
NSF Org: |
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences |
Recipient: |
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Initial Amendment Date: | July 15, 2015 |
Latest Amendment Date: | July 15, 2015 |
Award Number: | 1536302 |
Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
Program Manager: |
Thomas Baerwald
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
Start Date: | August 15, 2015 |
End Date: | January 31, 2018 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $15,994.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $15,994.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
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History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
845 N PARK AVE RM 538 TUCSON AZ US 85721 (520)626-6000 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
888 N Euclid Ave Tucson AZ US 85721-0001 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): | Geography and Spatial Sciences |
Primary Program Source: |
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Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
This doctoral dissertation research project will investigate the ability of conservation payments to achieve their intended goals of both improving ecosystem health and enhancing rural livelihoods. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are thought to influence conservation via payments to those who own or manage land. Many programs pay for services provided by forests, such as water filtration or carbon sequestration, or for management practices assumed to provide these services. Despite the rapid growth of hundreds of PES programs across the globe, there is little consensus regarding their development or conservation successes, leading many scholars, conservationists, and development practitioners to call for interdisciplinary investigations into these initiatives. This project will provide new insights regarding how PES initiatives affect forest and agricultural ecosystem health and also the lives and governance structures of rural participants. The project will test assumptions that incentivized activities or increased forest cover necessarily equate to improved ecosystem services and benefits to land users, because it will employ a quasi-experimental design that compares the actions of participants and non-participants to examine what might have occurred if PES interventions had not taken place. Project results will contribute new information and insights to discussions about the world's largest PES program, the United Nations' Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative, which is being implemented in developing nations across the globe, because studies of existing PES programs can inform the choices of potential participants and shape REDD+'s currently contested design. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.
The doctoral student will undertake a political ecological analysis of a PES program by exploring the connections between social and ecological systems in Guatemala and by linking local practices to international calls for conservation. She will use a mixed methods approach of semi-structured interviews, livelihood surveys, and forestry plots to determine how payments affect who makes forest management decisions; what decisions are made; benefits and costs associated with different forest uses; and impacts on ecosystem services. Comparisons across land tenure patterns, socioeconomic situations, and deforestation rates will illustrate what factors influence the ability of PES programs to achieve their goals. Focusing on the measureable ecosystem services of carbon capture and agrobiodiversity in conjunction with interviews and surveys, the student will examine assumptions that incentivized activities necessarily equate to improved ecosystem services and benefits to land users. She also will investigate the capacity for these programs to empower or dispossess rural communities by changing existing systems of governance and access to the benefits of land.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs are an emergent form of environmental governance that aim to provide motivation for environmental protection and, often, funds for local development. Many of these programs, which incentivize conservation activities through payments to those who own or manage land, focus on forested areas. Despite the rapid growth of hundreds of PES programs across the globe, there is little consensus on their development or conservation successes. This study explores how the financial valuation of nature through PES programs affects local livelihoods and ecological benefits of forests, using Guatemala’s national forestry incentive programs as a case study. These programs, known locally as PINFOR, PINPEP, and PROBOSQUE, pay rural Guatemalan land managers annually for reforestation or existing forest conservation. Specifically, this research investigates (1) changes in existing forest governance and management practices, as well as tensions that emerge through shifts in land use; (2) changes in access to land resources, including benefits and opportunity costs; and (3) changes in carbon storage potential. These questions are particularly pertinent in the Western Highlands of Guatemala where this study took place because many indigenous Maya groups maintain communal forests despite a history of state-sanctioned exploitation and expropriation (Elías et al., 2009).
Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the co-PI completed extensive participant observation at forest-related activities, over 120 semi-structured interviews with government officials, non-government organization employees, program participants, and neighboring non-participants, and 30 forestry plots assessing carbon capture on private and communal lands both receiving and not receiving incentive payments. Results indicate that the incentive programs have transitioned from a form of PES that acted as a timber subsidy to interventions more concerned with conservation and development needs among historically marginalized populations. These changes are significant in that indigenous groups and communal forest users have used the incentives as a platform to argue for state recognition of their conservation activities that provide benefits for others at multiple scales (local, national, and international). However, the benefits of the incentives are severely tempered by restrictions in enrollment due to the programs’ ties to land tenure (and thus linked to histories of dispossession) and the continued prioritization of incentives for large-scale landowners who hold legal titles in the national cadaster.
Carbon capture plots also revealed that communally-managed forests contain a significantly higher amount of carbon than private lands, and the presence or absence of an incentive payment is much less influential on carbon content than land tenure. This indicates the importance of utilizing the incentives to enhance, rather than harm, existing communal forest management techniques. Many indigenous communal forest user groups have fought to gain access to incentives, despite the programs’ requirements to comply with a state-sanctioned conception of property and forest management guidelines.
This project contributes to debates surrounding PES program design and outcomes through its innovative interdisciplinary approach that mixes both social and natural science methods. In particular, this research fills a gap by returning ecology to political ecological studies by connecting social systems to ecological shifts in carbon capture caused by these PES programs (Walker, 2005). The study additionally contributes the rarely heard voices of neighboring non-participants in PES programs and breaks down assumptions between an increase in protected forest cover and ecosystem system service provision. Results have been published and presented in both English and Spanish in the U.S. and Guatemala, with the intent of influencing Guatemalan program design and informing PES best practices globally. The results of the research become particularly pertinent as the United Nations’ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) expands across the globe, including in Guatemala.
Elías, S., Larson, A., Mendoza, J., 2009. Tenencia de la Tierra, Bosques y Medios de Vida en el Altiplano Occidental de Guatemala.
Walker, P.A., 2005. Political ecology: where is the ecology? Prog. Hum. Geogr. 29, 73–82. doi:10.1191/0309132505ph530pr
Last Modified: 03/14/2018
Modified by: Nicolena R Vonhedemann
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