Jordi Honey-Rosés

A spatially explicit estimate of avoided forest loss.

With the potential expansion of forest conservation programs spurred by climate-change agreements, there is a need to measure the extent to which such programs achieve their intended results. Conventional methods for evaluating conservation impact tend to be biased because they do not compare like areas or account for spatial relations. We assessed the effect of a conservation initiative that combined designation of protected areas with payments for environmental services to conserve over wintering habitat for the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) in Mexico. To do so, we used a spatial-matching estimator that matches covariates among polygons and their neighbors. We measured avoided forest loss (avoided disturbance and deforestation) by comparing forest cover on protected and unprotected lands that were similar in terms of accessibility, governance, and forest type. Whereas conventional estimates of avoided forest loss suggest that conservation initiatives did not protect forest cover, we found evidence that the conservation measures are preserving forest cover. We found that the conservation measures protected between 200 ha and 710 ha (3-16%) of forest that is high-quality habitat for monarch butterflies, but had a smaller effect on total forest cover, preserving between 0 ha and 200 ha (0-2.5%) of forest with canopy cover >70%. We suggest that future estimates of avoided forest loss be analyzed spatially to account for how forest loss occurs across the landscape. Given the forthcoming demand from donors and carbon financiers for estimates of avoided forest loss, we anticipate our methods and results will contribute to future studies that estimate the outcome of conservation efforts.

To pay or not to pay? Monitoring performance and enforcing conditionality when paying for forest conservation in Mexico

Paying landowners to conserve forests is a promising new strategy to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services. However to succeed with this approach, programme managers need reliable monitoring data to make informed payment decisions. This includes withholding payment from landowners who do not meet conservation objectives. The monitoring method used for the Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund compared aerial photographs and conducted field sampling to identify forest changes. The comparison of aerial photographs showed that 161 hectares of forest were degraded in the central core zone of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico between 2001 and 2003. As a result, payment was withheld from one of 13 landowners. Analysis of high resolution (0.6 m) digital aerial photographs did not detect finer scale changes, despite obtaining an average pixel resolution 1000 times greater than Landsat satellite imagery. This suggests that current payment for ecosystem services programmes are underestimating environmental change and overpaying non-compliant participants. In addition, selecting a decision rule to enforce payment conditionality raised new questions about how much ecosystem degradation should be permitted before withholding payment. Sound decisions about withholding payment cannot be developed until the marginal value of ecosystem services is better understood. Until then, payment thresholds can be based on specific policy objectives.

Illegal Logging in Common Property Forests

Community-based forestry has the potential to improve forest management in the commons. Unfortunately, the ease with which logging interests are able to ignore community decisions and steal timber remains troubling. This article analyzes how illegal logging is highly erosive to community cohesiveness and institutions in the context of community forestry in Mexico. It analyzes the modus operandi of clandestine logging operations and their complex relationship with common property managers. Resistance and complicity simultaneously manifest themselves in the struggle to protect forest resources. Finally, to bridge scholarship with practice, I propose a framework for diagnosing timber theft in common property forests that may help orient conservation efforts.

How effective are biodiversity conservation payments in Mexico

We assess the additional forest cover protected by 13 rural communities located in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico, as a result of the economic incentives received through the countrys national program of payments for biodiversity conservation. We use spatially explicit data at the intra-community level to define a credible counterfactual of conservation outcomes. We use covariate-matching specifications associated with spatially explicit variables and difference-in-difference estimators to determine the treatment effect. We estimate that the additional conservation represents between 12 and 14.7 percent of forest area enrolled in the program in comparison to control areas. Despite this high degree of additionality, we also observe lack of compliance in some plots participating in the PES program. This lack of compliance casts doubt on the ability of payments alone to guarantee long-term additionality in context of high deforestation rates, even with an augmented program budget or extension of participation to communities not yet enrolled.

The Llobregat River Basin: A Paradigm of Impaired Rivers Under Climate Change Threats

The Llobregat River represents a paradigmatic example of an impaired river subject to emerging global change impacts. This chapter provides an introduction to the main geomorphological, geological, climatic, and biological features of the river basin, as well as an overview on the hydrological alterations and the intense management of water resources in the basin. The Llobregat hydrology has experienced a significant runoff reduction during the last decades. This decrease is related to climatic drift but also to the increasing forest land cover that has promoted a 25% reduction of the streamflow. The chapter also describes the human uses of the Llobregat River waters from a historical perspective, with particular emphasis on the difficulties that an intrinsically unpredictable river like Llobregat posed to the different human uses along history. The historical development makes emphasis on the industrial activities affecting water resources during the twentieth century. The chapter includes a detailed analysis of the present situation on water extractions, discharges, and diversions that define the Llobregat River Basin as a deeply impaired ecosystem, especially in the most downstream reaches.

