Search

This chapter models migration decisions as joint individual and family decisions and develops a model in which family members can migrate on the condition that they remit more than they would have contributed as resident household member. The upper bound on remittances is set by their own net benefits after migration. The paper uses cross-sectional data collected in 2000 from northeast Ghana to investigate the effect of farm household population, family landholding and the perceived soil quality on migration and remittance decisions of members of the farm household in Northeast Ghana. Nested logit and Tobit models estimation techniques are employed. The empirical results confirm the negative effect that per-capita farmland size has on the probability of migration. More livestock sales coincide with fewer remittances. The core factors of the theoretical model could not be confirmed, however. Land quality appears to have no effect on migration or remittances. Local employment conditions help mitigate migration, however [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water allocations as well as water quality and health concerns are often due to inadequate policies and institutions, which pose major challenges for policy reform. The necessary ingredients of such reform include four elements: rules to improve the decision-making process about water projects, principles to improve water allocation, incentives for water conservation, and incentives to improve water quality. The paper shows that improved policies and incentives can address many of the global water problems and lead to environmental sustainability while addressing distributional issues. Some of the reforms may hurt the poor in the short run through higher water prices, but may provide them better access to water and reduce the toll of unsustainable water use in the long run. The direct and indirect implications of increasing prices of energy for water reforms are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty traps and resource degradation in the rural tropics appear to have multiple and complex, but similar, causes. Market imperfections, imperfect learning, bounded rationality, spillovers, coordination failures and economically dysfunctional institutions all play a role, to varying degrees in different places and times. Pinning down these mechanisms empirically remains a challenge, however, but one essential to the design of appropriate interventions for reducing poverty and environmental degradation in areas where livelihoods depend heavily on natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A transition from slash-and-burn farming to sustainable land use is essential for the prevention of poverty and the conservation of the rainforest in the Philippine uplands. The key of this transition is that farmers invest in the quality of their land, e.g., through terracing, contour bunding, irrigation facilities, agroforestry or tree plantation. In their turn, these investments depend on a variety of factors, such as the households' socioeconomic and agro-ecological conditions. This chapter presents an econometric analysis of the determinants of households' investments in land quality in the Philippines. A logit model of investments is formulated using the information generated from an in-depth household survey of 104 households randomly selected in four upland villages located in Luzon, Philippines at varying distance to the major markets of metropolis Manila. The findings show that older household heads have a higher probability of investing in land quality improvement. This is due to ‘lifecycle effects' on the part of the farmers since they accumulate capital and knowledge as they grow older. Household heads with more knowledge of soil and water conservation techniques, and households with additional, non-farming income are also more likely to invest in land improvements. Significant influence is also observed of village-level characteristics. Contrary to (neo-) Boserupian theory, population density did not appear to have an influence. Traditional upland policies tend to see farmers as destructive agents that must be forced towards sustainable agriculture - usually without much success. As suggested by the research results, many opportunities exist for policies that rather aim to reinforce and spread the positive actions that farmers are already carrying out spontaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of traditional informal institutions on the sustainable management of upland agricultural fields in indigenous communities of the northern Philippines. The estimated results from the case study suggest significant positive effects of a traditional reciprocal exchange-labour system and customary property rights restrictions on field maintenance activities, although the existence of traditional authority is not found to be significant. The results imply a continuing positive role for embedded customs in these communities, despite some evidences of decaying traditional institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of non-timber forest products (NTFP) in sustaining livelihood and poverty smoothening in rural communities, they are highly depleted and poorly conserved. Besides, conservation initiatives in Nigeria to date are rarely participatory. Even community forests, the main source of NTFP, are poorly conserved. Therefore, to enhance participatory conservation initiatives, this study determines the willingness of households in forest communities in the rainforest region of Nigeria to pay for systematic management of community forests using the contingent-valuation method. A multistage random-sampling technique was used in selecting 180 respondent households used for the study. The value-elicitation format used was discrete choice with open-ended follow-up questions. A Tobit model with sample selection was used in estimating the bid function. The findings show that some variables such as wealth category, occupation, number of years of schooling and number of females in a household positively and significantly influence willingness to pay. Gender (male-headed households), start price of the valuation, number of males in a household and distance from home to forests negatively and significantly influence willingness to pay. Incorporating these findings in initiatives to organize the local community in systematic management of community forests for NTFP conservation will enhance participation and hence poverty alleviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review many theoretical predictions that link poverty to deforestation and then examine poverty's net impact empirically using multiple observations of all of Costa Rica after 1960. Countrywide disaggregate (district-level) data facilitate analysis of both poverty's location and its impact on forest. If the characteristics of the places the poor live are not controlled for, then poverty's impact is confounded with differences between poorer and less poor areas and we find no significant effect of poverty. Using our data over space and time to control for effects of locations' differing characteristics, we find that the poorer are on land whose relative quality discourages forest clearing, such that with these controls the poorer areas are cleared more. The latter result suggests that poverty reduction aids the forest. For the poorest areas, this result is weaker but another effect is found: deforestation responds less to productivity, i.e., the poorest have less ability to expand or to reduce given land quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the possible economic consequences of the development of ecotourism on fishing communities of poor countries from two complementary points of view: an empirical survey of a case study, and a bioeconomic model. It is divided into three parts. The first part of the paper is dedicated to the case of the Saloum delta, Senegal, an area where demographic pressure and an agriculture crisis have led to a sharp increase in fishing effort resulting in overfishing, and where attempts have been made to provide alternative income to the local population through ecotourism. The second part of the paper presents a two-sector bioeconomic model, where the link between artisanal fishing and ecotourism relies on their common use of the same natural resource. According to this model, developing ecotourism may help to overcome the dilemma between the need for long-term resource conservation and the immediate necessity to provide jobs and income to the local population. However, due to the negative externality exerted by fishing on ecotourism, the model suggests that this development is likely to be non-optimal if it is left to the initiative of market forces. The last section of the paper discusses the practical significance of these conclusions, with reference to the Saloum delta case. It underlines the major limits of the model, including the assumed non-extractive character of ecotourism, and its lack of spatial dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Payment for environmental services (PES) is seen as a mechanism that can achieve two goals, providing poor resource managers with an additional source of income and maintaining environmental services. Although some reservations have been made on the effectiveness of PES of reaching the poor, similar reservations can be made about achieving the second goal. Because many environmental services are intangible, developing simple and straightforward indicators to measure and monitor the environmental service provided and linking these to the efforts supplied by the resource managers is difficult and costly. But establishing this link is crucial to those who are paying and ultimately for the success of the PES concept. By reviewing the literature on this topic and analysing in a systematic way what types of measurement problems there are, we will show that the type of monitoring that is required within a PES has consequences for the institutional arrangement needed for a successful PES. We find that the institutional arrangements for monitoring vary according to (i) the type of environmental service and its underlying production process; (ii) the extent to which the environmental service can be freely observed or measured; (iii) the extent to which activities of the resource managers who provide the environmental service can be freely observed; and finally (iv) the deterministic or stochastic nature of production processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]