Nancy McCarthy

When could payments for environmental services benefit the poor

Since modification of agricultural production choices in developing countries often provides positive environmental externalities to people in developed countries, payment for environmental services (PES) has become an important topic in the context of economic development and poverty reduction. We consider two broad categories of PES programs, land-diversion programs, where lands are diverted from agriculture to other uses, and working-land programs, where agricultural production activities are modified to achieve environmental objectives. PES programs are generally good for landowners. The distribution of land and land quality is critical in determining poverty impacts. Where ES and agricultural productivity are negatively correlated and the poor own lands of low agricultural quality, they stand to gain from PES programs. Consumers and wage laborers may lose where food supply is inelastic and programs reduce labor demand. Working-land programs may have better distributional effects than diversion programs.

Food security, climate change, and sustainable land management. A review

Agriculture production in developing countries must be increased to meet food demand for a growing population. Earlier literature suggests that sustainable land management could increase food production without degrading soil and water resources. Improved agronomic practices include organic fertilization, minimum soil disturbance, and incorporation of residues, terraces, water harvesting and conservation, and agroforestry. These practices can also deliver co-benefits in the form of reduced greenhouse gas emissions and enhanced carbon storage in soils and biomass. Here, we review 160 studies reporting original field data on the yield effects of sustainable land management practices sequestering soil carbon. The major points are: (1) sustainable land management generally leads to increased yields, although the magnitude and variability of results varies by specific practice and agro-climatic conditions. For instance, yield effects are in some cases negative for improved fallows, terraces, minimum tillage, and live fences. Whereas, positive yield effects are observed consistently for cover crops, organic fertilizer, mulching, and water harvesting. Yields are also generally higher in areas of low and variable rainfall. (2) Isolating the yield effects of individual practices is complicated by the adoption of combinations or “packages” of sustainable land management options. (3) Sustainable land management generally increases soil carbon sequestration. Agroforestry increases aboveground C sequestration and organic fertilization reduces CO2 emissions. (4) Rainfall distribution is a key determinant of the mitigation effects of adopting specific sustainable land management practices. Mitigation effects of adopting sustainable land management are higher in higher rainfall areas, with the exception of water management.

Climate Smart Agriculture? Assessing the Adaptation Implications in Zambia

We examine a set of potentially climate smart agricultural practices, including reduced tillage, crop rotation and legume intercropping, combined with the use of improved seeds and inorganic fertiliser, for their effects on maize yields in Zambia. We use panel data from the Rural Incomes and Livelihoods Surveys merged with a novel set of climatic variables based on geo-referenced historical rainfall and temperature data to explore the changing effects of these practices with climatic conditions. We estimate the impacts on maize yields, and also on the exhibition of very low yields and yield shortfalls from average levels, as indicators of resilience, while controlling for household characteristics. We find that minimum soil disturbance and crop rotation have no significant impact on these yield outcomes, but that legume intercropping significantly increases yields and reduces the probability of low yields even under critical weather stress during the growing season. We also find that the average positive impacts of modern input use (seeds and fertilisers) are significantly conditioned by climatic variables. Timely access to fertiliser emerges as one of the most robust determinants of yields and their resilience. These results have policy implications for targeted interventions to improve theproductivity and the resilience of smallholder agriculture in Zambia in the face of climate change.

Land allocation under dual individual-collective use in Mexico

Abstract Households typically have to decide on allocating the resources which they control between individualized activities and activities where there is common access. In this case, the ability to cooperate in the management of common access resources determines the relative profitability of the two resource bundles, hence, affecting the allocation of resources held by households to one or the other. The Mexican social sector is of this type, with land under individual jurisdiction allocated to either crops or pastures: the product of land in crops is privately appropriated, while land in pastures is collectively grazed. We develop a model that shows that, when cooperation fails in the management of collectively grazed pastures, more land is allocated to crops than under successful cooperation and less to pastures, while the stocking rate on pastures is increased. This results in too much land in extensive crops and too many animals per hectare of pasture—a well-known observation for Mexico. This prediction is confirmed by analysis of data from a sample of Mexican social sector households.

Climate Variability and Flexibility in Resource Access: The Case of Pastoral Mobility in Northern Kenya

In many regions of the world, property rights to natural resources are held under various forms of communal ownership, which often exhibit flexibility for users to access different resources depending on relative need. This paper explores the links between climate variability, transactions costs associated with resource access, and patterns of herd mobility in northern Kenya. Results indicate that greater spatial variability of vegetation leads to greater herd mobility, and that higher transaction costs reduce mobility for herds engaged in long-distance movements. Moreover, long-distance mobility is higher in drought years only in those communities with greater spatial and seasonal variability of vegetation.

