Ram Pandit

Capitalized Amenity Value of Native Vegetation in a Multifunctional Rural Landscape

In many parts of the world, natural vegetation has been cleared to allow agricultural production. To ensure a long-term flow of ecosystem services without compromising agricultural activities, restoring the environment requires a balance between public and private benefits and costs. Information about private benefits generated by environmental assets can be utilized to identify conservation opportunities on private lands, evaluate environmental projects, and design effective policy instruments. We use a spatio-temporal hedonic model to estimate the private benefits of native vegetation on rural properties in the state of Victoria, Australia. Specifically, we estimate the marginal value of native vegetation on private land and examine how it varies with the extent of vegetation on a property and across a range of property types and sizes. Private benefits of native vegetation are greater per unit area on small and medium-sized properties and smaller on large production-oriented farms. Native vegetation exhibits diminishing marginal benefits as its proportion of a property increases. The current extent of native vegetation cover is lower than the extent that would maximize the amenity value to many landowners. There is scope for improved targeting of investment in the study region by incorporating private benefits of environmental projects into environmental planning processes. Landowners with high marginal private benefits from revegetation would be more willing to participate in a revegetation program. Targeting these landowners would likely provide higher value for money because such projects could be implemented at lower public cost.

Social Heterogeneity and Community Forestry Processes: Reflections from Forest Users of Dhading District, Nepal

Community forestry has been characterized as a successful model of community-based forest governance in Nepal that shifts forest management and use rights to local users, often socially heterogeneous in caste, gender and wealth status. This heterogeneity forms the basis of social groups, which differ in their needs, priorities and perceptions regarding community forestry implementation processes. This paper explores the dynamics of three community forestry processes—users’ participation, institutional development, and decision-making and benefit-sharing—among forest user groups as perceived by three social groups of forest users—elite, women and disadvantaged—from eight community forests of Dhading district, Nepal, using qualitative and quantitative techniques. It is found that social groups have differing levels of perception about community forestry processes occurring in their user groups. In particular, social elites differ from women and disadvantaged members of the group in users’ participation in community forestry activities and institutional development of forest user groups. An important policy implication of the findings is that social inclusiveness is central to the effective implementation of community forestry processes, not only to safeguard its past successes but also to internalize the economic opportunities it poses through reducing deforestation and forest degradation in the future.

Valuing Environmental Assets on Rural Lifestyle Properties

Lifestyle landowners value land for its amenities and ecological characteristics and could play an important role in managing and conserving native vegetation in multifunctional rural landscapes. We quantify values of ecosystem services captured by owners of rural lifestyle properties in Victoria, Australia, using a spatial hedonic property price model. The value of ecosystem services provided by native vegetation is maximized when that vegetation occupies about 40 percent of the area of a lifestyle property. Since the current median proportion of native vegetation is 15 percent, most lifestyle landowners could benefit from increasing the area of native vegetation on their properties.

Economic well-being, the distribution of income and species imperilment

Mikkelson et al.’s (PLoS One 2(5):e444, 2007) empirical finding of a positive relationship between income inequality and species imperilment in an international context is less-than-compelling for 3 reasons: (a) findings for their limited sample size, which constitutes a relatively small fraction of all countries, may not hold in the context of a more encompassing sample of countries, (b) their aggregate analysis, which includes amphibians, birds, mammals, reptiles, and vascular plants, may mask important taxa-level differences, and (c) the absence of controls for spatial autocorrelation between countries. Using data from 133 countries, we estimate models of factors that influence species imperilment and, controlling for cross-border effects, we reproduce the Mikkelson et al. findings, then demonstrate that they are sensitive to inclusion of additional countries, model specification, and to data aggregation.

Economic Freedom, Corruption, and Species Imperilment: A Cross-Country Analysis

We weave together two strands of the scientific literature: we have been presented with the proposition that economic freedom and corruption are linked to economic prosperity and with the proposition that economic prosperity is related to environmental degradation. The question we explore empirically is whether economic freedom and corruption are linked, albeit perhaps indirectly through economic prosperity, to environmental degradation. Using data from 152 countries, we estimate models of factors that influence species imperilment and, controlling for cross-border effects, find evidence across several taxa groups of a statistically significant relationship between economic freedom and species imperilment. However, we find consistent evidence of a similar relationship between corruption and species imperilment for only one taxa group.

