Payments for Environmental Services: To whom, where, and how much?
Jennifer Marie Alix-Garcia,
Alain de Janvry (alain@berkeley.edu) and
Elisabeth Sadoulet (esadoulet@berkeley.edu)
No 20421, 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO from American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association)
Abstract:
In this paper we consider different strategies for implementing a payment for environmental services (PES) program to mitigate deforestation in Mexican common property forests (ejidos). We begin by discussing the policy context within which PES programs find themselves, highlighting other possible interventions to help preserve environmental amenities in Mexico. We then discuss some basic principles of environmental payment schemes, formalizing these into three that we simulate: payment of the opportunity cost for forests at risks; payment for environmental benefits provided by forests at risk; a flat payment scheme with a cap on allowable hectares, similar to the type of program often applied in developing countries; and a program of opportunity cost payments for forest at risk with highest environmental benefit per dollar paid. We find that, of these three, the last is most efficient and the second most egalitarian. We also repeat a simulation of the third scheme using predicted, rather than actual risk, which circumvents the problem of strategic behavior on the part of recipient communities but introduces some error into the targeting process. Finally, we consider the characteristics of communities that receive payments from the most efficient program, finding that larger and more remote ejidos receive the lion's share of the budget, but that payments to them are not necessarily more efficient. This scheme also gives more, though smaller on a per capita basis, payments to poor and indigenous communities, where they are more efficient than those to non-poor and non-indigenous ejidos.
Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)
Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/20421/files/sp04al02.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea04:20421
DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.20421
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO from American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search (aesearch@umn.edu).