Does Eco-Certification Have Environmental Benefits?
Organic certification in Costa Rica improves coffee growers’ environmental performance
Central America
Don’t Tell Me What to Do, Tell Me Who to Follow! Field Experiment Evidence on Voluntary Donations
The authors conducted a field experiment in a protected area to explore the effects of conformity to a social reference versus a comparable, but imposed, suggested donation. By keeping the intrinsic valuation of the good constant, they were able to explore the effect of these two treatments on self image.
The Evidence Base for Environmental and Socioeconomic Impacts of “Sustainable” Certification
Initiatives certifying that farms and firms adhere to predefined environmental and social welfare production standards are increasingly popular. According to proponents, they create financial incentives for farms and firms to improve their environmental and socioeconomic performance. This paper reviews the evidence on whether sustainable certification of agricultural commodities and tourism operations actually has such benefits.
The Environment for Development Initiative Activity Report 2007-2009
The Environment for Development initiative started in 2007 and this is the report for the first three-year period.
Paying the Price of Sweetening Your Donation: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment
Using a natural field experiment in a recreational site, a public good almost fully dependent on voluntary donations, the authors explored the crowding-out effect of gift rewards. First, they investigated whether receiving a map in appreciation of a donation crowded out prosocial behavior and found no significant effect of giving the map. Second, they explored the effect of adding the map to a treatment designed to increase donations. Interestingly, when the gift was combined with their attempt to trigger reputational and self image motives, the probability of donating decreased significantly, compared to the social reference treatment alone.
Research-policy dialogue improves drinking water management
“To do high-quality research, you need to find out what policy makers need and nurture the interaction,” says Maria Angelica Naranjo, EfD researcher in Central America. Her research colleagues Roger Madrigal and Francisco Alpízar are exploring why some Costa Rican communities are successful in drinking water management while others are not. Policy makers and local communities are already using some of the researchers’ recommendations to bring change.
Research helps save Costa Rica’s beaches
Unplanned, aggressive coastal development is threatening beautiful beaches. To help address one of Costa Rica’s most serious environmental problems, researchers from the Environment for Development initiative (EfD) are evaluating the performance and impact of a voluntary environmental regulation and certification initiative called the Blue Flag Ecological Program.
The effects of national parks on local communities’ wages and employment in Costa Rica
Despite of the clear global environmental benefits of increasing the amount of protected areas, how these conservation policies affect the well being of individuals in nearby localities is still under debate. Using household surveys with highly disaggregated geographic reference, this study explores how national parks have affected wages and unemployment in Costa Rica for the period 2000-2007.
Trade and Deforestation: A literature review
In this paper, we investigate what the literature has found by analyzing the relationship between trade liberalization and deforestation
Determinants of Performance of Drinking-Water Community Organizations: A Comparative Analysis of Case Studies in Rural Costa Rica
The authors examine the performance of community organizations that provide safe drinking water in rural Costa Rica.
Conservation Policies and Labor Markets: Unraveling the Effects of National Parks on Local Wages in Costa Rica
Using household surveys with highly disaggregated geographic reference, the authors explored how national parks affect local wages in Costa Rica and how effects on local welfare can be positive or negative in different parks or even within different areas of a park.
Sectorial Analysis and findings: Agriculture
The chapter explores the links between ecosystem services (ES) and agricultural productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)
Importance of biodiversity and ecosystems in economic growth and equity in Latin America and the Caribbean: An economic valuation of ecosystems
Part of the UNDP Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean: A biodiversity super power.
EfD fellow leads Costa Rican negotiating team at COP15
Research Fellow Alvaro Umaña is the Head and Political Coordinator of the Costa Rican Negotiating Team at Copenhagen.
To trade or Not to Trade: A Firm-Level Analysis of Emissions Trading in Santiago, Chile
The authors surveyed firms participating in emissions trading programs in Santiago, Chile, to explore further whether tradable permits are appropriate for transition and developing economies. Their survey information revealed serious implementation and design flaws in Chile’s trading, but they are not more severe than the EU or U.S. systems. Countries with similar income levels and institutional maturity as Chile should be able to develop well-functioning permit trading schemes.
Fuel Tax Incidence in Developing Countries: The Case of Costa Rica
Although fuel taxes are a practical means of curbing vehicular air pollution, congestion, and accidents in developing countries—all of which are typically major problems—they are often opposed on distributional grounds.
