K. Lawlor

Forest Figures: Ecosystem Services Valuation and Policy Evaluation in Developing Countries

We review the evidence on the economic values of forest ecosystem services in developing nations and the effectiveness of policies aimed at protecting these services. We conclude that, despite a plethora of publications, the literature is thin, with few well-designed studies that can provide a coherent picture of ecosystem values or policy effectiveness. Although ecologists coined the term ecosystem services and have led much of the recent research, ecosystem services is fundamentally an economic concept. This offers economists a unique and important opportunity to contribute to the emerging literature on ecosystem valuation and policy effectiveness. Most importantly, we conclude that the most fruitful path for future inquiry is to more tightly integrate policy and research by conducting studies that combine nonmarket valuation and impact evaluation (i.e., valuation estimates based on observed impacts in the context of real-world programs). We believe that investing scarce research funds in such an integrated approach will increase the likelihood that future research on ecosystem services will yield high-quality evidence of practical use to policymakers.

Institutions and Policies to Protect Rural Livelihoods in REDD+ Regimes

While there is growing interest among researchers and practitioners concerning the risks that emerging REDD regimes pose to rural livelihoods, there has been little scholarly analysis of specific policies that could be applied to guard against these risks. We argue that for REDD regimes to avoid negative impacts on local populations, social safeguard policies will need to overcome the significant barriers posed by ambiguous property rights and weak governance and create five institutional conditions: (1) local community support for project-level activities, (2) citizen participation in reforms affecting property rights and land use, (3) transparency of forest carbon revenue flows, (4) citizen access to grievance mechanisms, and (5) opportunities for adaptive management through evaluation. We identify and discuss various policies that could be applied to produce these conditions. We argue that positively engaging rural populations in REDD may be integral to the effectiveness of programs in reducing deforestation and degradation, and enhancing forest carbon stores. Future research should aim to identify the causal mechanisms (policies and institutions) responsible for positive socioeconomic and ecological impacts in REDD, while testing key theories that link participation to conservation and development outcomes.

Deforestation and Forest Degradation: Concerns, Causes, Policies, and Their Impacts

National and international efforts to reduce loss of tropical forests, while having some impacts, have largely failed to substantially slow the rates of loss from deforestation and forest degradation that reduce species habitat while accounting for 12–17% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions. To wit, within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, negotiators are actively considering ways to provide incentives for tropical forest conservation and thus carbon storage plus other service co-benefits. Policy effectiveness, efficiency, and equity can increase if we learn lessons from the past about what drives and what inhibits deforestation and degradation, understanding what has worked or not, and the reasons.