Factors that influence sales of wildlife-related specialty license plates.

We analyzed data for 39 states to identify factors that influence sales of wildlife-related specialty license plates. Wildlife plate sales were not statistically influenced by specialty plate price, the number of other specialty plates available, or the requirement to display two plates. There was some evidence that sales of wildlife plates are positively related to per capita income. In addition, sales of wildlife plates appeared to be influenced positively by the percent of individuals who engage in wildlife-related recreation. We failed to observe strong ethnicity impacts on sales of wildlife plates, but did find consistent evidence that wildlife plate sales were related negatively to the percentage of the population in the 18–24 age range. Finally, there was evidence that sales of wildlife plates are significantly higher in the South than elsewhere in the United States.

Pigskins and Politics: Linking Expressive Behavior and Voting

In this article, the authors use data collected from nearly 4,000 single-family residences in Auburn, Alabama to investigate empirically whether nonpolitical expressiveness (displaying support for Auburn Universitys football team outside ones home) is related to the probability that at least one resident voted in the national/state/local elections held on November 7, 2006. Controlling for the assessed value of the property and the length of ownership, the authors find that the likelihood of voting by at least one person from a residence with an external display of support for Auburn University is nearly 2 times greater than from a residence without such a display. This suggests that focusing narrowly on voting as a reflection of political expressiveness may lead researchers to overstate the relative importance of expressiveness in the voting context and understate its more fundamental and encompassing importance in a variety of contexts, only one of which may be voting.

Industrial pollution and the management of river water quality: a model of Kelani River, Sri Lanka

Water quality of the Kelani River has become a critical issue in Sri Lanka due to the high cost of maintaining drinking water standards and the market and non-market costs of deteriorating river ecosystem services. By integrating a catchment model with a river model of water quality, we developed a method to estimate the effect of pollution sources on ambient water quality. Using integrated model simulations, we estimate (1) the relative contribution from point (industrial and domestic) and non-point sources (river catchment) to river water quality and (2) pollutant transfer coefficients for zones along the lower section of the river. Transfer coefficients provide the basis for policy analyses in relation to the location of new industries and the setting of priorities for industrial pollution control. They also offer valuable information to design socially optimal economic policy to manage industrialized river catchments.

Policy choice and riverine water quality in developing countries: An integrated hydro-economic modelling approach

Industrialization and urbanization, as a result of rapid economic development, have led to the deterioration of water quality in many rivers in developing countries. The Kelani River in Sri Lanka provides drinking water to Colombo and a range of market and non-market ecosystem services; but these services are threatened by deteriorating water quality. We apply a hydro-economic model that accounts for spatial patterns of water quality and abatement cost variability between firms in the catchment. The hydro-economic model combines a hydrological model of water quality with an economic optimization model to determine a cost-effective policy under alternate policy regimes. These include: the existing policy based on effluent concentration standards, effluent trading and effluent trading with multiple zones and an effluent tax. Tradeable permits with multiple zones are the least cost policy option that accounts for both spatial externalities and abatement costs. However, given current institutional capabilities, an effluent tax would be a more realistic second best policy as a transition from the current policy of effluent concentration standards to a policy based on the quantity of effluents.

Capitalisation of residential solar photovoltaic systems in Western Australia

Due to government financial incentives and falling prices of photovoltaic (PV) systems, solar power has become the fastest growing renewable energy source in Australia. As financial incentives are being reduced or phased out, there is a possibility that adoption of this technology will slow down, thus creating a need for improved policy instruments targeted at adoption of residential PV systems. One of the factors affecting adoption of solar technology in the residential sector is its capitalisation in property values. Yet, the awareness of the capitalisation of PV investments in the Australian property market is limited. Our data indicate that homeowners who anticipate selling their properties in the near future are reluctant to adopt PV systems. This paper presents the first empirical estimate of the property price premiums associated with residential solar PV systems in Australia using residential property sales data from the Perth metropolitan area of Western Australia. An estimated 2.3–3.2 per cent property price premium associated with the PV systems suggests that homeowners fully recover the costs of PV investments upon the sale of their properties. Effective government policy could use this information to encourage adoption of residential PV systems by homeowners.