Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tag: PES

No crowding out among those terminated from an ongoing PES program in Colombia

Esther Blanco, Lina Moros, Alexander Pfaff, Ivo Steimanis, Maria Alejandra Velez, Bjorn Vollan
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 120 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2023.102826

pdf link icon

This paper presents novel evidence of no crowding out, of either motivations or donations, among those terminated from an ongoing program of payments for ecosystem services (PES) in Colombia. PES programs have risen in number. However, claims about perverse impacts after programs end could inhibit their growth. PES end for different reasons (planned duration, budget reduction, issues in implementation) and in different ways (some participants or all). An expressed concern for PES is that receiving payments lowers conservation, after PES end, if participants’ intrinsic motivations for conservation are ‘crowded out’ by financial incentives. We test for crowding out by an ongoing program in which some but not all contracts were terminated. We see no evidence of crowding out, since neither the motivations nor the donations for the terminated farmers are significantly different than for non-PES land owners (and this is robust to matching on levels of assets, residence on farm past donation behavior, main economic activity, and participation in collective activities). Our results add evidence from an actual PES to literature questioning the relevance, importance and even sign of crowding effects.

 

Comments closed

Temporary PES do not crowd out and may crowd in lab-in-the-field forest conservation in Colombia

Lina Moros, Maria Alejandra Velez, Daniela Quintero, Danny Tobin, Alexander Pfaff
Ecological Economics 204 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107652

pdf link icon

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs exist globally and at times shift behaviors. Unlike protected areas, PES compensate land users, raising local acceptance of conservation. Yet some worry that if payments are temporary, as is often the case, conservation behaviors can be reduced by PES, ‘crowded out’ to be lower after PES than if no PES had existed. We conducted lab-in-the-field experiments in Colombia, where PES policies are expanding, offering either individual or collective conditional payments to 676 farmers who are potential PES participants. Those payments end, within each experimental session, for all or only for some participants. We consistently find that conservation is not lower after PES than before. Also, conservation contributions tend to fall over time without PES, in keeping with public-goods literatures. Taken together, these results imply that even after our payments end, conservation is above the baseline defined by our controls, suggesting some form of (at least short-run) crowding in.

 

Comments closed

Costa Rica’s Payment for Environmental Services Program: Intention, Implementation, and Impact

G. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa, Alexander Pfaff, Juan Robalino, Judson Boomhower
Conservation Biology 2007 volume 21, number 5, 1165–1173

PDF link iconWe evaluated the intention, implementation, and impact of Costa Rica’s program of payments for environmental services (PSA), which was established in the late 1990s. Payments are given to private landowners who own land in forest areas in recognition of the ecosystem services their land provides. To characterize the distribution of PSA in Costa Rica, we combined remote sensing with geographic information system databases and then used econometrics to explore the impacts of payments on deforestation. Payments were distributed broadly across ecological and socioeconomic gradients, but the 1997–2000 deforestation rate was not significantly lower in areas that received payments. Other successful Costa Rican conservation policies, including those prior to the PSA program, may explain the current reduction in deforestation rates. The PSA program is a major advance in the global institutionalization of ecosystem investments because few, if any, other countries have such a conservation history and because much can be learned from Costa Rica’s experiences.

 

Comments closed