Principles for Fairness and Efficiency in Enhancing Environmental Services in Asia: Payments, Compensation, or Co-Investment?

The term payments for environmental services (PES) has rapidly gained popularity, with its focus on market-based mechanisms for enhancing environmental services (ES). Current use of the term, however, covers a broad spectrum of interactions between ES suppliers and beneficiaries. A broader class of mechanisms pursues ES enhancement through compensation or rewards. Such mechanisms can be analyzed on the basis of how they meet four conditions: realistic, conditional, voluntary, and pro-poor. Based on our action research in Asia in the Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services (RUPES) program since 2002, we examine three paradigms: commoditized ES (CES), compensation for opportunities skipped (COS), and co-investment in (environmental) stewardship (CIS). Among the RUPES action research sites, there are several examples of CIS with a focus on assets (natural + human + social capital) that can be expected to provide future flows of ES. CES, equivalent to a strict definition of PES, may represent an abstraction rather than a current reality. COS is a challenge when the legality of opportunities to reduce ES is contested. The primary difference between CES, COS, and CIS is the way in which conditionality is achieved, with additional variation in the scale (individual, household, or community) at which the voluntary principle takes shape. CIS approaches have the greatest opportunity to be pro-poor, as both CES and COS presuppose property rights that the rural poor often do not have. CIS requires and reinforces trust building after initial conflicts over the consequences of resource use on ES have been clarified and a realistic joint appraisal is obtained. CIS will often be part of a multiscale approach to the regeneration and survival of natural capital, alongside respect and appreciation for the guardians and stewards of landscapes

Fairly efficient or efficiently fair: success factors and constraints of payment and reward schemes for environmental services in Asia

Payment for environmental service (PES) is strictly defined as a market-based environmental policy instrument to achieve environmental protection in the most efficient way. However, an increasing body of literature shows that the prescriptive conceptualization of PES cannot be easily generalized and implemented in practice and the commodification of ecosystem services is problematic. To investigate the underlying causes, this PhD study combines a quantitative and qualitative research approach using case studies in Indonesia, the Philippines and Nepal. The empirical observations on emerging PES-mechanisms in the Asian case studies show that interdependency of fairness and efficiency should be the main consideration in designing and implementing a PES scheme in developing countries. Neither fairness nor efficiency alone should be the primary aim but an intermediate PES that is “fairly efficient and efficiently fair” may bridge the gap between PES theory and the practical implementation of PES to increase ES provision and improve livelihoods. </p

TARGET PLASMA FORMATION BY UHF POWER

Abstract The properties of plasma injected into open magnetic trap of uniform field from independent UHF source have investigated. Plasma is created in the UHF source at the frequency of 2400 MHz (power input 150 W) in the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) regime at the pressure of neutral argon 10 −5 ÷10 −2 Torr. It is established that a rather quiescent plasma with controlled density within the range of 2·10 8 ÷2·10 12 cm −3 and temperature 2÷3 eV is accumulated in the trap. It turned out, that plasma lifetime in the trap is determined by a classical mechanism of particle escape at the expense of collisions, at fixed value of magnetic field in the trap it practically is not changed with the variation of neutral gas pressure and reaches the value ∼4·10 −3 s at the magnetic field strength in the trap equal 1600 Oe

Co-productive agility and four collaborative pathways to sustainability transformations

Co-production, the collaborative weaving of research and practice by diverse societal actors, is argued to play an important role in sustainability transformations. Yet, there is still poor understanding of how to navigate the tensions that emerge in these processes. Through analyzing 32 initiatives worldwide that co-produced knowledge and action to foster sustainable social-ecological relations, we conceptualize ‘co-productive agility’ as an emergent feature vital for turning tensions into transformations. Co-productive agility refers to the willingness and ability of diverse actors to iteratively engage in reflexive dialogues to grow shared ideas and actions that would not have been possible from the outset. It relies on embedding knowledge production within processes of change to constantly recognize, reposition, and navigate tensions and opportunities. Co-productive agility opens up multiple pathways to transformation through: (1) elevating marginalized agendas in ways that maintain their integrity and broaden struggles for justice; (2) questioning dominant agendas by engaging with power in ways that challenge assumptions, (3) navigating conflicting agendas to actively transform interlinked paradigms, practices, and structures; (4) exploring diverse agendas to foster learning and mutual respect for a plurality of perspectives. We explore six process considerations that vary by these four pathways and provide a framework to enable agility in sustainability transformations. We argue that research and practice spend too much time closing down debate over different agendas for change – thereby avoiding, suppressing, or polarizing tensions, and call for more efforts to facilitate better interactions among different agendas

Co-productive agility and four collaborative pathways to sustainability transformations

