Out of sight, not out of mind: developments in economic models of groundwater management

Dynamic models of natural resource management have been applied to groundwater for decades, incorporating at least two inescapable aspects: first, since groundwater stocks are carried over to future periods, dynamic analysis is essential and any costs and benefits included in the analysis will require discounting; second, the positive and normative aspects of management must be clarified at the outset. The difference is fundamental even if the results of the two model types sometimes turn out to be fairly close. A whole strand of literature has been preoccupied with the question of whether policy interventions at least have the potential of improving groundwater management in a meaningful sense. However, given the well-documented parlous state of many aquifers around the world today, the focus has mostly shifted from debating whether or not intervention is worthwhile to identifying the relevant features of complex groundwater systems, designing better policies and facilitating their successful implementation. We survey developments in economic models relevant to groundwater management, focusing especially on the depiction of uncertainty and on the different methods applied to estimate the total economic value of groundwater.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Examining Connections between Gendered Dimensions of Inequality and Deforestation in Nepal

The United Nations recognizes empowering women as a key component of achieving numerous development-related goals. Qualitative studies suggest that communities where men and women have equal levels of agency over resource allocation and land tenure sometimes experience decreases in forest degradation and deforestation, all else being equal. However, these patterns are spatially heterogeneous, as are patterns of gender inequality in terms of land tenure and agency. This paper uses data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to quantify the relationship between gender inequality and ecosystem degradation using three linear regression models, Empirical Bayesian Kriging, and mapping the intersections between gender inequality and deforestation. Results from LASSO, Ordinary Least Squares, and Stepwise regression models show that there is no linear relationship between gender inequality and deforestation. Additionally, the distributions of gender inequality as it pertains to land tenure and deforestation are highly heterogeneous over space, indicating potential sociocultural and sociodemographic factors not captured in my data. Further work should focus on identifying ways to incorporate complex gender dynamics into environmental planning at multiple levels of forest governance

Marine Protected Areas: Economic and Social Implications

This paper is a guide for citizens, scientists, resource managers, and policy makers, who are interested in understanding the economic and social value of marine protected areas (MPAs). We discuss the potential benefits and costs associated with MPAs as a means of illustrating the economic and social tradeoffs inherent in implementation decisions. In general, the effectiveness of a protected area depends on a complex set of interactions between biological, economic, and institutional factors. While MPAs might provide protection for critical habitats and cultural heritage sites and, in some cases, conserve biodiversity, as a tool to enhance fishery management their impact is less certain. The uncertainty stems from the fact that MPAs only treat the symptoms and not the fundamental causes of overfishing and waste in fisheries.Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), marine reserves, fisheries

Community watershed management in semi-arid India: The state of collective action and its effects on natural resources and rural livelihoods

"Spatial and temporal attributes of watersheds and the associated market failures that accelerate degradation of agricultural and environmental resources require innovative institutional arrangements for coordinating use and management of resources. Effective collective action (CA) allows smallholder farmers to jointly invest in management practices that provide collective benefits in terms of economic and sustainability gains. The Government of India takes integrated watershed management (IWM) as a key strategy for improving productivity and livelihoods in the rain-fed and drought-prone regions. This study investigates the institutional and policy issues that limit effective participation of people in community watershed programs and identifies key determinants for the degree of CA and its effectiveness in achieving economic and environmental outcomes. We use empirical data from a survey of 87 watershed communities in semi-arid Indian villages to identify a set of indicators of CA and its performance in attaining desired outcomes. Factor analysis is used to develop aggregate indices of CA and its effectiveness. Regression methods are then employed to test the effects of certain policy relevant variables and to determine the potential effects of CA in achieving desired poverty reduction and resource improvement outcomes. We find a positive and highly significant effect of CA on natural resource investments, but no evidence of its effects on household assets and poverty reduction outcomes. This may be attributable to longer gestation periods for realizing indirect effects from collective natural resource investments and the lack of institutional mechanisms to ensure equitable distribution of such gains across the community, including the landless and marginal farmers." authors' abstractCollective action, Institutions, Property rights, Watershed management, Poverty, Environmental impacts,