Taxes, Permits, and the Adoption of Abatement Technology under Imperfect Compliance
The authors analyze how price-based and quantity-based emissions regulations affect compliance incentives and social welfare with incomplete enforcement and technology adoption.
Conservación para el desarrollo (Spanish only)
En Costa Rica los parques nacionales generan bienestar a las comunidades vecinas
Temas pendientes en la gobernabilidad hídrica (Spanish only)
Las organizaciones comunales de abastecimiento de agua y saneamiento en Costa Rica
Rendición de cuentas y participación comunitaria en la provisión de agua potable (Spanish only)
La efectividad de una política de descentralización depende de muchos factores y no puede ser concebida como una panacea para solventar los problemas de provisión de agua potable en todos los contextos.
Essays on the Political Economy of Transport Regulation in Costa Rica
The general objective of the thesis is to analyze the political economy of the regulation of Costa Rica’s transport sector and identify the main opportunities and challenges in designing a more integrated regulatory approach for the sector.
Distributional equity of fuel tax in Costa Rica
Perhaps current prices of fossil fuels are the reflection of the hurricane's eye passing through the global markets. Before exorbitant oil prices again steal all the attention, it is important to analyze our policies on public and private transport management in general. And in particular fuel tax policies, which is here discussed by Francisco Alpizar, Rebecca Osakwe and Allen Blackman.
Fuel tax incidence in developing countries: the case of Costa Rica
Policy makers in developing countries need to balance an array of distributional, political, fiscal and environmental goals in deciding whether to raise fuel taxes. Our analysis demonstrates that distributional concerns need not trump competing goals.
Mapping success in protecting forests
For Costa Rica’s parks and reserves, a threatened location is the key to effectively avoiding deforestation
Voluntary Environmental Regulation in Developing Countries: Mexico’s Clean Industry Program
Because conventional command-and-control environmental regulation often performs poorly in developing countries, policymakers are increasingly experimenting with alternatives, including state-sponsored voluntary regulatory programs that provide incentives, but not mandates, for pollution control.
EfD-CA works with The Nature Conservancy in Costa Rica
EfD-CA's research fellows are estimating a cost base structure for the allocation of service concessions and non-essential activities within the protected wilderness areas.
The Effect of Risk, Ambiguity, and Coordination on Farmers´Adaptation to Climate Change: A Framed Field Experiment
The authors used a framed field experiment with coffee farmers in Costa Rica after tropical storm Alma to explore how farmers react to different levels of risk to income and productive means from extreme weather under measurable and unmeasurable uncertainty. They also examined whether investment costs to reduce vulnerability exhibit economies of scope.
Conditional Cooperation and Social Group: Experimental Results from Colombia
There is growing interest in understanding whether behavior is the same across locations. By holding cross- and within-country dimensions constant (in contrast to previous studies on cross-group comparisons of conditional cooperation), the authors investigated cooperative behavior between social groups in the same location. Their results reveal significantly different cooperation behavior, suggesting that different social groups exhibit differences both in terms of composition of types and extent of conditional cooperation.
Alternative Pollution Control Policies in Developing Countries: Informal, Informational, and Voluntary
In developing countries, weak environmental regulatory institutions often undermine conventional command-and-control policies. As a result, these countries are increasingly experimenting with alternative approaches that aim to leverage nonregulatory “green” pressures applied by local communities, capital markets, and consumers. This article reviews three strands of the empirical literature on this trend.
Payments for Environmental Services: Empirical analysis for Costa Rica
Location Affects Protection: Observable Characteristics Drive Park Impacts in Costa Rica
Quality of Life in Urban Neighborhoods in Costa Rica
Unintended Impacts of Multiple Instruments on Technology Adoption
This paper analyzes unintended impacts of the interaction of multiple environmental policy instruments, specifically, the effects of tradable permits and seasonal direct regulations on adoption rates of advanced abatement technologies.
User Financing in a National Payments for Environmental Services Program: Costa Rican Hydropower
National government-funded payments for environmental services (PES) programs often lack sustainable financing and fail to target payments to providers of important environmental services. In principle, these problems could be mitigated by replacing at least some government funding with direct contributions from individual environmental service users who have incentives to underwrite payments and who can ensure that they are targeted appropriately.
Strategies for adapting to climate change in Costa Rica
Read María A. Naranjo' opinion article (Estrategias de adaptación al cambio climático en Costa Rica) in "La Nación" (January 28th), related to the EfD Central America Project "Small Farmers' Determinants of Private Adaptation to Climate Change Strategies" (Spanish only).
