pressures. Consistent with this, three conditions for “environmental selection” yielded little short-run impact from PADDD: low pressures, unblocked higher pressures, and pressures blocked less by those PAs selected for erasures. Yet for “development selection,” with PA erasures in sites with pressures plus enforcement, PADDD yielded increased deforestation.

 

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The Brazilian intergovernmental fiscal transfer for conservation: a successful but self-limiting incentive program

Published April 1, 2021 by Alex Pfaff
Patricia G.C. Ruggiero, Alexander Pfaff, Paula Pereda, Elizabeth Nicholas, Jean Paul Metzger
Ecological Economics 191 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107219

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Brazil’s ecological intergovernmental fiscal transfer (ICMS-E) is a conservation incentive for protected areas (PAs). It redistributes tax revenues to reward municipalities for hosting PAs. To quantify its impact on the creation of state and municipal PAs, we used panel regressions on a longitudinal municipality dataset that combined information on PA creation and ICMS-E implementation for the 1467 municipalities in 6 Brazilian states in the Atlantic Forest region that never changed borders, from 1987 to 2016. We found that the percent of the municipal area covered with state or municipal PAs increased as a consequence of ICMS-E implementation. However, the magnitude of this effect declined as the ICMS-E revenue is shared more widely due to the expansion of PAs that reduced the gain from new PAs. We also found that ICMS-E policy primarily spurred the creation of PAs with less restrictive rules – similar to IUCN category V reserves – mainly by municipalities. For more restrictive PAs with higher local costs for municipalities, ICMS-E promoted state-proposed PAs but not municipal PAs. Our results suggest that states used ICMS-E to incentivize local implementation of their conservation preferences, including strict conservation, while municipal governments responded mostly with low-cost actions to increase their revenues.

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Can we increase the impacts from payments for ecosystem services? Impact rose over time in Costa Rica, yet spatial variation indicates more potential

Published March 1, 2021 by Alex Pfaff
Juan Robalino, Alexander Pfaff, Catalina Sandoval, G. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa
Forest Policy and Economics 132 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2021.102577

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As programs with payments for ecosystem services (PES) have become more numerous, raising the need for and also the opportunity for rigorous evidence on their contributions, we examine shifts within Costa Rica’s Pagos por Servicios Ambientales (PSA) program. The PSA was heralded from its initiation, despite demonstrations of low early impacts. We study shifts in impact over time across early periods and whether further adjustments could raise contributions. Looking over time, we find that PSA contracts signed for the 2000–2005 period had higher impacts than contracts for the program’s initial time period, 1997–1999 found in previous research. Looking over space, we find that PSA payments have higher impacts for lower slopes and lower market distances. Linking these results, the rise in impact for 2000–2005 occurred alongside a shift in the targeting of PSA, which was along ecological dimensions (limiting effects of owners offering unprofitable lands). Yet the spatial variations in impacts we document suggest that explicitly targeting impact offers the potential to further raise PES impacts in Costa Rica, as well as in other nations.

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Election cycles affect deforestation within Brazil’s Atlantic Forest

Published January 1, 2021 by Alex Pfaff
Patricia G.C. Ruggiero, Alexander Pfaff, Elizabeth Nicholas, Marcos Rosa, Jean Paul Metzger
Conservation Letters (2021) https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12818

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Policymakers’ incentives during election campaigns can lead to decisions that significantly affect deforestation. Yet this is rarely studied. For Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, a highly biodiverse tropical forest, we link federal-and-state as well as municipal elections to annual deforestation between 1991 and 2014. Across 2253 municipalities, those with higher deforestation see a significant rise in deforestation during federal-and-state election years. Municipal election years raise deforestation for locations with lower deforestation, whereas all of these increases are accentuated when there is party alignment between different levels of government. This effect of election cycles has fallen over time, to date, yet that cannot be assumed to continue. Our results highlight the need to limit opportunistic behaviors that affect natural resources and the environment with implications for biodiversity, carbon storage, and other ecosystem services.

 

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