Diffusion of a gear-based conservation innovation: adoption patterns and social - ecological outcomes

Conservation interventions are only effective if people use them. Thus, identifying motivations and barriers to the uptake of conservation interventions is critical. Yet, analysis of factors that hinder or promote conservation diffusion (spread of conservation interventions) processes has received little attention by conservation practitioners and policy makers. Consequently, many efforts to achieve sustainability fail to reach full potential. Nearly all conservation interventions are characterized by the introduction of new ideas and practices. In line with this recognition, implementation of conservation can therefore benefit from a large body of social science research that explains how new ideas, practises, and technologies, i.e., innovations spread. Central to understanding how innovations spread among social systems, is the diffusion of innovations theory pioneered by Rogers. This thesis uses the diffusion of innovation lens to investigate the introduction of a conservation intervention in coastal Kenya. Diffusion research show that peoples' adoption behaviour is typically influenced by social differentiations in terms of personal attributes, socioeconomic status, and communication behaviour (Rogers 2010). Though personal attributes and socioeconomic status are widely used to analyse adoption processes (Horst et al 2007, Knowler & Bradshaw 2007), there remains very limited empirical work emphasizing the effect of communication behaviour in conservation diffusion literature. In addition, there is a long-standing recognition that proper communication channels are critical in facilitating innovation transfer (Gladwell 2006, Nilakanta & Scamell 1990, Rogers 1995). Yet, no criteria currently exist in the conservation literature to identify characteristics and functions of key intermediaries needed to facilitate conservation transfer. Thirdly, after initial adoption, whether people maintain an innovation is largely determined by the impact it has on their lives. However, conservation diffusion studies rarely examine the impacts of conservation innovations on either people or ecosystems (Weeks et al 2010, Woodhouse & Emiel de Lange 2016). These critical knowledge gaps lend themselves for empirical investigation. This thesis therefore aims to examine how people adopt conservation interventions and determine key social and environmental impacts of doing so. To address these aims, I ask two fundamental research questions: (i) "how does conservation interventions spread through societies?" (ii) "what are the consequences of conservation diffusion on people and environment?" I provide answers to these questions by addressing the following interrelated specific objectives: 1. determine the factors that influence uptake (adoption) and spread (diffusion) of a conservation intervention over time (Chapter 3) 2. identify key stakeholders to facilitate conservation transfer (Chapter 4) 3. investigate impacts of conservation diffusion on people's wellbeing (Chapter 5) 4. examine impacts of conservation diffusion on the ecosystem (Chapter 6) I explore these issues through a case study of a fisheries bycatch (incidental take) reduction initiative introduced in coastal Kenya (see details in chapter 2). Specifically, I study a modified basket trap retrofitted with escape gaps that allows juveniles and narrow-bodied, low value fish species (i.e. bycatch) to exit, while larger, wider-bodied target species are retained (Mbaru & McClanahan 2013). This intervention was introduced with the explicit aim to protect biodiversity by harvesting fish species at sizes that ensure sustainability of the local fishery (McClanahan & Mangi 2004). However, it was expected that improved catches over time will translate to positive sustainability outcomes, e.g., improved income and livelihoods that will continue to accrue over the long term. Aside from the diffusion of innovations theory, this research further draws from a number of social science theories and emerging breakthroughs in functional ecology to provide a rigorous and deeper examination of the study aims highlighted above. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction about the different theoretical foundations and approaches that can be used to analyse conservation diffusion processes in light of the diffusion of innovations theory. Chapter 2 provides an overview of study sites and describes the methods used throughout the thesis, though each chapter will also have additional methods. In chapter 3, I integrate theoretical foundations of the diffusion of innovations theory with novel breakthroughs in network science to offer a clearer understanding of the factors that shape conservation diffusion patterns over time. Unlike the majority of conservation diffusion studies, I explicitly measure communication behaviour via social networks and leverage recent advances in network modelling to simultaneously test the effect of social network structures and social influence on conservation diffusion while accounting for personal attributes and socioeconomic characteristics. I show that network processes contribute considerably to conservation diffusion – particularly in the early adoption stage – even when key socioeconomic factors are accounted for. By showing that communication behaviour is crucial during the early stages of the diffusion process, my results challenge decades of diffusion research suggesting commination behaviour is more important for late adoption. Overall, I demonstrate that harnessing the power and