Something more than building rural aqueducts
Read Francisco Alpizar’and Róger Madrigal’ opinion article (Algo más que construir acueductos rurales) in “La Nacion” (January 18th) associated with the EfD Central America Project: Decentralization in water resource management: exploring the determinants of success (Spanish only).
Tariffs for new renewable energy production in Costa Rica
The Costa Rican Regulatory Authority (ARESEP) seeks a new methodology to set the prices of electric power generation that uses renewable and alternative sources of energy.
Estrategias para adaptarse al cambio climático (Spanish only)
El caso de los productores de café en Costa Rica
Towards an integral policy for the transport sector
Read Francisco Alpizar’ opinion article (Política integral para el sector transporte) about an Integral Transport Policy for Costa Rica published at “La Nacion” (January 8th). (Spanish only)
Don’t Tell Me What to Do, Tell Me Who to Follow!
Results indicate that visitors look at the behavior of others in deciding if and how much to donate, but partially reject being told what to do. Also, as the social reference moves farther away from average behavior, its effect on the typical visitor is diminished, leading to lower and less frequent donations.
Agroforestry Price Supports as a Conservation Tool: Mexican Shade Coffee
Economic policies that boost profits from agroforesty, thereby creating financial incentives for land managers to favor these systems over less environmentally friendly land uses, could, in theory, have ancillary environmental benefits. This paper analyzes primary and secondary data to determine whether a voluntary price support program for Mexican coffee-mostly grown in shaded systems that supply important ecosystem services- has had such "win-win" benefits by stemming land-use change in the coffee sector.
Tradable Permits in Developing Countries: Evidence from Air Pollution in Santiago, Chile
Santiago was one of the first cities outside the OECD to implement a tradable permit program to control air pollution. This paper looks closely at the program’s performance over the past 10 years, stressing its similarities and discrepancies with trading programs in developed countries, and analyzing how it has reacted to regulatory adjustments and market shocks. Studying Santiago’s experience allows us to discuss the drawbacks and advantages of applying tradable permits in less developed countries.
Environmental Policy, Fuel Prices, and the Switch to Natural Gas in Santiago, Chile
The author analyzes the role of environmental policies and energy cost savings in the switch to natural gas by stationary sources in Chile. There is skepticism about using market-based policies (economic instruments) in the developing world—permit trading programs versus emissions fees. This paper produces new evidence of the role of environmental regulations and market forces in a successful air-quality improvement program in Chile, a less-developed country.
Taxes, Permits, and the Diffusions of a New Technology
The author looks at the effects of the choice between taxes and permits on the pattern of adoption of a new emissions abatement technology. The regulator determines the optimal ex-post amount of emissions before firms start to adopt the technology. Each firm decides when to adopt, considering benefits, costs, and advantage gained over their rivals, producing a sequence of adoption that is “diffused” into the industry over time.
Does Disclosure Reduce Pollution? Evidence from India's Green Rating Project
Public disclosure programs that collect and disseminate information about firms’ environmental performance are increasingly popular in both developed and developing countries. Yet little is known about whether they actually improve environmental performance, particularly in the latter setting.
Quality of Life in Urban Neighborhoods in Costa Rica
Research Fellows Juan Robalino and Roger Madrigal made an important contribution for the Inter-American Development Bank’s project called Quality of Life in Urban Neighborhoods in Costa Rica.
Land Cover Change in Mixed Agroforesty: Shade Coffee in El Salvador
Little is known about land cover change in mixed agroforestry systems, which often supply valuable ecological services. The authors use a spatial regression model to analyze clearing in El Salvador’s shade coffee–growing regions during the 1990s.
‘Contribute! You can make a difference!’
A nature field experiment and a choice experiment of the payment system of voluntary contribution. Evidence from Cahuita National Park in Costa Rica.
Deforestation Impacts of Environmental Services Payments – Costa Rica’s PSA Program 2000–2005
The authors estimated the deforestation impact of Costa Rica’s pioneering environmental services payments program (Pagos por Servicios Ambientales, or PSA) between 2000 and 2005. Despite finding that less than 1 in 100 of enrolled land parcels would have been deforested annually without payments, the program’s potential for impact was increased by explicitly targeting areas with deforestation pressure and increasing some payments to enroll land that would have been cleared.
Adaptative design and management of a payment for ecosystem services scheme in Copan Ruinas, Honduras
This article presents a case study of development of a Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program related to drinking water in the city of Copán Ruinas, Honduras. (Text in Spanish)