Market-based Approaches to Environmental Management: A Review of Lessons from Payment for Environmental Services in Asia

Market-based approaches to environmental management, such as payment for environmental services (PES), have attracted unprecedented attention during the past decade. PES policies, in particular, have emerged to realign private and social benefits such as internalizing ecological externalities and diversifying sources of conservation funding as well as making conservation an attractive land-use paradigm. In this paper, we review several case studies from Asia on payment for environmental services to understand how landowners decide to participate in PES schemes. The analysis demonstrates the significance of four major elements facilitating the adoption and implementation of PES schemes: property rights and tenure security, transaction costs, household and community characteristics, communications, and the availability of PES-related information. PES schemes should target win-win options through intervention in these areas, aimed at maintaining the provision of ecological services and improving the conditions for local inhabitants

Making Heat Visible: Promoting Energy Conservation Behaviors Through Thermal Imaging

Householders play a role in energy conservation through the decisions they make about purchases and installations such as insulation, and through their habitual behavior. The present U.K. study investigated the effect of thermal imaging technology on energy conservation, by measuring the behavioral effect after householders viewed images of heat escaping from or cold air entering their homes. In Study 1 (n = 43), householders who received a thermal image reduced their energy use at a 1-year follow-up, whereas householders who received a carbon footprint audit and a non-intervention control demonstrated no change. In Study 2 (n = 87), householders were nearly 5 times more likely to install draught proofing measures after seeing a thermal image. The effect was especially pronounced for actions that addressed an issue visible in the images. Findings indicate that using thermal imaging to make heat loss visible can promote energy conservation

Promising Approaches to Address the Needs of Poor Female Farmers: Resources, Constraints, and Interventions

This paper critically reviews attempts to increase poor female farmers' access to, and control of, productive resources in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It surveys the literature from 1998 to 2008 that describes interventions and policy changes across several key agricultural resources, including land, soil, and water; labor-saving technologies; improved varieties; extension services; and credit. Main questions: (1) Are women more constrained in access to, and control of, productive resources? (2) What are the key intervention strategies to address constraints to accessing such resources? (3) What are some of the promising approaches that have been used in the field? and (4) Have those approaches been rigorously evaluated, and what are the implications for scaling up

Goodbye to Projects? ¿ A livelihoods-grounded audit of the Plan for the Modernisation of Agriculture (PMA) in Uganda

Approaches to projects and development have undergone considerable change in the last decade with significant policy shifts on governance, gender, poverty eradication, and environmental issues. Most recently this has led to the adoption and promotion of the sustainable livelihood (SL) approach. The adoption of the SL approach presents challenges to development interventions including: the future of projects and programmes, and sector wide approaches (SWAPs) and direct budgetary support.This paper `A livelihoods-grounded audit of the Plan for the Modernisation of Agriculture in Uganda¿ is the fourteenth in the series of project working papers.Department for International Developmen

A review of policies and strategies affecting the peri-urban interface

As discussed elsewhere (Adell, 1999; Allen, 1999), whilst there is no accepted definition of what precisely constitutes the "peri-urban interface", the project team has identified at least three different approaches from where it has been conventionally conceptualised. These approaches may be classified according to the set of variables they choose to emphasise: physical attributes, such as proximity to the city and poor infrastructure; socio-economic variables; or urban-rural flows (of people, energy, goods)

A review of input and output policies for cereals production in Nepal:

This study examines the existing status, policies, and institutions for promoting agricultural output in Nepal, in particular cereals. In this context, it reviews the policies on agricultural input such as seed, fertilizer, water, agricultural equipment, research and extension, and agricultural credit. It also provides an overview of the policies and programs related to agricultural output marketing and procurement of food grains in Nepal.cereals, maize, Wheat,

The carbon-saving behaviour of residential households

The housing sector in 2004 was accountable for about 30% of total UK carbon emissions. The magnitude of this figure represents a significant imperative for policymakers to act on the sector through behavioural change strategies. Energy efficiency in households might easily be considered as driven mainly by economic motives, but this would not explain why even cost-free behavioural changes, like switching the lights off more often, are not adopted more widely. Literature has mainly concentrated either on the economic motives of pro-environmental behaviours or on the relevance of attitudes to shape them. Little has been said so far on the interaction between attitudes and the so called contextual factors. Diekmann and Presindörfer (2003) outlined the “low-cost hypothesis” which argues that pro-environmental behaviours are driven by pro-environmental attitudes only in the presence of low costs. However, little is known about households’ perceptions of costs and benefits in relation to energy saving behaviour. We propose to develop the low-cost hypothesis with a theoretical approach integrating attitudinal research and rational choice literature and explaining the interaction between tangible and intangible costs and benefits.Furthermore, the importance of resources such as education, information and income is highlighted in order to explain the magnitude of the perception of the costs and benefits considered by households. Finally, the scope for policy intervention aimed at shaping perceived costs and benefits to help the drive towards pro-environmental behaviour is discussed

Promising approaches to address the needs of poor female farmers: Resources, constraints, and interventions

"Recognizing that “gender matters,” many development interventions have aimed to close the gender gap in access to resources, both human and physical, and to address the specific needs of female farmers. This paper critically reviews attempts to increase poor female farmers' access to, and control of, productive resources in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It surveys the literature from 1998 to 2008 that describes interventions and policy changes across several key agricultural resources, including land, soil, and water; labor-saving technologies; improved varieties; extension services; and credit. Compared with interventions designed to increase investment in human capital, only a minority of interventions or policy changes designed to increase female farmers' access to productive resources have been rigorously evaluated. Future interventions need to consider interactions among inputs rather than treat each input in isolation, adapt interventions to clients' needs, and pay attention to the design of alternative delivery mechanisms, the trade-offs between practical and strategic gender needs, and the culture and context specificity of gender roles." from authors' abstractGender, Agriculture, Interventions, Agricultural growth, Agricultural technology,