characteristics of social networks can help diffuse conservation interventions through target populations. In chapter 4, I draw on social network theory and methods to develop specific criteria for selecting stakeholders who are best placed in social networks (i.e., key players) to facilitate four key conservation objectives: (1) rapid diffusion of conservation information, (2) diffusion between disconnected groups, (3) rapid diffusion of complex knowledge or initiatives, or (4) widespread diffusion of conservation information or initiatives over a longer time period. After identifying the key players for the four distinct diffusion related conservation objectives, I then test whether the socioeconomic attributes of the key players I identified match the ones typically selected by conservation NGOs and other resource management agencies to facilitate conservation diffusion (i.e., current players). Results show clear discrepancies between current players and key players, highlighting missed opportunities for progressing more effective conservation diffusion. The chapter concludes with a novel, practical, and nuance approach to identify a set of ‗key players' better positioned to facilitate diffusion related conservation objectives, thereby helping to mitigate the problem of stakeholder identification in conservation diffusion processes. The focus of chapter 5 is to investigate the effects of adoption or non-adoption of the conservation intervention on people's wellbeing, i.e., an umbrella term that encompasses good social relations, freedom of choice, and basic materials for a good life (MEA 2005). Here, I use the wellbeing framework (Gough & McGregor 2007) to capture how the conservation innovation may impact multiple dimensions (material, relational, subjective) of people's wellbeing. I use panel data (i.e., follow the same individuals over time) to study these three dimensions of wellbeing before the intervention, during the short term (i.e., one year after the introduction), and in the medium term (i.e., about two years after the introduction) for those that adopt the innovation (adopters), those that don't adopt (nonadopters), and in control villages, where the intervention was not introduced. Overall, my findings indicate that adoption of the conservation intervention did no harm to the associated human communities. Indeed, I show modest improvements in material and subjective livelihood wellbeing for adopters relative to controls over time. However, the variations I find in wellbeing experiences (in terms of magnitude of change) among adopters, nonadopters, and controls across the different domains over time affirm the dynamic and social nature of wellbeing. Findings emphasize the need for environmental policy to use multiple indicators of wellbeing in addition to baselines in future evaluation research. The focus of chapter 6 is to assess the impact of the conservation intervention on environment. Previous attempts have been made to understand the effects of escape slot trap fishing on the marine environment (Condy et al 2015). However, most of this work tends to focus on species abundances and catch composition (Gomes et al 2014). Yet, the growing interest in an ecosystem-based approach has stressed maintaining and sustaining ecological functions (Henriques et al 2014). Moreover, in multi-species coral reef fisheries fishing gears are known to exhibit some degree of overlap in the species they capture (McClanahan & Mangi 2001). Depending on the level and type of overlap, these interactions can potentially retard critical pathways associated with gear-based conservation interventions (McClanahan & Kosgei 2018). Against this background, I employ a trait-based approach to assess functional selectivity of the escape slot trap. In addition, I quantify overlaps in catch composition between escape slot traps and other gear types that operate concurrently in the same reefs. These are hook and line, speargun, gillnet, beach seine, basket trap, and a combination of other nets. Overall, I show that using escape slot traps has the potential to lead to environmental improvements. Fish assemblages in escape slot traps are more functionally redundant (tendency of species to perform similar functions) and a vast majority constitute the least breadth of functional diversity. However, I find that two-thirds of the catch released by escape slot traps is targeted by other gear types. Thus, given the extent of overlaps in species selectivity between gears, switching to escape slot traps may not achieve conservation targets in the Kenyan multi-species coral reef fishery unless other gear types are also simultaneously excluded. These results call for caution when assessing ecological implications of gear-based conservation innovations particularly in gear-diverse coral reef fisheries where competitive interactions between gears are eminent. Together, this body of work advances the current state of knowledge about analysing patterns and outcomes of conservation diffusion over time. The stakeholder selection criteria developed in chapter 4 can be applied to facilitate widespread adoption and diffusion of simple initiatives such as rapid environmental awareness campaigns as well as more complex initiatives that seek to implement behaviour change to improve conservation outcomes. This work further provides a more comprehensive way to look at conservation outcomes and can help draw policy attention to the nonmaterial impacts of conservation. Trait-based approaches can provide a concrete platform for ecosystem-based management approaches in tropical multi-species fisheries

