Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru

We estimate the effects of Peru’s oldest watershed payments for environmental services (PES) initiative in Moyobamba (Andes–Amazon transition zone) and disentangle the complex intervention into its two main forest conservation treatments. First, a state-managed protected area (PA) was established, a...

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Autores principales: Montoya Zumaeta, J.G., Rojas, E., Wunder, Sven
Formato: Journal Article
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10568/112215
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author Montoya Zumaeta, J.G.
Rojas, E.
Wunder, Sven
author_browse Montoya Zumaeta, J.G.
Rojas, E.
Wunder, Sven
author_facet Montoya Zumaeta, J.G.
Rojas, E.
Wunder, Sven
author_sort Montoya Zumaeta, J.G.
collection Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (CGSpace)
description We estimate the effects of Peru’s oldest watershed payments for environmental services (PES) initiative in Moyobamba (Andes–Amazon transition zone) and disentangle the complex intervention into its two main forest conservation treatments. First, a state-managed protected area (PA) was established, allowing sustainable use but drastically limiting de facto land use and land rights of households in the upper watershed through command-and-control interventions. Second, a subset of those environmentally regulated households also received incentives: PES-like voluntary contracts with conditional in-kind rewards, combined with access to participation in sustainable income-generating activities of the integrated conservation and development project (ICDP) type. To evaluate impacts, we perform matching procedures and adjustment regressions to obtain the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) of each intervention. We investigate impacts on plot-level forest cover and household welfare for the period 2010–2016. We find that both treatments—command-and-control restrictions and the incentive package—modestly but significantly mitigated primary forest loss. Incentive-induced conservation gains came at elevated per-hectare implementation costs. We also find positive effects on incentive-treated households’ incomes and assets; however, their self-perceived wellbeing counterintuitively declined. We hypothesise that locally frustrated beneficiary expectations vis-a-vis the ambitiously designed PES-cum-ICDP intervention help explain this surprising finding. We finalise with some recommendations for watershed incentives and policy mix design in Moyobamba and beyond.
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spelling CGSpace1122152024-06-26T09:37:55Z Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru Montoya Zumaeta, J.G. Rojas, E. Wunder, Sven conservation ecosystem services watershed management We estimate the effects of Peru’s oldest watershed payments for environmental services (PES) initiative in Moyobamba (Andes–Amazon transition zone) and disentangle the complex intervention into its two main forest conservation treatments. First, a state-managed protected area (PA) was established, allowing sustainable use but drastically limiting de facto land use and land rights of households in the upper watershed through command-and-control interventions. Second, a subset of those environmentally regulated households also received incentives: PES-like voluntary contracts with conditional in-kind rewards, combined with access to participation in sustainable income-generating activities of the integrated conservation and development project (ICDP) type. To evaluate impacts, we perform matching procedures and adjustment regressions to obtain the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) of each intervention. We investigate impacts on plot-level forest cover and household welfare for the period 2010–2016. We find that both treatments—command-and-control restrictions and the incentive package—modestly but significantly mitigated primary forest loss. Incentive-induced conservation gains came at elevated per-hectare implementation costs. We also find positive effects on incentive-treated households’ incomes and assets; however, their self-perceived wellbeing counterintuitively declined. We hypothesise that locally frustrated beneficiary expectations vis-a-vis the ambitiously designed PES-cum-ICDP intervention help explain this surprising finding. We finalise with some recommendations for watershed incentives and policy mix design in Moyobamba and beyond. 2019-11-20 2021-03-08T08:21:40Z 2021-03-08T08:21:40Z Journal Article https://hdl.handle.net/10568/112215 en Open Access Public Library of Science Montoya-Zumaeta, J., Rojas, E., Wunder, S. 2019. Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru. PLoS ONE, 14 (11) : e0225367. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225367
spellingShingle conservation
ecosystem services
watershed management
Montoya Zumaeta, J.G.
Rojas, E.
Wunder, Sven
Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru
title Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru
title_full Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru
title_fullStr Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru
title_full_unstemmed Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru
title_short Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru
title_sort adding rewards to regulation the impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in moyobamba peru
topic conservation
ecosystem services
watershed management
url https://hdl.handle.net/10568/112215
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