Relaxing Constraints as a Conservation Policy

Ben Groom and Charles Palmer

No 2012.63, Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Abstract: Eco-entrepreneurs in developing countries are often subject to market or institutional constraints, e.g. via credit rationing or missing markets. Conservation interventions which relax constraints may be both cost-effective and poverty reducing. A simulation using data from an intervention in Madagascar to relax the technological constraints of forest honey production investigates this possibility. Cost-effectively achieving dual environment-development goals is shown to depend on the severity of constraints, relative prices and, importantly, the nature of technology. Success is more likely for technologies exhibiting close to constant returns to scale or high input complementarity. Forest honey does not meet these requirements, whereas sustainable forest management may well do. Ultimately, where market or institutional constraints are present, knowledge of the recipient technology is required for more informed, efficient and perhaps, more politically-acceptable conservation policy.

Keywords: Payments for Environmental Services (PES); Market Constraints; Cost-Effectiveness; Efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H21 Q28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://feem-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/w ... oads/NDL2012-063.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Relaxing constraints as a conservation policy (2014)
Working Paper: Relaxing constraints as a conservation policy (2014)
Working Paper: Relaxing Constraints as a Conservation Policy (2012)
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:fem:femwpa:2012.63

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alberto Prina Cerai ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).