Elizabeth J. Z. Robinson

The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols

We have identified a Y-chromosomal lineage with several unusual features. It was found in 16 populations throughout a large region of Asia, stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea, and was present at high frequency: approximately 8% of the men in this region carry it, and it thus makes up approximately 0.5% of the world total. The pattern of variation within the lineage suggested that it originated in Mongolia approximately 1,000 years ago. Such a rapid spread cannot have occurred by chance; it must have been a result of selection. The lineage is carried by likely male-line descendants of Genghis Khan, and we therefore propose that it has spread by a novel form of social selection resulting from their behavior.

The Influence of Markets and Policy on Spatial Patterns of Non-Timber Forest Product Extraction

When villagers extract resources, such as fuelwood, fodder, or medicinal plants from forests, their decisions over where and how much to extract are influenced by market conditions, their particular opportunity costs of time, minimum consumption needs, and access to markets. This paper develops an optimization model of villagers’ extraction behavior that clarifies how, and under what conditions, policies that create incentives such as improved returns to extraction in a buffer zone might be used instead of adversarial enforcement efforts to protect a forest’s pristine “inner core.” (JEL Q23)

The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: from 25 years of inaction to a global transformation for public health

The Lancet Countdown tracks progress on health and climate change and provides an independent assessment of the health effects of climate change, the implementation of the Paris Agreement, 1 and th ...

Protecting Developing Countries' Forests: Enforcement in Theory and Practice

Abstract This paper relates the key findings of the optimal economic enforcement literature to practical issues of enforcing forest and wildlife management access restrictions in developing countries. Our experiences, particularly from Tanzania and eastern India, provide detail of the key pragmatic issues facing those responsible for protecting natural resources. We identify large gaps in the theoretical literature that limit its ability to inform practical management, including issues of limited funding and cost recovery, multiple tiers of enforcement and the incentives facing enforcement officers, and conflict between protected area managers and rural peoples needs.

Implementing REDD through community‐based forest management: Lessons from Tanzania

REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) aims to slow carbon releases caused by forest disturbance by making payments conditional on forest quality over time. Like earlier policies to slow deforestation, REDD must change the behaviour of forest degraders. Broadly, it can be implemented with payments to potential forest degraders, thus creating incentives; through payments for enforcement, thus creating disincentives; or through addressing external drivers such as urban charcoal demand. In Tanzania, community-based forest management (CBFM), a form of participatory forest management (PFM), was chosen as the model for implementing REDD pilot programs. Payments are made to villages that have the rights to forest carbon. In exchange for these payments, the villages must demonstrably reduce deforestation at the village level. Using this pilot program as a case study, we provide insights for REDD implementation in sub-Saharan Africa. We pay particular attention to leakage, monitoring and enforcement. We suggest that implementing REDD through CBFM-type structures can create appropriate incentives and behavioural change when the recipients of the REDD funds are also the key drivers of forest change. When external forces drive forest change, however, REDD through CBFM-type structures becomes an enforcement program, with local communities rather than government agencies being responsible for the enforcement. That structure imposes costs on local communities, whose local authority limits the ability to address leakage outside the particular REDD village. In addition, for REDD to lead to lower emissions, implementation will have to emphasize conditionality of payments on measurable decreases in forest loss.

Sizing Reserves within a Landscape: The Roles of Villagers’ Reactions and the Ecological-Socioeconomic Setting

Traditionally, siting and sizing decisions for parks and reserves reflected ecological characteristics but typically failed to consider ecological costs created from displaced resource collection, welfare costs on nearby rural people, and enforcement costs. Using a spatial game-theoretic model that incorporates the interaction of socioeconomic and ecological settings, we show how incorporating more recent mandates that include rural welfare and surrounding landscapes can result in very different optimal sizing decisions. The model informs our discussion of recent forest management in Tanzania, reserve sizing and siting decisions, estimating reserve effectiveness, and determining patterns of avoided forest degradation in Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation programs. (JEL Q23)

Efficiency, enforcement and revenue tradeoffs in participatory forest management: an example from Tanzania

Where joint forest management has been introduced into Tanzania, ‘volunteer’ patrollers take responsibility for enforcing restrictions over the harvesting of forest resources, often receiving as an incentive a share of the collected fine revenue. Using an optimal enforcement model, we explore how that share, and whether villagers have alternative sources of forest products, determines the effort patrollers put into enforcement and whether they choose to take a bribe rather than honestly reporting the illegal collection of forest resources. Without funds for paying and monitoring patrollers, policy makers face tradeoffs over illegal extraction, forest protection and revenue generation through fine collection.

The Trees and the Bees: Using Enforcement and Income Projects to Protect Forests and Rural Livelihoods Through Spatial Joint Production

Forest managers in developing countries enforce extraction restrictions to limit forest degradation. In response, villagers may displace some of their extraction to other forests, which generates “leakage” of degradation. Managers also implement poverty alleviation projects to compensate for lost resource access or to induce conservation. We develop a model of spatial joint production of bees and fuelwood that is based on forest-compatible projects such as beekeeping in Thailand, Tanzania, and Mexico. We demonstrate that managers can better determine the amount and pattern of degradation by choosing the location of both enforcement and the forest-based activity.

The role of incentives for sustainable implementation of marine protected areas: an example from Tanzania

Although Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) provide an increasingly popular policy tool for protecting marine stocks and biodiversity, they pose high costs for small-scale fisherfolk who have few alternative livelihood options in poor countries. MPAs often address this burden on local households by providing some benefits to compensate locals and/or induce compliance with restrictions. We argue that MPAs in poor countries can only contribute to sustainability if management induces changes in resource-dependent households’ incentives to fish. With Tanzania’s Mnazi Bay Ruvuma Estuary Marine Park (MBREMP) and its internal villages as an example, we use an economic decision modeling framework as a lens to examine incentives, reaction to incentives, and implications for sustainable MPA management created by park managers’ use of enforcement (“sticks”) and livelihood projects (“carrots”). We emphasize practical implementation issues faced by MBREMP managers and implications for fostering marine ecosystem sustainability in a poor country setting.

India’s disappearing common lands: fuzzy boundaries, encroachment, and evolving property rights

Opportunistic land encroachment occurs in many low-income countries, gradually yet pervasively, until discrete areas of common land disappear. This paper, motivated by field observations in Karnataka, India, demonstrates that such an evolution of property rights from common to private may be efficient when the boundaries between common and private land are poorly defined, or “fuzzy.” Using a multi-period optimization model, and introducing the concept of stock and flow enforcement, I show how effectiveness of enforcement effort, whether encroachment is reversible, and punitive fines, influence whether an area of common land is fully defined and protected or gradually or rapidly encroached. (JEL C61, K42, Q24)