Annotated bibliography on socio-economic and ecological impacts of marine protected areas in Pacific Island countries

The bibliography is to highlight impacts on fisheries and livelihoods attributed to coral reef marine protected areas in Pacific Island countries and territories. Included in this collection is literature that reports various forms of reef area management practiced in Pacific Island countries: reserves, sanctuaries, permanent or temporary closed areas, community and traditional managed areas. (Document contains 36 pages

Studying coupled human and natural systems from a decentralized perspective: the case of agent-based and decentralized modeling

The science of coupled human and natural systems deals with the interactions between humans and their environment. This science focuses on the complex dynamics and patterns that emerge through these interactions. One of the most insightful ways to study coupled human and natural systems consists in developing models to reproduce the patterns seen in these systems. Models of coupled human and natural systems are particular in the sense that they require the integration of knowledge from various and differing fields such as economics, social sciences, ecology, hydrology, biology, climate sciences and many others. In this thesis, we claim that most coupled human and natural systems are decentralized and would better be modeled from a decentralized perspective. Agent-based models, especially can be very useful to model human systems. A review of the literature shows that agent-based modeling is a commonly used tool in all the fields related to coupled human and natural systems such as socio-ecology – or social and ecological systems, hydro-economic systems, socio-hydrology or integrated environmental modeling. While agent-based models present a lot of challenges, they appear as promising tools for the representation of humans in models of coupled human and natural systems. Using an agent-based model of farmers’ decision-making on irrigation, coupled with a model of groundwater flow and aquifer/stream interactions, we studied the role of individuals in a coupled agricultural and hydrologic system. The model was designed to simulate the interactions between farmers pumping groundwater to irrigate their corn fields and the water levels within a portion of the aquifer below the Republican River Basin in the High Plains region in Nebraska. A set of simulations show that incorporating behavioral heterogeneity of individuals in the model leads to the formation of spatial and temporal patterns. In other words, some of the patterns found in the real system could be partially explained by behavioral heterogeneity of farmers. Additionally, we find that model results are more accurate when accounting for individual heterogeneity. Including individuals in the model also helps understand how these individuals are impacted by system dynamics such as new policies or environmental change. This can prove useful for policy making when knowing the differences between individuals can help devise better policies. The challenge in modeling individuals and their behavior is to decide how complex these models should be. We suggest that individual behavior should be considered as another source of uncertainty rather than a source of unnecessary complexity

Linking Attitudes, Policy, and Forest Cover Change in Buffer Zone Communities of Chitwan National Park, Nepal

