A Tentative Theory of Change to Evaluate Jurisdictional Approaches to Reduced Deforestation

Sub-national jurisdictions are promoted as strategic levels of governance for achieving reduced deforestation objectives. Jurisdictional approaches (JA) emerged as government-led, holistic approaches to forest and land use management across one or more legally defined territories. Despite increasing popularity amongst the science and practitioner communities, there is a lack of robust empirical data documenting their effectiveness in delivering environmental, social and economic outcomes. In this paper, we contend that further clarification of the JA concept would help its evaluation. More specifically, we suggest that current evaluation practices of JA would be strengthened if they were based on a theory of change clarifying the causal linkages between the interventions associated with a given JA and their effects. By integrating select empirical knowledge on JA with a selection of middle-range theories from the literature on collective environmental governance, we design a generic theory of change for JA, which is articulated around two intermediary outcomes, namely the emergence of collaboration and social learning. We also formulate hypotheses regarding the conditions that enable or hinder these collective intermediary outcomes of JAs. We acknowledge that another fundamental challenge for JAs is to remove or block the external contradicting signals that still fundamentally drive deforestation. Thus, JA interventions need to operate not only at the jurisdictional level, but also beyond

Assessment of high (diurnal) to low (seasonal) frequency variations of isoprene emission rates using a neural network approach

Using a statistical approach based on artificial neural networks, an emission algorithm (ISO-LF) accounting for high to low frequency variations was developed for isoprene emission rates. ISO-LF was optimised using a data base (ISO-DB) specifically designed for this work, which consists of 1321 emission rates collected in the literature and 34 environmental variables, measured or assessed using National Climatic Data Center or National Centers for Environmental Predictions meteorological databases. ISO-DB covers a large variety of emitters (25 species) and environmental conditions (10° S to 60° N). When only instantaneous environmental regressors (instantaneous air temperature <i>T0</i> and photosynthetic photon flux density <i>L0</i>) were used, a maximum of 60% of the overall isoprene variability was assessed with the highest emissions being strongly underestimated. ISO-LF includes a total of 9 high (instantaneous) to low (up to 3 weeks) frequency regressors and accounts for up to 91% of the isoprene emission variability, whatever the emission range, species or climate investigated. ISO-LF was found to be mainly sensitive to air temperature cumulated over 3 weeks (<i>T21</i>) and to <i>L0</i> and <i>T0</i> variations. <i>T21</i>, <i>T0</i> and <i>L0</i> only accounts for 76% of the overall variability

The Problem of Competition Among Domestic Trunk Airlines - Part I

Cet article propose une analyse des processus d’émergence et de diffusion des paiements pour services environnementaux (PSE) au Cambodge à partir de la théorie du changement institutionnel de John R. Commons. Nous montrons que dans un contexte de conflits d’intérêts autour de l’utilisation des ressources, la mise en place ou le blocage de certains projets PSE correspondent à des stratégies mises en oeuvre par les organisations non gouvernementales de conservation et le Gouvernement pour orienter la définition des règles encadrant la gestion des écosystèmes. Au final, le développement des PSE au Cambodge n’a pas permis une modification profonde de ces règles, le déséquilibre des rapports de force entre les différents acteurs impliqués ayant conduit au maintien du statu quo, au détriment des communautés locales

8 - Les paiements pour services environnementaux ou écosytémiques

Les dispositifs de PSE constituent un des outils de politique environnementale les plus en vogue de ces dernières années. Malgré les imprécisions sur leur définition, les PSE reposent de manière générale sur l’idée d’un paiement (récompense, dédommagement) effectué par ceux qui bénéficient des services fournis par les écosystèmes à ceux qui en assurent le maintien. Les débats concernant leur application, leur ..