Co-production, the collaborative weaving of research and practice by diverse societal actors, is argued to play an important role in sustainability transformations. Yet, there is still poor understanding of how to navigate the tensions that emerge in these processes. Through analyzing 32 initiatives worldwide that co-produced knowledge and action to foster sustainable social-ecological relations, we conceptualize ‘co-productive agility’ as an emergent feature vital for turning tensions into transformations. Co-productive agility refers to the willingness and ability of diverse actors to iteratively engage in reflexive dialogues to grow shared ideas and actions that would not have been possible from the outset. It relies on embedding knowledge production within processes of change to constantly recognize, reposition, and navigate tensions and opportunities. Co-productive agility opens up multiple pathways to transformation through: (1) elevating marginalized agendas in ways that maintain their integrity and broaden struggles for justice; (2) questioning dominant agendas by engaging with power in ways that challenge assumptions, (3) navigating conflicting agendas to actively transform interlinked paradigms, practices, and structures; (4) exploring diverse agendas to foster learning and mutual respect for a plurality of perspectives. We explore six process considerations that vary by these four pathways and provide a framework to enable agility in sustainability transformations. We argue that research and practice spend too much time closing down debate over different agendas for change – thereby avoiding, suppressing, or polarizing tensions, and call for more efforts to facilitate better interactions among different agendas

Can rewards for environmental services benefit the poor? Lessons from Asia

Pro-poor rewards for environmental services (RES) link global priorities on poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. Emerging approaches to payment for environmental services vary in mechanism and form of payment. Rural poverty is multidimensional and the poverty syndromes vary with the intensity of landscape use and management, with the solution to lack of access to markets, education and healthcare associated with loss of natural capital. RES mechanisms have to balance effectiveness and efficiency with fairness and pro-poor characteristics, with transaction costs as obstacles to both. The economic perspective on financial transfers needs to be balanced with the social and environmental paradigms of fairness. Our first hypothesis is that only under specific circumstances, actual cash incentive to individual participants of RES will contribute substantially to poverty alleviation of ES providers. The second hypothesis is that non-financial incentive to ES providers will contribute to reducing poverty by linking the community (participants and non-participants) to access to capital types (human, social/political, natural, infrastructure and financial, such as microcredit). Review of key ratios of relative number and wealth of service providers and beneficiaries supports the first hypothesis and rejects the notion of widespread potential for reducing upstream rural poverty through individual cash payments. Results of community focus group discussions support the second hypothesis through context-specific preferences for the mechanisms by which RES can trigger conditions for sustainable developmen

A Revealed Preference Approach to Estimating Supply Curves for Ecosystem Services: Use of Auctions to Set Payments for Soil Erosion Control in Indonesia

To supply ecosystem services, private landholders incur costs. Knowledge of these costs is critical for the design of conservation-payment programs. Estimating these costs accurately is difficult because the minimum acceptable payment to a potential supplier is private information. We describe how an auction of payment contracts can be designed to elicit this information during the design phase of a conservation-payment program. With an estimate of the ecosystem-service supply curve from a pilot auction, conservation planners can explore the financial, ecological, and socioeconomic consequences of alternative scaled-up programs. We demonstrate the potential of our approach in Indonesia, where soil erosion on coffee farms generates downstream ecological and economic costs. Bid data from a small-scale, uniform-price auction for soil-conservation contracts allowed estimates of the costs of a scaled-up program, the gain from integrating biophysical and economic data to target contracts, and the trade-offs between poverty alleviation and supply of ecosystem services. Our study illustrates an auction-based approach to revealing private information about the costs of supplying ecosystem services. Such information can improve the design of programs devised to protect and enhance ecosystem service

Transport ferroviaire de passagers : la concurrence « sur le marché » s’installe en Europe

La concurrence est au coeur de la feuille de route de l’Union européenne (UE) dans le champ des transports. C’est aujourd’hui une réalité qui a profondément transformé le transport aérien à la suite de la libéralisation progressive mise en place entre 1987 et 1997. Les compagnies low cost détenaient plus de 30 % du marché européen avant l’épidémie de Covid, un chiffre en augmentation ensuite. Dans les transports terrestres de passagers, la libéralisation du transport routier est intervenue dès les années 1990 en Grande-Bretagne ou en Suède, mais tardivement dans des pays comme l’Allemagne (2013) ou la France (2015). Pour le ferroviaire, l’ouverture à la concurrence s’est faite dès les années 1990 (Suède, Grande-Bretagne, Allemagne…) mais principalement sous la forme d’appels d’offre, de concurrence « pour le marché ». Les cas de concurrence « sur le marché », deux opérateurs ou plus se trouvant sur une même relation, sont restés des exceptions peu probantes. Or le paysage est en train de changer. Comme nous allons le voir dans un premier temps, plusieurs pays européens ont expérimenté l’open access ferroviaire pour les passagers et de nouvelles entrées sur le marché sont attendues dans les années qui viennent. Il est donc possible de dresser un bilan en observant les impacts pour les passagers (prix, fréquence, confort…) mais aussi pour les opérateurs et les gestionnaires de réseau. Les tendances perçues étant conformes à ce qu’enseigne l’économie de la concurrence, il est envisageable d’en déduire ce qui va se passer en France où la compétition vient de s’engager entre la SNCF et Trenitalia, en attendant l’arrivée de la Renfe, et d’autres