Deforestation in Nepal threatens the functioning of complex social-ecological systems, including rural populations that depend on forests for subsistence, as well as Nepal’s biodiversity and other ecosystem services. Reliance on forest resources, coupled with high population densities and rates of growth, highlights the importance of studying the relationship between human communities, forest cover and trends through time, and forest management institutions. A Master Plan for Nepal’s Forestry Sector (MPFS), enacted in 1989, laid the foundation for modern community-based forest management in Nepal. In 2014, the MPFS reached the end of its 25-year lifespan, after successfully ushering in significant institutional changes that fundamentally transformed the management of Nepal’s forests, mostly through devolving management and benefits from the national level to local communities. Here, we examine the effectiveness of the MPFS to offer insight into this complex coupled human and natural system. Using remote sensing techniques and Landsat satellite imagery, the 25-year anniversary of the MPFS was used to explore forest cover trends in the buffer zone Village Development Committees surrounding Chitwan National Park (CNP). An in-country household survey was then conducted to: (1) understand how local attitudes toward forest conservation-related behaviors correlated with empirical forest cover trends; and (2) understand which socio-demographic variables influenced supportive attitudes. The survey was conducted in two rural communities in southern Nepal—one that has experienced significant forest loss, the other forest gain—compare with forest cover trends as indicated by the results from Chapter 1. Lastly, we used an agent-based model (ABM) to explore what effect village attitudes toward forest conservation would have on the extent of forest cover if improved policies are implemented, population growth rate fluctuates, and villages are able to cooperate by mimicking each other’s attitudes and behaviors. Results suggest that since the MPFS was enacted, there was first a continued decrease in forest cover, followed by a significant increase overall. Survey results suggest a significant difference in attitudes toward forest conservation in the two areas studied, and in both study sites, participation in community forestry strengthened support for conservation, supportive forest conservation-related attitudes aligned with forest cover gain in recent years, and a negative relationship was found between economic status and having supportive attitudes. Additionally, on average, respondents did not feel that the current national political climate in Nepal supported sustainable forestry. The results from the ABM suggest that improving forest-related policies would have a dramatic effect on the forest cover over time, the ability for villages to cooperate will likely have little effect on forest cover, and population growth rate will likely have a significant effect on forest extent. We also found that despite clear strengths, there are challenges with using ABM to model forest conservation dynamics and land use/land cover change at different scales. These data offer insight into the success of modern community-based forest management policies and supporting institutions, and are especially important as Nepal’s Master Plan for the Forestry Sector has expired and the country is in the process of structuring a new Forestry Sector Strategy

Governmental Payments for Ecosystem Services Programs in China

Meine Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit den institutionellen Aspekten staatlicher Zahlungen für Ökosystemleistungen (Payments for Ecosystem Services „PES“) in China. Marktbasierte Ansätze zur Steuerung von Ökosystemleistungen, insbesondere von PES, wurden in den letzten Jahrzehnten als neue und innovative Politikinstrumente angesehen. Entsprechend diesem internationalen Trend sind PES auch in China populär, werden jedoch meist mit dem inländischen Begriff der Ökokompensation beschrieben. Einen wirtschaftlichen Anreiz für Verhaltensänderungen zu schaffen, wenn das Ökokompensations-Programm nur ein Ausgleich für gesetzliche Einschränkungen ist, kann eine Herausforderung darstellen. Die Merkmale der Ökokompensation unterscheiden sich von anderen nationalen PES-Programmen, da sich das Governance-Modell, die Eigentumsrechte und die gesellschaftlichen Strukturen in China stark von anderen Staaten unterscheiden. Die Ökokompensation steht vor vielen institutionellen Herausforderungen, wenn es darum geht, ökonomische Anreize für Verhaltensänderungen zu schaffen. Zahlungen für Ökosystemleistungen, die Elemente sowohl eines freiwilligen, marktbasierten als auch eines hierarchischen Systems kombinieren, um mit den besonderen institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen umzugehen, wurden bisher noch nicht ausreichend untersucht. Eine Wissenslücke besteht insbesondere hinsichtlich der Anpassung des Designs von PES an die institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen in China. Die Mechanismen von Zahlungen für Ökosystemleistungen in China unterscheiden sich in wichtigen Punkten von den aus der westlichen Erfahrung bekannten Mechanismen. Die vorliegende Dissertation zielt darauf ab, die Diskrepanz zwischen der allgemein gültigen Rahmung von Zahlungen von Ökosystemleistungen und der Realität ihrer Praxis zu verringern, indem sie eine institutionelle Analyse des chinesischen staatlichen PES-Programms vornimmt. Das Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) gilt als eines der weltweit größten PES-Programme und ist ein wichtiger Bestandteil der Ökokompensation. Das erste Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es, anhand des SLCP als empirische Fallstudie zu verstehen, wie das institutionelle Design des staatlichen PES in China verbessert werden kann. Das zweite Ziel ist in einem breiteren internationalen Kontext zu sehen und zielt darauf ab, einen methodischen Beitrag zur Analyse der Governance von Ökosystemleistungen zu leisten. Die Dissertation folgt einer kumulativen Struktur, die aus einem Rahmentext besteht, in den fünf, von Experten begutachtete, Artikel aus internationalen Fachzeitschriften integriert sind. Kapitel 1 ist eine Einführung, in der die Forschungslücken und die Forschungsziele im Hinblick auf staatliche PES beschrieben werden. Kapitel 2 liefert die theoretische Grundlage der institutionellen Ökonomie und zeigt die Bedeutung der Governance von Naturressourcen in China auf. Darauf aufbauend konkretisiert Kapitel 3 das Forschungsdesign, indem es die Forschungsziele in verschiedene Forschungsfragen untergliedert. Kapitel 4 beinhaltet den Ergebnisteil, der fünf Zeitschriftenartikel umfasst. Der erste Artikel liefert die konzeptionelle Grundlage für alle nachfolgenden Untersuchungen, die in dieser Dissertation vorgestellt werden, und gibt einen Überblick über die Wirksamkeit und die institutionellen Herausforderungen des chinesischen SLCP. Sowohl der zweite als auch der dritte Artikel sind empirische Untersuchungen. Der zweite Artikel untersucht, wie die sozioökonomischen und institutionellen Bedingungen Anreize für Haushalte in ländlichen Gebieten schaffen, um die primären Umweltziele des SLCP zu erreichen. Der dritte Artikel zeigt, wie lokale Dynamiken die Umsetzung des SLCP beeinflusst und geprägt haben. Der vierte Artikel veranschaulicht und diskutiert die im zweiten Artikel angewandte Methode im Vergleich zu einer weiteren Fallstudie in Deutschland. Der fünfte Artikel schließlich stellt die Stärken und Schwächen der im dritten Artikel angewandten Methode den Erfahrungen ähnlicher Studien in vier weiteren Ländern gegenüber. Zusammen liefern diese Artikel wichtige Beiträge für die beiden Ziele der Dissertation. Kapitel 5 beinhaltet die Synthese und Diskussion der Ergebnisse und Kapitel 6 schließt die Dissertation ab. Das wichtigste Ergebnis dieser Dissertation ist, dass die Wirksamkeit des staatlichen PES in China das Ergebnis der Interaktion der treibenden sozialen Kräfte ist, während institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen und lokale Dynamiken eine Schlüsselrolle bei der Ausgestaltung der Programmumsetzung spielen. Das SLCP hätte unter bestimmten institutionellen Bedingungen ein großes Potenzial für die Schaffung signifikanter Skaleneffekte und für die Verbesserung der Umwelteffektivität. Allerdings weicht die derzeitige Umsetzung des SLCP wegen der besonderen institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen erheblich von dem von der Politik geförderten Marktansatz ab. Zwar haben die institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen die breite Akzeptanz und schnelle Entwicklung des SLCP in der Anfangsphase nicht behindert, doch gibt es keine Möglichkeit, einen langfristigen Erfolg im Hinblick auf die Umwelteffektivität zu erreichen, wenn die wichtigsten PES-Elemente fehlen. Der überwiegend von oben nach unten gerichtete Ansatz des Programms und das Fehlen von echter Freiwilligkeit, Konditionalität