7 - La diffusion de la notion de service écosystémique au Costa Rica, en France, à Madagascar, au Brésil et au Cambodge

Depuis le Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), la notion de service écosystémique s’est peu à peu imposée comme norme dans les discours internationaux et contribue à relégitimer des dispositifs existants et à légitimer de nouveaux instruments d’action publique tels que les PSE (Wunder, 2005), aussi bien dans les pays du Nord que dans les pays du Sud (Hrabanski et al., 2013). Les services écosystémiques et les instruments de politiq..

Economic analysis of payments for environmental services in the least developed countries : Institutions, motivation and efficiency : The case of Cambodia

Cette thèse vise à comprendre les mécanismes par lesquels les Paiements pour Services Environnementaux (PSE) émergent et influencent la conservation effective des écosystèmes naturels au Cambodge. Elle contribue également à poursuivre l’opérationnalisation des cadres conceptuels institutionnalistes d’analyse des PSE dans le cadre d’un pays parmi les moins avancés de la planète. Au Cambodge, les PSE apparaissent comme le résultat de processus politiques de négociations influencés par les institutions préexistantes et dans lesquelles certains acteurs, notamment le Gouvernement et les ONG, cherchent à influencer les décisions relatives à la définition de nouvelles règles d’utilisation des ressources naturelles afin que celles-ci s’alignent sur leurs intérêts. Ceci amène, au Cambodge, au blocage de certains types de PSE. La thèse cherche également à mesurer et expliquer l’efficacitéenvironnementale d’un cas de PSE communautaire. Ce type de mécanisme peut contribuer à la conservation efficace des forêts même lorsque la pression extérieure augmente. Néanmoins, ces effets dépendent de certaines caractéristiques du contexte socio-économique local, probablement parce qu’elles influencent la capacité de gestion collective des forêts que vise à renforcer ce type de PSE. De plus, la pérennité de ces effets n’est pas assurée sur le long terme. Le programme a ainsi érodé certaines perceptions des valeurs d’usage de la conservation de la forêt qui, dans un contexte de pauvreté et de dépendance forte des populations locales aux ressources naturelles, peuvent constituer des motivations partiellement intrinsèques à conserver.This thesis aims to understand the mechanisms through which Payments for Environmental Services (PES) emerge and influence the effective conservation of natural ecosystems in Cambodia. It also contributes to the operationalization of institutional conceptual frameworks for the analysis of PES, as it takes to the case of one of the world’s least developed countries. In Cambodia, PES appear to be the result of political processes (negotiations) influenced by pre-existing institutions and in which some stakeholders, such as the Government and NGOs,seek to influence decisions related to the definition of new rules for the use of natural resources so that they align with their interests. This explains why some types of PES schemes face political blockages at the national level. The thesis also seeks to measure and explain the environmental effectiveness of one community-PES. The case study leads to the effective conservation of forests even when the external pressure increases. However, this effect depends on some characteristics of the local socio-economic context, probably because they influence the likelihood of local collective management of forests, which the scheme aims to strengthen. In addition, the permanence of these effects is not guaranteed in the long run. The program has indeed eroded some perceptions of use values of forest conservation, which are, in a context of poverty and strong dependence of local communities on natural resources, the foundation for partially intrinsic motivation to conserve

Impact of a media campaign on consumers' purchasing intentions of legal timber in Cameroon

Illegal logging is a key driver of deforestation in tropical countries and benefits a large number of stakeholders, including urban domestic buyers. Changing the latter's purchasing behavior could produce significant shifts in the illegal trade market. Based on survey data (n= 463), this paper assesses the impact of a media campaign on consumers' purchase intentions for legal timber and wooden furniture in Yaoundé and analyses the underlying psychological mechanisms. Combining covariate matching and mediation analysis, we found a significant positive effect of the media campaign on the declared intention to purchase legally-sourced timber and the mediation effect of two out of three precursors of the theory of planned behaviors, namely attitude and subjective norms. This study provides critical inputs to frame future media campaign messages and, by demonstrating some consumers' interest in legal timber, to strengthen the domestic legitimacy of policies such as the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade