PRESA

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Incentives for sustaining ecosystem services in
multi-functional landscapes a pentagon of
research questions for the World Agroforestry
Centre
Brent Swallow Principal Economist and Global
Coordinator, ASB Partnership for the Tropical
Forest Margins
Presentation to Frontiers in Sustainable
Development Speaker Series, Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University, Tuesday May 6,
2008
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Overview of presentation

1. Global challenges and opportunities for
   establishing and maintaining incentives for
   multi-functional landscapes
2. Defining research questions
3. Projects and some collaboration possibilities

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Challenges

1. (Rapidly) increasing market demand for food, fuel
   and fiber (provisioning ES)
2. Regulating and support services in general
   decline and increased latent demand
3. Inappropriate and poorly enforced regulations and
   rights
4. Desire for simple policy solutions leads to
   simplistic understanding of cause-effect

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Challenges
Opportunities

• Decentralization of authority for NRM (within
  govt, to corporations, consumers, NGOs)
• Greater penetration of markets and private sector
  into utility sectors
• PES part of a global trend toward flexible
  environmental policies
• 4. Interest in REDD for mitigating climate
  change, while maintaining resilience and options
  (even in the US!!)

1. (Rapidly) increasing market demand for food, fuel
   and fiber (provisioning ES)
2. Regulating and support services in general
   decline and increased latent demand
3. Inappropriate and poorly enforced regulations and
   rights
4. Desire for simple policy solutions leads to
   simplistic understanding of cause-effect

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Incentives as compensation and reward for
sustaining ecosystem services valued by off-site
beneficiaries
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Overarching Context
Conservation and Reduced Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation
Tree Density (on farm / off-farm)
Public or collective forest management
On-farm afforestation / agroforestry
Population, Market opportunities
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Pentagon of Defining Research Questions
Realistic
Questions / Hypotheses
Sustainability
Efficiency
Acceptability
Poverty
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Realistic / effective
Q1. What are the critical spaces in watersheds
and mixed-use landscapes where on-farm land use
has greatest off-farm effects (eg riverine
areas)? Q2. What are likely time paths of
landscape degradation and restoration (lags,
hysteresis effects)? Q3. What elements of
agroforestry and other land use systems are most
important for landscape function (eg anchoring
and binding for landslide risk)?
Ulugurus, Tanzania
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Efficiency
Q1. Are there strong negative incentives for
farmers to practice good environmental
stewardship or the private sector to invest in
ecosystem services (eg rural taxation, monopoly
on power supply)? Q2. What are the strongest
elements of the business case for investment in
ecosystem management (compliance, reputation,
market niche, cost)? Q3. What is the
possibility of using reverse auction approaches
for countering problems of asymmetric
information?
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Acceptability / Fairness
Q1. How does the form of conditional payment
affect their acceptance in local communities (eg.
property rights, monetary payments, public
services) Q2. What are the tradeoffs between
fairness and efficiency in geographic and social
targeting of positive incentives / payments (eg
case of REDD in Indonesia)? Q3. Do mechanisms
with positive incentives undermine social norms
of responsible behavior?
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Sustainability

• Q1. Under what conditions will payments for
  environmental services lead to sustainable
  improvements in ecosystem stewardship?
• new norms of acceptable behavior
• Increased uptake of new technologies
• equity investment by beneficiaries
• new forms of livelihood that reduce pressure
• growth in markets for products consistent with
  sustainability

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Poverty

• Q1. What combination of actions on negative and
  positive incentives are most likely to meet one
  of four levels of propoor
• Doesnt harm the poor
• More than offsets harm to the poor
• Fairly includes the poor or
• Differentially benefits the poor.
• Q2. Does the exclusion of socially-marginalized
  people undermine the effectiveness and
  sustainability of mechanisms?
• Q3. Are mechanisms that involve voluntary
  engagement in labour-intensive enterprises most
  likely to differentially benefit the poor (eg
  reverse auctions for conservation investment)?

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Projects and Collaboration Opportunities
Propoor Rewards for Environmental Services in
Africa
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RUPES Rewarding the Upland Poor for
Environmental Services

• Active since 2002 with support from IFAD, EU,
  USAID, NSF and other donors
• Network of field sites and country engagement
  across Southeast and South Asia
• Action Research with a variety of strategic and
  boundary partners
• A number of tools, methods and boundary objects
• Collaborative research with Sustainability
  Science on
• K2A and boundary spanning
• Reverse auctions for allocating conservation
  contracts
• New phase starting in late 2008

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RUPES Action Research Sites Areas of Interest
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PRESA Propoor Rewards for Environmental
Services in Africa

• Builds on RUPES experience
• 3 levels of activity
• Site-level engagement with partners
• Policy and private sector engagement
• Community of practice
• Funded by IFAD, EU, UNEP, World Bank Finland
  for 2008 to 2011

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PRESA SITES
MALAWI
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ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins

• Began in 1994
• Network of international and national
  organizations known for sound comparative studies
  across the margins of the humid tropical forests
  (11 core members plus 70 others)
• Global Coordination Unit at the World
  Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi and
  regional coordination for SE Asia, Africa and the
  Amazon

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ASB Research Questions about Reduced Emissions
from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD)

• Transaction costs and roles of different levels
• How changes in commodity markets will change
  incentives for land use change at the tropical
  forest margins
• Need for REDD mechanisms to be efficient, fair,
  adaptive and consistent with sustainable
  development pathways
• How context defines the right mix of Rs
  regulations, rights, rewards

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More information
www.worldagroforestry.org/sea/networks/rupes
www.worldagroforestry.org/cres
www.asb.cgiar.org