Emerging Evidence on the Effectiveness of Tropical Forest Conservation

The PLOS ONE Collection “Measuring forest conservation effectiveness” brings together a series of studies that evaluate the effectiveness of tropical forest conservation policies and programs with the goal of measuring conservation success and associated co-benefits. This overview piece describes the geographic and methodological scope of these studies, as well as the policy instruments covered in the Collection as of June 2016. Focusing on forest cover change, we systematically compare the conservation effects estimated by the studies and discuss them in the light of previous findings in the literature. Nine studies estimated that annual conservation impacts on forest cover were below one percent, with two exceptions in Mexico and Indonesia. Differences in effect sizes are not only driven by the choice of conservation measures. One key lesson from the studies is the need to move beyond the current scientific focus of estimating average effects of undifferentiated conservation programs. The specific elements of the program design and the implementation context are equally important factors for understanding the effectiveness of conservation programs. Particularly critical will be a better understanding of the causal mechanisms through which conservation programs have impacts. To achieve this understanding we need advances in both theory and methods.

Evaluation of the Permanence of Land Use Change Induced by Payments for Environmental Services in Quindío, Colombia

The effectiveness of conservation interventions such as Payments for Environmental Services (PES) is often evaluated—if it is evaluated at all—only at the completion of the intervention. Since gains achieved by the intervention may be lost after it ends, even apparently successful interventions may not result in long-term conservation benefits, a problem known as that of permanence. This paper uses a unique dataset to examine the permanence of land use change induced by a short-term, asset-building PES program implemented in Quindío, Colombia, between 2003 and 2008. This the first PES program to have a control group for comparison. Under this program, PES had been found to have a positive and highly significant impact on land use. To assess the long-term permanence of these changes, both PES recipients and control households were re-surveyed in 2011, four years after the last payment was made. We find that the land use changes that had been induced by PES were broadly sustained in intervening years, with minor differences across specific practices and sub-groups of participants, indicating that these changes were in fact permanent. The patterns of change in the period after the PES program was completed also help better understand the reasons for the program’s success. These results suggest that, at least in the case of productive land uses such as silvopastoral practices under conditions such as those at the study site, asset-building PES programs can be effective at encouraging land owners to adopt environmentally-beneficial land management practices and that the benefits will persist after payments cease.

Goldilocks and the raster grid: Selecting scale when evaluating conservation programs

Access to high quality spatial data raises fundamental questions about how to select the appropriate scale and unit of analysis. Studies that evaluate the impact of conservation programs have used multiple scales and areal units: from 5x5 km grids; to 30m pixels; to irregular units based on land uses or political boundaries. These choices affect the estimate of program impact. The bias associated with scale and unit selection is a part of a well-known dilemma called the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP). We introduce this dilemma to the literature on impact evaluation and then explore the tradeoffs made when choosing different areal units. To illustrate the consequences of the MAUP, we begin by examining the effect of scale selection when evaluating a protected area in Mexico using real data. We then develop a Monte Carlo experiment that simulates a conservation intervention. We find that estimates of treatment effects and variable coefficients are only accurate under restrictive circumstances. Under more realistic conditions, we find biased estimates associated with scale choices that are both too large or too small relative to the data generating process or decision unit. In our context, the MAUP may reflect an errors in variables problem, where imprecise measures of the independent variables will bias the coefficient estimates toward zero. This problem may be pronounced at small scales of analysis. Aggregation may reduce this bias for continuous variables, but aggregation exacerbates bias when using a discrete measure of treatment. While we do not find a solution to these issues, even though treatment effects are generally underestimated. We conclude with suggestions on how researchers might navigate their choice of scale and aerial unit when evaluating conservation policies.

Changing Ecosystem Service Values Following Technological Change

AbstractResearch on ecosystem services has focused mostly on natural areas or remote places, with less attention given to urban ecosystem services and their relationship with technological change. However, recent work by urban ecologists and urban designers has more closely examined and appreciated the opportunities associated with integrating natural and built infrastructures. Nevertheless, a perception remains in the literature on ecosystem services that technology may easily and irreversibly substitute for services previously obtained from ecosystems, especially when the superiority of the engineered system motivated replacement in the first place. We emphasize that the expected tradeoff between natural and manufactured capital is false. Rather, as argued in other contexts, the adoption of new technologies is complementary to ecosystem management. The complementarity of ecosystem services and technology is illustrated with a case study in Barcelona, Spain where the installation of sophisticated water treatment technology increased the value of the ecosystem services found there. Interestingly, the complementarity between natural and built infrastructures may remain even for the very ecosystems that are affected by the technological change. This finding suggests that we can expect the value of ecosystem services to co-evolve with new technologies. Technological innovation can generate new opportunities to harness value from ecosystems, and the engineered structures found in cities may generate more reliance on ecosystem processes, not less.

Is this trail too crowded? A choice experiment to evaluate tradeoffs and preferences of park visitors in Garibaldi Park, British Columbia.

Large crowds in parks can be a problem for park managers and visitors. However, perceptions of crowding are difficult to measure due to coping mechanisms deployed by park visitors. Furthermore, perceptions of crowding should not be measured in isolation, but rather as part of a suite of conditions that comprise the visitors’ outdoor experience. We used a dichotomous choice experiment with visual images and eight attributes to estimate park users’ utilities associated with their visitor experience in Garibaldi Provincial Park in British Columbia, Canada. Our visual method allowed us to control for background view and compare user preferences on hiking trails with preferences at final destinations. We find that utilities are more sensitive to crowding at viewpoints than to other aspects of the outdoor experience. Thus, visitor satisfaction and crowding perceptions are more likely to be defined by where visitors have these encounters rather than the total number of encounters.