All that Glitters: A Review of Payments for Watershed Services in Developing Countries

This report reviews the current status of payments for watershed services in developing countries. It highlights the main trends in the evolution of these schemes, synthesising the available evidence on their environmental and social impacts, and drawing lessons for the design of future initiatives. The interest in payments for watershed services (PWS) as a tool for watershed management in developing countries is growing, despite major setbacks. This review identified 50 ongoing schemes, 8 advanced proposals and 37 preliminary proposals for PWS. A previous review published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) on markets and payments for environmental services (Silver Bullet or Fools' Gold? (Landell-Mills and Porras 2002)) identified just 41 proposed and ongoing PWS schemes in developing countries, which suggests a considerable growth in interest in this approach

The Cost of Avoiding Deforestation: Update of the Report prepared for the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change

According to the introduction, this report provides a global estimate of the cost of reducing the rate of deforestation

The Potential For UK Portfolio Investors To Finance Sustainable Tropical Forestry

Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Concert per l'orquestra del Conservatori del Liceu sota la direcció de Mtre. Josep Munner al Gran Teatre del Liceu

Orquestra del Conservatori del Liceu dirigida per Josep MunnerPrograma. Obres de Schubert, Grieg, Mozart, Wagner i Berlio

Assessing the role of economic instruments in a policy mix for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provision: a review of some methodological challenges

In this paper we review a number of methodological challenges of evaluating and designing economic instruments aimed at biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provision in the context of an existing policy mix. In the context of the EU 2010 goal of halting biodiversity loss, researchers have been called upon to evaluate the role of economic instruments for cost-effective decision-making, as well as non-market methods to assess their benefits. We argue that cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and non-market valuation (NMV) methods are necessary, but not sufficient, approaches to assessing the role of economic instruments in a policy mix. We review the principles of “social-ecological-systems”(SES) (Ostrom et al. 2007) and discuss how SES can complement economic cost and benefit assessment methods, in particular in policy design research. To illustrate our conceptual comparison of assessment methodologies, we look at two examples of economic instruments at different government levels – payments for ecosystem services (PES) at farm level and ecological fiscal transfers to municipal /county government. What conceptual problems are introduced when evaluating policies in an instrument mix? How can the SES framework complement CEA and NMV in policy assessment and design? We draw on experiences from Brazil and Costa Rica to exemplify these questions. We conclude with some research questions

A data support infrastructure for Clean Development Mechanism forestry implementation: an inventory perspective from Cameroon

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) forestry project development requires highly multi-disciplinary and multiple-source information that can be complex, cumbersome and costly to acquire. Yet developing countries in which CDM projects are created and implemented are often data poor environments and unable to meet such complex information requirements. Using Cameroon as an example, the present paper explores the structure of an enabling host country data support infrastructure for CDM forestry implementation, and also assesses the supply potential of current forestry information. Results include a conceptual data model of CDM project data needs; the list of meso- and macro-level data and information requirements (Demand analysis); and an inventory of relevant data available in Cameroon (Supply analysis). From a comparison of demand and supply, we confirm that data availability and the relevant infrastructure for data or information generation is inadequate for supporting carbon forestry at the micro, meso and macro-levels in Cameroon. The results suggest that current CDM afforestation and reforestation information demands are almost impenetrable for local communities in host countries and pose a number of cross-scale barriers to project adoption. More importantly, we identify proactive regulatory, institutional and capacity building policy strategies for forest data management improvements that could enhance biosphere carbon management uptake in poor countries. CDM forestry information research needs are also highlighted

Global variation in the cost of increasing ecosystem carbon

Slowing the reduction, or increasing the accumulation, of organic carbon stored in biomass and soils has been suggested as a potentially rapid and cost-effective method to reduce the rate of atmospheric carbon increase(1). The costs of mitigating climate change by increasing ecosystem carbon relative to the baseline or business-as-usual scenario has been quantified in numerous studies, but results have been contradictory, as both methodological issues and substance differences cause variability(2). Here we show, based on 77 standardized face-to-face interviews of local experts with the best possible knowledge of local land-use economics and sociopolitical context in ten landscapes around the globe, that the estimated cost of increasing ecosystem carbon varied vastly and was perceived to be 16-27 times cheaper in two Indonesian landscapes dominated by peatlands compared with the average of the eight other landscapes. Hence, if reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and other land-use mitigation efforts are to be distributed evenly across forested countries, for example, for the sake of international equity, their overall effectiveness would be dramatically lower than for a cost-minimizing distribution.Peer reviewe

XIII Concurso Internacional de Canto Francisco Viñas

Orquestra del Gran Teatre del Liceu dirigida per G. Pérez Busquie

XIV Concurso Internacional de Canto Francisco Viñas

Programa de mà de la XIV edició del Concurs Internacional de Cant Francesc Viñas. S'hi van interpretar fragments de "Parsifal" de R. Wagner, "El Messies" de G. F. Haendel, "Eugène Oneguin" de P. I. Txaikovski, "La Bohème" de G. Puccini, "Le nozze di Figaro" de W. A. Mozart, "I Pagliacci" de R. Leoncavallo, "Lakmé" de L. Delibes i "Peer Gynt" d'E. Grieg. També s'hi van interpretar peces d'A. Copland, F. Schubert, J. Sibelius, G. Verdi, A. Scarlatti, G. Fauré, M. I. Glinka, L. v. Beethoven, J. Brahms, F. Mendelssohn, M. Ravel, V. Bellini i G. Meyerbeer, entre altres. Els participants van ser J. Prasser, F. Laurent, M. T. Godoy, M. Popova, Y. H. Kim Lee, C. M. Soto-Chavarria, R. Christesen, M. C. Alzola, I. Aragón, J. J. Beristain, I. Encinas, A. Herrero, M. Lora, R. Martínez, A. Matalonga, F. Matilla, B. Melero, L. Pascual, J. Porras, A. Sarroca, A. Segarra, K. Fowler, D. M. Pelton, G. Silva Marin, J. J. Cubaynes, M. Chaineaud, J. P. Lafont, J. Manric, D. Cusick, H. Kenway, M. Lefevre, A. Andriesen, J. M. Bakker i J. J. LeeuwOrquestra del Gran Teatre del Liceu dirigida per G. Pérez Busquie