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This thesis consists of four papers focusing on the role of heterogeneity and uncertainty in the context of climate change policy and agricultural development. By using intra-household data, the first paper illustrates differences in spouses’ perception of climatic risks and its effect on household’s adoption of climate change adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa. In Kenya, female spouses’ perception of climatic risks increases the household’s likelihood of adopting climate adaptation strategies, whereas males’ perception has no statistically significant effects. The adoption of livestock-based strategies for climate change adaptation is positively associated with both female and male spouses’ perceptions of climatic risks in Uganda, whereas it has a negative relationship with females’ perception in Tanzania. Moreover, both male and female spouses’ perceptions of climatic risks have positive associations with households’ likelihood of adopting crop-based strategies for climate change adaptation in Uganda and Tanzania. The second paper assesses how the impacts of climate change vary across crops and across agro-ecosystems in Ethiopia using the household-level panel data. The empirical results show that climate change will induce an increase in coffee and teff yields at high altitudes while it will decrease coffee yield at low altitudes, and barley, maize, and wheat yield at high altitudes by the years 2041-2060. The third paper provides a systematic review of literature that uses a real-options approach for the analysis of investment in climate adaptation and mitigation actions. The review shows the need of future research incorporating climate uncertainty, risk preferences, and decisions-makers’ strategic interactions. The fourth paper models farmers’ opportunity to relocate coffee farms to higher altitudes in Ethiopia as climate adaptation strategy. The results illustrate how the uncertainty in net returns and high establishment costs may induce farmers to postpone their adaptation actions. The findings of papers presented in this thesis point to the need to take into account the differences in individual behaviours, vulnerabilities and uncertainties in designing climate and development policies.

1. Primary objectives of national parks usually include both, the protection of natural processes and species conservation. When these objectives conflict, as occurs because of the cascading effects of large mammals (i.e., ungulates and large carnivores) on lower trophic levels, park managers have to decide upon the appropriate management while considering various local circumstances. 2. To analyse if ungulate management strategies are in accordance with the objectives defined for protected areas, we assessed the current status of ungulate management across European national parks using the naturalness concept and identified the variables that influence the management. 3. We collected data on ungulate management from 209 European national parks in 29 countries by means of a large-scale questionnaire survey. Ungulate management in the parks was compared by creating two naturalness scores. The first score reflects ungulate and large carnivore species compositions, and the second evaluates human intervention on ungulate populations. We then tested whether the two naturalness score categories are influenced by the management objectives, park size, years since establishment, percentage of government-owned land, and human impact on the environment (human influence index) using two generalized additive mixed models. 4. In 67.9% of the national parks, wildlife is regulated by culling (40.2%) or hunting (10.5%) or both (17.2%). Artificial feeding occurred in 81.3% of the national parks and only 28.5% of the national parks had a nonintervention zone covering at least 75% of the area. Furthermore, ungulate management differed greatly among the different countries, likely because of differences in hunting traditions and cultural and political backgrounds. Ungulate management was also influenced by park size, human impact on the landscape, and national park objectives, but after removing these variables from the full model the reduced models only showed a small change in the deviance explained. In areas with higher anthropogenic pressure, wildlife diversity tended to be lower and a higher number of domesticated species tended to be present. Human intervention (culling and artificial feeding) was lower in smaller national parks and when park objectives followed those set by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 5. Our study shows that many European national parks do not fulfil the aims of protected area management as set by IUCN guidelines. In contrast to the USA and Canada, Europe currently has no common ungulate management policy within national parks. This lack of a common policy together with differences in species composition, hunting traditions, and cultural or political context has led to differences in ungulate management among European countries. To fulfil the aims and objectives of national parks and to develop ungulate management strategies further, we highlight the importance of creating a more integrated European ungulate management policy to meet the aims of national parks.

International audience; Payment for ecosystem services has become one of the most important conservation policy options worldwide. In developing countries, however, payments are often targeted toward communities instead of individuals. Nonetheless, there is little evidence for the effectiveness of different payment schemes in promoting proconservation behavior. We compare three payment schemes (community-based payments [CBP], equality-based individual payments [EBIP], and performance-based individual payments [PBIP]) using dynamic behavioral experiments with 450 participants in 34 Ugandan villages. We further assess the interplay of the payment schemes with stylized local organizations including communication, leadership, and external advice. We find that PBIP lead to better conservation outcomes than EBIP and CBP. Furthermore , PBIP outperform CBP under all tested conditions. Thus, our results provide important insights for the design of future incentive-based conservation interventions, and we underscore how our novel and low-cost approach can be used to increase the effectiveness of conservation policies.