und Eigentumsrechten werden zusammen als kritische Faktoren verstanden, die mögliche Misserfolge langfristig erklären. Ein weiterer Beitrag der Dissertation sind die methodischen Ansätze, die zum besseren Verständnis der Governance von Ökosystemleistungen beitragen. Diese Dissertation zeigt, dass Ansätze, die qualitative und quantitative Methoden kombinieren, wie z.B. Qualitative Vergleichende Analyse (Qualitative Comparative Analysis „QCA“) und Soziale Netzwerkanalyse (SNA), ein großes Potenzial für die institutionelle Analyse und partizipative Forschung von PES haben. Bei beiden Methoden wurde besonderes Augenmerk auf die detaillierte Beschreibung ihrer Anwendung sowie die damit verbundenen Vor- und Nachteile gelegt.My dissertation focuses on institutional aspects of governmental payments for ecosystem services (PES) in China. Market-based approaches for ecosystem service governance, particular the PES, have been considered new and innovative policy instruments over the past decades. Corresponding to this international trend, PES schemes in China are mostly described by the domestic term eco-compensation. However, the characteristics of eco-compensation are distinct from other national PES programs, as governance model, property rights and societal structures in China are different to the PES theory. Eco-compensation faces many institutional challenges in creating economic incentives for behavioral change. However, PES that combines elements of both a voluntary market and hierarchy-based system in dealing with incomplete institutional settings has not yet been sufficiently addressed. In particular, there is a knowledge gap regarding fitting the design of PES and institutional settings in China together. The mechanisms of PES in China differ in important ways from mechanisms familiar from the western experience. This dissertation aims to reduce the divergence between the common framing of PES and the reality of its practice by presenting the institutional analysis of China’s governmental PES program. As a major component of eco-compensation, the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) is considered one of the world’s largest PES programmes. By taking SLCP as an empirical case, the first objective of this dissertation is to understand how to improve the institutional design of governmental PES. The second lies in a broad international context, aiming at methodologically contributing to the analysis of ecosystem services governance. This dissertation follows a cumulative structure, integrating the framework text and five papers. Chapter 1 is an introduction, outlining the research gaps and objectives of governmental PES. Chapter 2 provides a theoretical foundation to the institutional economic schools, their respective theories and the relevance of nature resource governance in China. Based on this, Chapter 3 confirms the research design by deconstructing the research objectives into different research questions. Chapter 4 is the results section, which comprises five papers. The first paper provides the conceptual basis for all subsequent studies presented in this dissertation, as it is an overview of the effectiveness and institutional challenges of China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP). Both the second and third papers are empirical works. The second paper explores how socioeconomic and institutional conditions encourage rural households to reach the primary environmental goals of SLCP. The third paper shows how local dynamics derived and shaped the SLCP’s implementation. The fourth paper illustrates and discusses the method used in paper 2, comparing it with another case study in Germany. Finally, the fifth paper present the strengths and weaknesses of the method used in paper 3 based on the experiences of four different countries. Together, these papers deliver important contributions to both objectives. Chapter 5 is the synthesis and discussion, and Chapter 6 concludes the dissertation. The key finding of this dissertation is that the effectiveness of governmental PES is a result of interacting driving forces, whereas institutional settings and local dynamics play key roles in shaping program implementation. The SLCP could achieve its potential in creating significant economies of scale and environmental effectiveness under certain institutional conditions. However, against incomplete institutional settings, the current implementation of SLCP has deviated substantially from the market approach promoted by policy makers. While the incomplete institutional settings did not prevent SLCP’s wide acceptance and fast development in its first phases, there is no by-pass to reach the long term success in terms of environmental effectiveness in the absence of key PES elements. The program’s predominantly top-down approach and lack of genuinely voluntary characteristics, conditionality and property rights are jointly understood to be critical factors that explain possible failures in the long-term. Another contribution which this dissertation makes is in methodological approaches of ecosystem service governance. This dissertation has shown that mixed approaches combining qualitative and quantitative methods, such as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and social network analysis (SNA), could have great potential for institutional analysis and participatory research for PES. The two methods were given particular emphasis in the detailed description of application, as well as in the inherent merits and limitations