Philippe Méral

Market-Based Instruments for Ecosystem Services: Institutional Innovation or Renovation?

Recent years have seen widespread experimentation with market-based instruments (MBIs) for the provision of environmental goods and ecosystem services. However, little attention has been paid to their design or to the effects of the underlying pro-market narrative on environmental policy instruments. The purpose of this article is to analyze the emergence and dissemination of the term “market-based instruments” applied to the provision of environmental services and to assess to what extent the instruments associated are genuinely innovative. The recommendation to develop markets can lead in practice to a variety of institutional forms, as we show it based on the example of payments for environmental services (PES) and biodiversity offsets, two very different mechanisms that are both presented in the literature as MBIs. Our purpose is to highlight the gap between discourse and practice in connection with MBIs.

The expansion of participatory governance in the environmental policies of developing countries: the example of Madagascar

The notion of governance is often considered to be essential, particularly by international institutions in developing countries, to improve the efficiency of policies and to strengthen the legitimacy of the aid. This article aims to clarify the various meanings of this notion and to analyse the policies for devolution of management of natural resources to local communities. The participatory practices involved supply some advantages: appropriation of the management of resources and policies by local actors, the intention to make these actors responsible, etc. But they do have limitations: an idyllic vision of community-based management; the risk of being captured by local community leaders; conflicts of interest and of temporality that are not discussed, but which do exist. The range and the limitations of this environmental governance, which we qualify as being participative, are illustrated by the case of Madagascar.

Diversity of rice cropping systems and organic rice adoption in agro-ecosystem with high risk of flood in Cambodia

In Cambodia, 85% of farmers are rice producers. Organic rice production has been adopted, with non-government organisation support and certifications, to improve farmers revenue for sustainable rural development. This study aims to define the constraints of organic rice adoption in an agro-ecosystem with high risk of flood. Using agrarian system diagnosis and analysis, it is found in the study that organic rice gives high value-added per hectare but low value-added per family labour because of the less non-flooded surface available to avoid chemical contamination, to enlarge organic rice surface. Moreover, organic farmers face lower social status because organic production practices are viewed as old-fashioned tools use by the poor farmers and that will not help them escape poverty. Another institutional constraint is that organic farmers face late payment from their cooperative until the rice is on-sold. This study finds that the price premium for organic rice is not high enough to induce adoption of this cropping practice. However, organic farmers are well trained, produce high-quality rice and are model farmers who participate in policy-making events, which encourage them to continue to produce organic rice.

Future generations and economic activities: The case of the social discount rate

The objective of this article is to show the difficulties economists have when they try to answer the following question: What can economists do to promote a fair and “safe” economic development? Or otherwise said: what should we do to promote more equity between generations in an environmental perspective? The purpose of this article is not to develop new tools or policies but to give an overview of some theoretical and practical problems linked to the connection between environment, intergenerational justice and economic activities. The first section focuses on the reasons for the need to develop a reflection about intergenerational equity in the economics of the environment. The second section investigates some related theoretical problems, and the third section shows the practical difficulties economists have when dealing with intertemporal economic decisions; that is, trying to take intergenerational equity into account—in particular the choice of a discount rate for public investments.