Book Review

Environmental Economics and Policy,

The Nepal Community Forestry Program and Member Mental Health - June 2019

This presentation asks - Do Community Forestry\u27s (CFs) and better forest quality yield mental health benefits

REDD+ Policy Preferences in Ethiopia: Developing Controls for Attribute Non-Attendance in Choice Experiment Data

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is a payment for ecosystem services system created under the UN to reduce deforestation and degradation in developing countries. The REDD+ program creates markets for carbon sequestration services where REDD+ buyers are in UN-FCCC Annex 1 countries (developed countries) and sellers are in non-Annex 1 (typically developing countries). About 25% of the world’s forests are community managed (three times as much as private forests) but there is limited knowledge and information on preferences of households in communities with community managed forests toward programs like REDD+. Further, we do not have a good understanding of the true costs borne by these households when participating in programs like REDD+. We use a choice experiment survey of rural Ethiopian communities to understand respondents’ preferences toward the institutional structure of REDD+ contracts. Choice experiment surveys, a non-market valuation technique, allow the researcher to elicit preferences, including the tradeoffs between characteristics of the good or policy being studied and the marginal willingness to pay for individual characteristics of the program/good being valued. Preliminary results show that respondents care about how REDD+ programs are structured with regard to the manner in which the payments are divided between the households and the communities, the restrictions on using grazing land, and the level of payments received for the program. We find that the required firewood gathering reduction does not impact some households’ choice of REDD+ contracts. We are currently testing new methods in attribute non-attendance to better explain this finding

Private Benefits from Ambient Air Pollution Reduction Policies Evidence from the Household Heating Stove Replacement Program in Chile

We estimate the key private benefits from a program to improve ambient air quality during winter in central Chile by replacing inefficient wood-fired home heating stoves with more efficient pellet stoves. We are interested in the private benefits to households because they represent the additional value of the program and likely drive private adoption. Combining electronic stove surface temperature and air pollution monitoring with household surveys, we estimate the effects of adoption on household fuel expenditures, indoor temperatures, and indoor air pollution concentrations (PM2.5). We also explore heterogeneous effects of the program by income group and energy poverty status. Our results suggest that, after controlling for observable characteristics of individuals and dwellings, users of pellet stoves on average enjoy 14% lower indoor PM2.5 concentrations compared with those who have traditional stoves. Lower-income and energy-poor households receive much greater than average improvements in indoor air pollution than those with higher-incomes, driving the overall sample estimate and indicating that the program is progressive in this dimension. While those who use more efficient pellet stoves have more stable indoor temperatures than those using traditional stoves, we find no differences in mean temperatures. The improved heating stove has significantly higher operating costs, and we find that these costs are most salient for low-income and energy-poor households

Measuring risk preferences in rural Ethiopia

Risk aversion has generally been found to decrease in income. This may lead one to expect that people in poor countries will be more risk averse than inhabitants of rich countries. Recent comparative findings with stu- dents suggest the opposite, potentially giving rise to a risk-income paradox. Findings with students, however, may result from selection effects. We test whether a paradox indeed exists by measuring the risk preferences of over 500 household heads across several regions in the highlands of Ethiopia. We do so using certainty equivalents, which are well suited to the task due to their simplicity. We find high degrees of risk tolerance, consistent with the evidence obtained for students using the same tasks. In particular, the level of risk tolerance is higher than the one found for student samples in most Western and even middle income countries. We also find risk tolerance to increase in income proxies within our sample, thus completing the paradox

Economics of REDD+ and Community Forestry

Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is a payment for ecosystem services (PES) system created under the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) that tries to reduce deforestation and degradation in countries not subject to requirements under the convention (non-Annex 1 countries) and, therefore, release less and sequester more carbon. Other cobenefits have been added, such as biodiversity protection, poverty reduction and afforestation, which make up the \u27+\u27 in REDD+. The \u27+\u27, therefore, attempts to address potentially negative, unintended effects on non-carbon ecosystem services and take account of effects on those who currently have claims to forests. Many of the forest areas where the \u27+\u27 is most important are community managed. Community forestry is therefore at the heart of REDD+

Child Labor, the Wealth Paradox, and Common Forest Management in Bolivia

That wealthier developing country households may rely more heavily on child labor than poorer households has come to be known as the “wealth paradox.” This paper tests for a wealth paradox with regard to common natural resource wealth by analyzing the relationship between child labor and improved common property forest management (CPFM) in Bolivia. Data are analyzed using several econometric methods and it is found that households experiencing more effective CPFM generally use more forest-based and total child labor. The analysis also confirms others’ findings of a private wealth paradox with regard to private land and extends the analysis to evaluate the effect of ownership of animals

The Nepal Community Forestry Program and Member Mental Health - June 2019

This presentation asks - Do Community Forestry\u27s (CFs) and better forest quality yield mental health benefits

REDUCING DEGRADATION OF FORESTS IN POOR COUNTRIES WHEN PERMANENT SOLUTIONS ELUDE US: WHAT INSTRUMENTS DO WE REALLY HAVE?

This paper evaluates policies for addressing forest degradation in developing country hill areas, where agriculture is the major activity and villagers depend on forests for important economic inputs. Runaway population growth, poverty and open access probably explain most "overuse" in such areas, but these are very difficult, long-term problems. The paper argues that under such conditions, interim demand-side policies are necessary, but quite limited. Focusing on the case of Nepal, two instruments for reducing fuelwood demand, promotion of more efficient, wood-burning cookstoves and subsidization of (or reduced taxes on) alternative fuels, are evaluated. Using a simple analytical model and results from two surveys conducted in Nepal, it is concluded that promoting improved stoves is a much more efficient and equitable instrument than subsidizing the major alternative fuel, which is kerosene. The cost of fuelwood saved using improved stoves is predicted to be a very low$2.77 per metric ton