The economics of agrobiodiversity conservation for food security under climate change

Subsistence-based and natural resource-dependent societies are especially vulnerable to climate change. In such contexts, food security needs to be strengthened by investing in the adaptability of food systems. This paper looks into the role of agrobiodiversity conservation for food security in the face of climate change. It identifies agrobiodiversity as a key public good that delivers necessary services for human wellbeing. We argue that the public values provided by agrobiodiversity conservation need to be demonstrated and captured. We offer an economic perspective of this challenge and highlight ways of capturing at least a subset of the public values of agrobiodiversity to help adapt to and reduce the vulnerability of subsistence based economies to climate change

Domestication of payments for ecosystem services: new evidence from the Andes.

The current project has sought to assess i) the potential of agricultural biodiversity-focused PES to serve as a cost-effective and socially equitable domesticated diversity conservation incentive scheme, as well as ii) how economic incentive mechanisms such as PES can be designed to build on and complement local institutions of collective action. Results are presented from pilot Payment for Agrobiodiversity Conservation (PACS) schemes and framed field experiments implemented in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes aimed at sustaining diversity within quinoa, a traditional Andean grain. Findings indicate that opportunity costs of conservation vary widely not only between the two study sites, but also between community-based groups within each site. This creates opportunities to minimize intervention costs by selecting least-cost conserving farmers. However, as shown with respect to the role of wealth and cooperation in determining opportunity costs, this also has implications for the type of farmer to be included in the conservation programme. Promisingly, depending on the fairness principle deemed most important in the local context, there does not necessarily have to be a significant trade-off between the schemes’ potential cost-effectiveness and equity outcomes. The observed behavior in the farmer experimental games further supports such findings and suggests that understanding farmer perceptions of fairness can have important implications for the design of conservation incentive mechanisms, particularly given the important influence of such perceptions on the pro-social behavior that underlies much de facto conservation. Incentive mechanisms, such as PACS, that can support socially valued ends not only by harnessing selfish preferences to public ends but also by evoking public-spirited motives are also more likely to be sustainable over the long-term. The use of PACS incentives for the maintenance of traditional crop varieties and the improvement of smallholder farmer livelihoods thus appears promising for further development and up-scaling

From Poverty to Disaster and Back: a Review of the Literature

Poor people are disproportionally affected by natural hazards and disasters. This paper provides a review of the multiple factors that explain why this is the case. It explores the role of exposure (often, but not always, poor people are more likely to be affected by hazards), vulnerability (when they are affected, poor people tend to lose a larger fraction of their wealth), and socio-economic resilience (poor people have a lower ability to cope with and recover from disaster impacts). Finally, the paper highlights the vicious circle between poverty and disaster losses: poverty is a major driver of people’s vulnerability to natural disasters, which in turn increase poverty in a measurable and significant way. The main policy implication is that poverty reduction can be considered as disaster risk management, and disaster risk management can be considered as poverty reduction

What role for cooperation in conservation tenders? Paying farmer groups in the high Andes

This paper sheds light on the potential of group-level tenders to enhance conservation where it depends on cooperation of small-scale farmers. We analyze data from two pilot Payment for Ecosystem Service (PES) schemes focused on the conservation of agricultural biodiversity in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. Contracts were assigned to farming groups who could choose between different types of in-kind payments with varying degrees of divisibility between group members. Our main results indicate that: (1) stronger general patterns of collective action is positively related to the level of cooperation in group-bid making; (2) where collective action is robust, collective payments seem to provide stronger conservation incentives than individual payments; (3) collective payments could mitigate some potential rent-seeking behavior by powerful groups; (4) selecting bid offers based on both a ‘cooperation ’ criterion and conservation land area offered does not overly compromise the cost-effectiveness of PES; and (5) group-level contracts may create strong incentives for contract compliance. Hence, combining farmer group-level contracts with collective in-kind payments can enhance the cost-effectiveness of conservation tenders, while generating co-benefits in terms of increased interaction and social capital among group members

Modern variety adoption and risk management in drought prone areas: insights from the sorghum farmers of eastern Ethiopia

Adoption rates of improved or modern varieties (MV) of sorghum in eastern Ethiopia are generally low. Although these MV may represent an effective means of coping with droughts, given their early maturing traits, landraces could prove to be more drought-tolerant and better adapted to marginal production conditions. Whether MV adoption is a risk reducing technology is very much an empirical question which this article investigates using a unique dataset from eastern Ethiopia in a year of extreme weather conditions. Results show that risk-factors coupled with access to markets and social capital drive farmers’ decisions to adopt MVs. On the one hand, it appears that farmers use MVs to mitigate moderate risks. On the other hand, farmers who have been most vulnerable to extreme weather events are less likely to use MVs suggesting that MV adoption does not necessarily represent an effective means of coping with drought. Finally, findings show that MV growers are more likely to be affected by sorghum failure once controlling for exogenous production factor

Modern variety adoption and risk management in drought prone areas: insights from the sorghum farmers of eastern Ethiopia

Adoption rates of improved or modern varieties (MV) of sorghum in eastern Ethiopia are generally low. Although these MV may represent an effective means of coping with droughts, given their early maturing traits, landraces could prove to be more drought-tolerant and better adapted to marginal production conditions. Whether MV adoption is a risk reducing technology is very much an empirical question which this article investigates using a unique dataset from eastern Ethiopia in a year of extreme weather conditions. Results show that risk-factors coupled with access to markets and social capital drive farmers’ decisions to adopt MVs. On the one hand, it appears that farmers use MVs to mitigate moderate risks. On the other hand, farmers who have been most vulnerable to extreme weather events are less likely to use MVs suggesting that MV adoption does not necessarily represent an effective means of coping with drought. Finally, findings show that MV growers are more likely to be affected by sorghum failure once controlling for exogenous production factor