Designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice: An overview of the issues

Land policies are of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of, and the economic opportunities open to, both rural and urban dwellers - particularly the poor. To this end, research on land policy, and analysis of interventions related to the subject, have long been of interest to the Bank's Research Department, and other academic, and civil society institutions. The report aims to strengthen the effectiveness of land policy in support of development, and poverty reduction, by setting out the results of recent research in a way that is accessible to a wide audience of policymakers, nongovernmental organizations, academics in the Bank's client countries, donor agency officials, and the broader development community. Its main message rests on three principles: 1) provision of secure tenure to land improves the welfare of the poor, particularly by enhancing the asset base of those whose land rights are often neglected, and, creates incentives needed for investment, paramount to sustainable economic growth; 2) facilitation of land exchange, and distribution, whether as an asset or for current services, at low cost, through markets, and non-market channels, will expedite land access by productive, but land-poor producers, so that once economic growth improves, financial markets would rely on the use of land as collateral; and, 3) governments' contribution to the promotion of socially desirable land allocation, and utilization. The report discusses mechanisms to promote tenure security, demonstrates the importance of rental market transactions, arguing the removal of impediments to these can generate equity advantages, and positive investments. It also illustrates mechanisms, ranging from taxation, to regulation and land use planning to address these issues.

Land policies for growth and poverty reduction

https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/download/pdf/52383/1.0132715/1

Rethinking ecosystem services to better address and navigate cultural values

http://sergiorosendo.pbworks.com/f/Wunder+et+al+2008+payments+for+environmental+services.pdf

Taking stock: A comparative analysis of payments for environmental services programs in developed and developing countries

https://estevecorbera.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/introductionpes_muradianetal_2010.pdf

Reconciling theory and practice: An alternative conceptual framework for understanding payments for environmental services☆

http://www2.inecc.gob.mx/dgipea/descargas/draft_ecological_economics.pdf

Paying for the hydrological services of Mexico's forests: Analysis, negotiations and results

I. Endogenous Evolution of Land Rights The propositions of Ester Boserup and the Property Rights School have dominated thinking about the endogenous evolution of land rights from open access to individual property. According to these views, there are two fundamental changes that push toward the privatization of a resource. One is its rising scarcity associated with population growth. The other is the rising value of the resource associated with greater market integration and the commercialization of agriculture. As long as there was land abundance and the resource had little commercial value, the marginal cost to current users of entry by an additional user was sufficiently small not to be worth opposing, and the magnitude of the externalities imposed in extraction by each user on all others was insignificant, making it not worth controlling. As the scarcity and value of the resource increases, changing property rights to regulate entry and to internalize the externality imposed by other users becomes profitable. Regulating entry requires transformation of the resource from open access to common property or to private property, limiting in each case access of the resource to a well-defined group of users. Internalizing externalities requires choosing between two options. One is to cooperate in the management of the common property resource (CPR) by introducing and enforcing rules that deter opportunism in the provision of services to the CPR and in the appropriation of resources from the CPR. The other is to divide the CPR among members of the community, either in subcoalitions where cooperation may prevail more easily or in individual allotments. The default option prevails when there is failure to enclose, failure to cooperate in the management of the CPR, and failure to enforce individual

/pdf/recrafting-rights-over-common-property-resources-in-mexico-zsjy6u4ysn.pdf

Recrafting Rights over Common Property Resources in Mexico

Vaquita marina, a small species of porpoise endemic to the Northern Gulf of California in Mexico, is the world’s most endangered cetacean species. With the purpose of preserving vaquita, the Mexican government launched PACE-Vaquita in 2008. This voluntary program o ffers an innovative schedule of compensations: as in a payment-for-conservation program, PACE-Vaquita compensates for temporary reductions in fishing e ffort; as in a program to accelerate technology adoption, PACE-Vaquita compensates for switching to vaquita-safe fishing methods; and as in a buyback program, PACE-Vaquita compensates fishermen for a permanent exit from fisheries. This paper seeks the factors explaining fishermen’s participation in PACEVaquita during its first year of operation. Analysis is carried out through a multinomial logit specification on a data set collected one week after the enrollment deadline. This paper shows that fishermen with skills in alternative economic activities more likely quit fishing, and fishermen with relatively less productive vessels more likely switched to vaquita-safe fishing methods. Discussion of public policy implications is provided.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1962987_code1750101.pdf?abstractid=1962987&type=2

Conservation of Vaquita Marina in the Northern Gulf of California

Rural communities have, in Mexico, an extraordinarily important, and yet largely unrecognized, role in influencing the way in which a huge endowment of natural resources is used and local public goods are delivered to a majority of the rural population. By contrast to Africa and North East Asia (Hayami and Platteau, 1998), these communities generally do not have their roots in tribal or ancestral village origins. They are instead mostly creation of the state, product of the political settlement that followed 10 years of peasant-led armed revolution. This settlement led to formation of the ejido communities as defined in the constitution of 1917. In some cases, land that had been expropriated from indigenous communities by expansion of the haciendas was restituted, giving a tribal basis to the ejido communities. But in the vast majority of cases, communities were created by pulling together in ejidos the former workers of expropriated haciendas or ad-hoc groups of rural households demanding access to land. A dual form of property rights was thus created, covering today each approximately half of the Mexican territory. On the one hand, a sector of private farms with a ceiling on land ownership equivalent to 100 hectares of irrigated land (the “pequeñas propriedades”). On the other hand, a social sector, generically referred to as the ejido sector, that includes indigenous communities with restituted lands and new ejido communities created by the reform, with ejido communities outnumbering indigenous communities 15 to 1. In this ejido sector, all land is owned by the community. Land in ejidos is also accessed under a dual system of land rights: individual plots to which ejidatario households have access in usufruct; and common property resources (CPR) to which all ejidatarios have access as regulated by the community.

/pdf/liberal-reforms-and-community-responses-in-mexico-2bdedgkqep.pdf

Liberal Reforms and Community Responses in Mexico

Stated preference methods can be used to estimate the demand function where no price variation has been observed before. This is the situation of the Mexican coral reef natural protected areas, where after the 2002 approval of a $20 pesos fee (US$1.80) the Ministry of the Environment is now considering increasing the amount of the fee, not only to raise more revenue for the park, but also to curb the number of visitors in the cases where there is excess demand. There are concerns that the very success of the reefs is bringing associated environmental damage that threatens its sustainable use. To estimate the reaction of visitors to different fee levels, we carried out a contingent valuation survey, and constructed with its results an aggregate demand for each park. This demand was then divided by seasons and nationalities, to explore the benefits and costs of differentiating fees, looking at both the revenue maximising and the welfare maximising fees. Finally we discuss how these fees would change when en...

Carlos Muñoz-Piña

Papers

Paying for the hydrological services of Mexico's forests: Analysis, negotiations and results

Recrafting Rights over Common Property Resources in Mexico

Conservation of Vaquita Marina in the Northern Gulf of California

Liberal Reforms and Community Responses in Mexico

Fees for Reefs: Economic Instruments to Protect Mexico’s Marine Natural Areas