Browsing by Author "Kerr, John"

Now showing 1 - 17 of 17
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    Alternatives to PES for securing delivery of environmental services
    Kerr, John; Jindal, Rohit (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Introduction: Environmental services can be thought of simply as positive externalities: benefits that accrue to people who do not pay for them, supplied by people who are not compensated for doing so. This helps explain why environmental services are often undersupplied and why there is interest in developing mechanisms to secure their delivery.
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    Basic principles of PES
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Over the last decade, several schemes have evolved in which those who are seen as providers of useful environmental services receive payments from the service buyers (service beneficiaries or 'users'). Known as Payments for Environmental Services (PES), these approaches constitute a new frontier in conservation and sustainable development efforts. Valid questions that arise here are: What is so new about PES, and what makes it special? We answer these questions by discussing why it is generally difficult to encourage natural resource users to provide environmental services and the relative merits of PES compared with other approaches to promote conservation.
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    Buyers, sellers, intermediaries
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Introduction: Most PES transactions involve three distinct stakeholder groups: buyers, sellers, and intermediaries. Each of these groups can consist of individuals, organizations, even governments. This brief summarizes important characteristics of these groups, including their motivations to enter into a PES transaction.
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    Impact evaluation of PES programs
    Kerr, John; Jindal, Rohit (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    PES has many attractive characteristics relative to other conservation approaches provided that transaction costs are low and other favorable conditions apply (see sections 2 and 3 of this Sourcebook). However, ascertaining PES's advantages requires measuring the effect of actual programs in the field. Such impact evaluation can also help in identifying opportunities for further improvements in efficiency of these programs and looking out for other environmental services that can find ready markets.
  • Indigenous soil and water conservation in India's semi-arid tropics
    Kerr, John; Sanghi, N. K. (London, UK: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 1992)
    Soil erosion is a problem that imposes both on- and off-farm costs. As soil erodes, valuable moisture and nutrients are lost, and the topsoil becomes increasingly shallow. The decline in yields that results is a private cost borne by farmers. Off the farm, downstream rivers and lakes become silted, shortening the productive lives of dams and other man-made structures. Soil particles can also transport pesticide residues, poisoning water supplies downstream. These are costs to society, but not necessarily to farmers.
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    Payments and conditionality
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    PES programs are based on the principle that land users who provide useful environmental services should receive payments from people who consume these services. These payments, also referred to as rewards or compensation, as discussed below, can be made for reducing environmental threats (foregoing land use that is detrimental to downstream communities) or for investing in new land-use practices that create positive benefits for downstream communities. PES is distinct among incentive-based conservation approaches because it provides direct inducements to service providers, conditional on continued provision of the service. Directness implies that payments or other economic benefits are directly targeted to provision of the service.
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    Payments for biodiversity conservation
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    PES schemes provide direct and conditional incentives to land users to adopt biodiversity-friendly practices. The push for such payment schemes comes not only from increased recognition of the role played by biodiversity in ecosystem functioning but also from heightened awareness of the fragility of most ecosystems. However, not all payment schemes secure the same service. Some payments are made to gain private access to particular species or habitats, while others are for buying or leasing development rights under either land lease schemes or tradable development rights systems.
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    Payments for bundled services
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Any ecosystem provides several kinds of environmental services at the same time. As we know, a tropical forest sequesters carbon, provides watershed services, is aesthetically beautiful, and conserves biodiversity. Selling only a few environmental services may not cover the opportunity cost of conserving the entire ecosystem. Instead, conservationists may need to organize payments for as many environmental services as possible. However, this will increase the transaction costs associated with selling each service individually. The solution may lie in bundling these services and selling them as a single product.
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    Payments for carbon sequestration services
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Excerpt from Introduction: "Carbon sequestration - the process of removing excess carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and storing it on land - helps mitigate global warming. Various land-use changes (no-till agriculture, grasslands) can absorb or sequester carbon. For instance, when barren lands are converted to forest, growing trees sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and store it as woody biomass and soil organic matter. Conversely, when mature forests are replaced by croplands, a large amount of CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
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    Payments for scenic beauty
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Although payments for scenic beauty are older than payment schemes for most other environmental services, scenic beauty itself is hard to define. It often encompasses a range of environmental services for consumptive (hunting, fishing) or non-consumptive (bird watching, boating) use.
