Local Effects of Payments for Environmental Services on Poverty

Juan Robalino (), Catalina Sandoval, Laura Villalobos and Francisco Alpizar Rodriguez

RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future

Abstract: We estimate local effects of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) programs on poverty in Costa Rica between 2007 and 2009. Using household surveys and spatial geographic data, we are able to control for socioeconomic and geographic characteristics at the individual and census tract level. We find that the effects are insignificant at a national level. However, this reflects countervailing forces. We find that PES coverage increases poverty in low-slope places and decreases poverty in high-slope places. These results are robust to demographic characteristics of the individuals. However, the magnitudes of the impacts are very low, even when they are statistically significant. We conclude that the PES program has not increased or decreased poverty substantially in Costa Rica. Policymakers could increase the impact on poverty by focusing their efforts in low-slope areas; however, as others have shown, such a focus could also reduce the impact on avoided deforestation.

Keywords: payment for environmental services; poverty; impact evaluation; conservation policies; heterogeneous effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q24 Q56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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