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Parties to small claims disputes at the Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) have the option to file a Notice of Objection to the CRT decision. This Notice of Objection makes CRT decision void and unenforceable, and provides the parties the opportunity to re-litigate the matter via de novo trial at provincial court. This paper tracks all CRT small claims decisions that were objected in a 12 month period, and using Richard Susskind’s categories of justice, attempts to determine whether the Notice of Objection is a justice enhancing mechanism. The results show that 36.8% of claims that were objected to never even began the process of re-litigating with the provincial court. Filing the claim with the provincial court increased the time the litigants spent interacting with the judicial system by an average of 7.2 months, and never resulted in a ruling that fully overturned the CRT’s decision. The empirical research shows that the NoO mechanism is not a justice-enhancing mechanism for CRT small claims litigants. The NoO mechanism should therefore be removed, and small claims should be subject to judicial review, bringing them in line with the rest of the CRT claims.

Chimpanzees, like all great ape species, have experienced a dramatic decline in global numbers during the past decades. The degradation, fragmentation and loss of suitable habitat impede chimpanzee movements, reducing the potential for dispersal and thus population viability. In Tanzania, 90% of the 2000–3000 remaining chimpanzees are found within the Greater Mahale Ecosystem (GME), the majority of which live at low densities outside of national park boundaries. Recent genetic analyses have identified potential boundaries between the northern and southern populations of the GME. Using landscape connectivity modelling, we aimed to clarify population connectivity across this vast ecosystem (>20,000 km2) and assess change over time. We developed habitat suitability models to create an index of habitat selection by chimpanzees and mapped connectivity using circuit theory. Our results suggest that, in recent history (1973), the entire ecosystem was linked by a series of corridors showing a high likelihood of chimpanzee movement. Our analysis also reveals a reduction of connectivity by 2017 impacting the two corridors linking the northern and southern GME. When projected to 2027, areas contributing to connectivity are predicted to continue to decline, threatening all available corridors between the northern and southern GME. By modelling connectivity across time, we were able to identify key areas to focus conservation efforts to maintain population viability within the largest chimpanzee population in Tanzania.

Over the past decade, the Brazilian federal government has offered a negative collective incentive to reduce deforestation by ‘blacklisting’ the municipalities in the Amazon with the highest deforestation rates. As for any unfunded mandate, the responses to blacklisting depend on both local incentives and local capacities. We evaluate a state program − Programa Municipios Verdes (PMV) or the Green Municipality Program – to increase the capacity of municipal governments in the state of Para to respond to this federal incentive. The PMV is voluntary, as municipal governments choose whether to participate. To control for differences due to self-selection into the program, we employ quasi-experimental methods: two-way, fixed-effects regressions in matched samples of municipalities; and the synthetic control method that compares outcomes in a participating municipality to outcomes in a weighted blend of control municipalities. Neither approach suggests that the PMV reduced deforestation beyond the effect of the blacklist. We hypothesize that municipalities joined the PMV to ameliorate the costs of complying with blacklist requirements, including the costs of exiting the blacklist. We show that the PMV increased total value added – with substantial heterogeneity - in participating blacklisted municipalities, and that these gains likely are not due to agricultural intensification. They may result from reductions in compliance risk and cost that make economic investments in a municipality more appealing. In the long run, this could make forest conservation more socially and politically sustainable.