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    Payments for watershed services
    Kerr, John; Jindal, Rohit (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    A watershed is an area that drains to a common point, making it a useful unit for managing water resources. The key characteristic of watersheds, from a human perspective, is that water generally flows downhill, so that upstream land uses affect downstream conditions through hydrological linkages. All over the world, watershed management efforts aim to influence this upstream-downstream relationship. They do so by encouraging upstream land-use practices that are consistent with maintaining the watershed so that it yields water that is unpolluted, low in sediment, buffered against flash floods, and with minimal fluctuations in dry-season and groundwater flows (Swallow et al., 2004). Local conditions determine what is possible and how best to achieve it. The basic scientific challenge in managing watersheds is to understand how upstream land-use practices affect natural resource conditions downstream, while the basic socioeconomic problem is to encourage people in an upper watershed to adopt those practices even though the benefits will accrue downstream ' in other words, how to encourage them to deliver this environmental service.
  • Payments for Watershed Services in Asia: A review of current initiatives
    Huang, M.; Upadhyaya, S. K.; Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Taylor & Francis, 2009)
    This paper evaluates 15 current Payment for Watershed Services (PWS) schemes in Asia, most of which are just beginning. High population density and the legal context of state control of most land are significant factors in Asia that may be barriers to PWS development. The reviewed PWS programs are in China, Nepal, Vietnam, the Philippines, India, and Indonesia.
  • PES design and policy issues: Part I
    Kerr, John; Jindal, Rohit (2007)
    This presentation discusses:
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    Policies and institutions: Enabling factors for PES
    Kerr, John; Jindal, Rohit (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Introduction: This brief examines policy and institutional issues that are important for PES. It addresses various aspects of the local policy environment, institutional issues related to property rights, collective action, and issues of public sentiments and norms that may influence the feasibility of a PES approach.
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    Securing environmental services and alleviating poverty
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Introduction: PES programs can have a significant impact on the poor. This is because potential service providers often constitute poor land users who depend directly on the local resource base for their livelihoods. Payments for securing useful environmental services potentially represent an opportunity to improve the economic well being of the poor who provide services. PES literature often highlights the potential compatibility between environmental conservation and poverty alleviation, so much so that some organizations now consider PES primarily as a tool for reducing poverty.
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    Transaction costs
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Introduction: Transaction costs are the costs of negotiating, contracting, implementing, and monitoring a PES program. They include all costs borne by a PES program other than those of actually producing an environmental service (such as investment in new land-use practices). These costs include not only monetary but also non-monetary costs, such as time expended by various program participants. Transaction costs can be divided into two broad categories: (1) ex ante or initial costs of achieving an agreement, and (2) ex post or costs of implementing an agreement once it is in place. The specifics under each of these categories can vary by case. In general, PES programs face costs related to searching for program partners, negotiating contracts, obtaining necessary approval, monitoring program activities, complying with contractual agreements, and insuring against the failure to secure the environmental service.
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    Valuing environmental services
    Jindal, Rohit; Kerr, John (Blacksburg, VA: SANREM CRSP, OIRED, Virginia Tech, 2007)
    Payments for environmental services usually signal the value that service users attach to them or the opportunity cost for land users to provide the same. The absence of markets for most environmental services makes it difficult to estimate a payment structure acceptable to both parties. For instance, an ecosystem may provide several kinds of environmental services, with only a few being valuable to service users. Similarly, opportunity costs for service providers will depend on the specific land uses they are asked to adopt. Therefore, an ad hoc payment structure will rarely work in the long run. Instead, PES programs must conduct careful analysis to estimate values of the environmental services they are going to secure. In some cases, like carbon sequestration, it is becoming to use actual market values as those markets come into being. Where there are no markets, methods to estimate value include: 1) imputing the value of the environmental service from observable phenomena; 2) using the survey-based approach known as contingent valuation to estimate buyers' willingness to pay (WTP) for a service and sellers' willingness to accept (WTA) compensation in return for providing a service, and 3) using auctions to identify actual WTP and WTA. Several techniques can be used to conduct these experiments, which are part of a growing field in economics called non-market valuation.