Endogenous Provision and Appropriation in the Commons

munity, creating the potential of avoiding the tragedy of the commons that characterizes resource use under open access (Bromley). Serious difficulties remain, however, in managing the resource in a way that is socially optimal because of the rival nature of appropriation by individual members. Achieving the social optimum requires either inducing a noncooperative behavior by individual members that mimics what co-

Putting Payments for Environmental Services in the Context of Economic Development

Paying for the provision of environmental services is a recent policy innovation that is attracting much attention in both developed and developing countries. The innovation involves a move away from command and control environmental policies, harnessing market forces to obtain more efficient environmental outcomes. Linking payments for environmental services (PES) to economic development and poverty reduction is an issue of importance since they may represent a new source of finance to developing countries, and developing countries are potentially important suppliers of global environmental services. The objective of this paper is to apply economic concepts, particularly those from natural resource and environmental economics, to a wide range of issues associated with the introduction of ES programs in the context of economic development. We introduce a typology of ES based upon economic reasoning, showing that payments for ES provide a solution to externalities and public good problems within the bounds of political economic constraints. Secondly, we focus on the problem of who should pay for ES: to what extent are payments likely to be covered within a global framework rather within a national or regional framework? Third, we will turn to issues of program design. We present some answers to the questions of how to target payments to achieve their objectives efficiently, and what the implications of alternative design schemes are. In particular, we focus upon the equity implications of ES programs and how can they affect poverty alleviation. The final section addresses issues of monitoring and enforcement of ES contracts, and we summarize the key findings in the conclusion.

Resource Management under Climatic Risk: A Case Study from Niger

In this article, we develop an empirical model of an agro-pastoral system subject to high climatic risk in order to test the impact of rainfall variability on livestock densities, land allocation patterns and herd mobility observed at the community level. Also, because grazing land is a common-pool resource, we determine the impact of cooperation on these decision variables. To capture different abilities of communities to cooperate in managing these externalities, we construct indices comprised of factors considered to affect the costliness of achieving successful cooperation. We then test hypotheses regarding the impact of rainfall variability and cooperation, using data collected in a semi-arid region of Niger. Results indicate that rainfall variability initially leads to higher densities, but the impact becomes negative as variability increases still further. This result indicates that the benefits of accumulating large herds in variable environments are eventually offset by the increasing probability of large losses. Mobility in the current period is strongly related to current rainfall, and is also positively related to long-term rainfall variability. Communities with characteristics hypothesised to favour cooperation have lower stock densities and greater herd mobility. Neither cooperation nor rainfall variability has a significant impact on the proportion of land allocated to crops or common pastures.

Traditional property rights, common property, and mobility in semi-arid African pastoralist systems.

Traditional pastoralist land management institutions in sub-Saharan Africa have been stressed by an increasing human population and related forces, including private enclosure of grazing land; government-sponsored privatization; and the increasing prevalence of violent conflicts and livestock theft. We model the incompleteness and flexibility of traditional grazing rights using fuzzy set theory. We compare individual and social welfare under the traditional system to individual and social welfare under a private property system and a common property system. Whether the traditional system is preferred to private property depends on whether the value of mobility, as defined by the traditional system, is more valuable than the right of exclusion inherent in private property. We find that under some conditions the imprecision which characterizes traditional rights can result in higher social returns than a common property regime characterized by complete symmetric rights across all members of the user group and complete exclusion of non-members.

What determines farmers’ adaptive capacity? Empirical evidence from Malawi

This paper assesses farmers’ incentives and conditioning factors that hinder or promote adaptation strategies and evaluates their impact on crop productivity by using data from nationally representative sample households in Malawi. We employed multivariate probit (MVP) and multinomial treatment effect (MTE) techniques to model adoption decisions and their yield impact. Exposure to delayed onset of rainfall and greater climate variability was positively associated with the choice of risk-reducing agricultural practices such as tree planting, legume intercropping, and soil and water conservation (SWC) but reduced the use of inputs (such as inorganic fertilizer) whose risk reduction benefits are uncertain. Concerning household adaptive capacity, wealthier households were more likely to adopt both modern and sustainable land management (SLM) inputs and were more likely to adopt SLM inputs on plots that were under greater security of tenure. In terms of system-level adaptive capacity, rural institutions, social capital and supply-side constraints were key in governing selection decisions for all practices considered, but particularly for tree planting and both organic and inorganic fertilizer applications. A combination of practices gave rise to higher yields suggesting that this might be a course of action that would sustain growth of yield in Malawi in the future.