A Spatial-Intertemporal Model for Tropical Forest Management Applied to Khao Yai National Park, Thailand

This paper discusses the application of a spatial-intertemporal model for tropical forest management to Khao Yai National Park in Thailand. This type of model, especially the spatial components, finds different optimal land allocations than do traditional models at empirically relevant levels of benefits. The spatial analysis here suggests that most of this park can be best used as a preserved area and also provides support for expanding the park into an adjacent unpopulated area. The analysis demonstrates that the park’s benefits to regional agriculture and villagers are large enough that preservation can proceed without international support, and that local people, as a group, have incentives to maintain most of the area as preserved land. Although the data cannot support a full case-study, these results underscore the need for empirical assessment of the spatial aspects of protected area management.parks, protected areas, people-park conflict, spatial, biodiversity, option value

Preliminary Injunction of Arbitration Proceedings - Six Clinics Holding Corporation, II v. Cafcomp Systems, Inc.

The issue presented in Six Clinics Holding Corporation, I v. Cafcomp Systems, Inc., is whether a court is prohibited from issuing a preliminary injunction in a case subject to arbitration.\u27 The parties had a private agreement to arbitrate any disputes, but the court enjoined the arbitration in order to determine a federal issue outside the arbitrator\u27s jurisdiction The defendant argued that the Anti-Injunction Act, which prohibits federal courts from enjoining state court proceedings, was violated.4 However, the court found a loophole by stating that a private arbitration is not a state proceeding and thus is not governed by the Act.5 This escape hatch is an all too easy method to avoid the Anti-Injunction Act\u27s purpose and strictly construed exceptions. By allowing a preliminary injunction of an arbitration proceeding, the Six Clinics court has diluted the strength and effect of alternative dispute resolution methods like arbitration

Parks, Buffer Zones, and Costly Enforcement

The reality of protected area management is that enforcing forest and park boundaries is costly and so most likely incomplete, due in part to the pressures exerted on the boundaries by local people who often have traditionally relied on the park resources. Buffer zones are increasingly being proposed and implemented to protect both forest resources and livelihoods. Developing a spatially-explicit optimal enforcement model, this paper demonstrates that there is a trade-off between the amount spent on enforcement, the size of a formal buffer zone, and the extent to which a forest can be protected from illegal extraction. Indeed, given the reality of limited enforcement budgets, a forest manager with a mandate to protect a whole forest may in fact end up doing a worse job than one who is able to incorporate an appropriately sized buffer zone into their management plans that, combined with more effective enforcement of a smaller exclusion zone, provide the appropriate incentives for villagers to extract only in the periphery of the forest, rather than venture further into the forest.

Wildfire Risk Management on a Landscape with Public and Private Ownership: Who Pays?

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Shade-Grown Coffee: Simulation and Policy Analysis for Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico

Shade-grown coffee provides a livelihood to many farmers, protects biodiversity, and creates environmental services. Many shade-coffee farmers have abandoned production in recent years, however, in response to declines in international coffee prices. This paper builds a farmer decision model under price uncertainty and uses simulation analysis of that model to examine the likely impact of various policies on abandonment of shade-coffee plantations. Using information from coastal Oaxaca, Mexico, this paper examines the role of various constraints in abandonment decisions, reveals the importance of the timing of policies, and characterizes the current situation in the study region.coffee farming, decision analysis, numerical modeling, Monte Carlo, price variability

Analyzing the Impact of Excluding Rural People from Protected Forests: Spatial Resource Degradation and Rural Welfare

This paper examines how forest-dependent villagers meet a resource requirement when they are excluded from some area of a forest. Forest managers who value both pristine and degraded forest should take into account a .displacement effect. resulting in more intensive villager extraction elsewhere, and a .replacement effect. in which villagers purchase more of the resource from the market. Similarly, forest managers who have poverty concerns should recognize that exclusion zones tend to be more costly to villagers without market access and those with low opportunity costs of labour- typically the poorest villagers.

Land Cover in a Managed Forest Ecosystem: Mexican Shade Coffee

Managed forest ecosystems—agroforestry systems in which crops such as coffee and bananas are planted side-by-side with woody perennials—are being touted as a means of safeguarding forests along with the ecological services they provide. Yet we know little about the determinants of land cover in such systems, information needed to design effective forest conservation policies. This paper presents a spatial regression analysis of land cover in a managed forest ecosystem—a shade coffee region of coastal Mexico. Using high-resolution land cover data derived from aerial photographs along with data on the geophysical and institutional characteristics of the study area, we find that plots in close proximity to urban centers are less likely to be cleared, all other things equal. This result contrasts sharply with the literature on natural forests. In addition, we find that membership in coffee-marketing cooperatives, farm size, and certain soil types are associated with forest cover, while proximity to small town centers is associated with forest clearing.deforestation, managed forest ecosystem, agroforestry, shade-grown coffee, Mexico, spatial econometrics, land cover

Spatial and Temporal Modeling of Community Non-Timber Forest Extraction

This paper examines the interaction of spatial and dynamic aspects of resource extraction from forests by local people. Highly cyclical and varied across both space and time, the patterns of resource extraction resulting from the spatial-temporal model bear little resemblance to the patterns drawn from focusing either on spatial or temporal aspects of extraction, as is typical in both the modeling and empirical literature to date. Combining the spatial-temporal model with a measure of success in community forest management.the ability to avoid open-access resource degradation.characterizes the impact of incomplete property rights on patterns of resource extraction and stocks. Key words: Spatial and temporal modeling; renewable resources; non-timber forest products; common property resources

Spatial Endogenous Fire Risk and Efficient Fuel Management and Timber Harvest

This paper integrates a spatial fire behavior model and a stochastic dynamic optimization model to determine the optimal spatial pattern of fuel management and timber harvest. Each years fire season causes the loss of forest values and lives in the western US. This paper uses a multi-plot analysis and incorporates uncertainty about fire ignition locations and weather conditions to inform policy by examining the role of spatial endogenous risk - where management actions on one stand affect fire risk in that and adjacent stands. The results support two current strategies, but question two other strategies, for managing forests with fire risk.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The impact of buffer zone size and management on illegal extraction, park protection and enforcement

Many protected areas or parks in developing countries have buffer zones at their boundaries to achieve the dual goals of protecting park resources and providing resource benefits to neighbouring people. Despite the prevalence of these zoning policies, few behavioural models of people’s buffer zone use inform the sizing and management of those zones. This paper uses a spatially explicit resource extraction model to examine the impact of buffer zone size and management on extraction by local people, both legal and illegal, and the impact of that extraction on forest quality in the park’s core and buffer zone. The results demonstrate trade-offs between the level of enforcement, the size of a buffer zone, and the amount of illegal extraction in the park; and describe implications for “enrichment” of buffer zones and evaluating patterns of forest degradation