Central America, as well as the rest of the Latin American and Caribbean region, relies heavily on its natural resources. Therefore, the EfD-CA lines of work are:
•Use of economic tools in the design of public policies for agriculture, water and ecosystem management
•Policy impact evaluation and economic valuation of natural resources and environmental management
•Architecture of financial instruments for climate change mitigation and adaptation
•Territorial and natural resource governance
•Green and inclusive value chains
•Decision-making processes for agricultural production and food, water and energy consumption at the family level
The following are our ongoing research projects:
The aim of this project is to contribute to the design of water demand management strategies related to water price and technology adoption for residential water consumption in urban areas with rapid population growth.
High school students are at risk: high temperatures decrease academic performance and daily school attendance. Can we mitigate these negative effects through better policies? This project proposes to answer this question by collecting and analyzing comparative data from Latin American countries and exploring the mechanisms under which existing public policies can mitigate the adverse effects of weather on schooling outcomes.
The main goal of this project is to test whether protected areas (PAs) reduce the likelihood of climate related disasters such as floods, landslides and storms, in Costa Rica and Honduras. This evaluation study is expected to provide empirical evidence on the role of PAs in providing hydrological services to avoid the occurrence and damages of floods and landslides as a consequence of extreme weather events.
While developed countries are increasing their reliance on renewable energy sources, low and middle-income countries maintain their energy matrix on conventional fuels and natural resources, increasing their energy dependency and unsustainable use of natural resources to respond to a growing population and emerging economy.
This study analyzes residential water demand by modeling both the effects of water prices and appliance portfolios selection on households’ water demands and welfare in the cities of San Jose and Addis Ababa. The results will be relevant inputs for the design of demand side water management policies.
The project will provide a multi-country comparative analysis of Community-based Water Organiszation (CWOs) and their determinants of adaptive capacity and performance based on rich empirical data (i.e. 3 developing countries, 160 CWO and 7,000 households).
The goal of this project is to determine how parks and other conservation policies might affect local welfare. We are interested in wages, employment of agricultural and non-agricultural activities, infrastructure and poverty rates.
This project develops a bio-economic model of sea turtle populations and egg/turtle harvest decisions as a basis for comparing across these various settings and approaches to sea turtle conservation and their impact on rural livelihoods.
Our goal is to learn about the Costa Rican experience from the inside, working closely with FONAFIFO staff to understand how they have sought to improve efficiency and to explore options for setting payment levels and targeting to increase efficiency, without missing the myriad of norms, rules, and other obstacles that program managers might face in the implementation of, for example, procurement auctions.
The present study aims to fill these gaps by estimating the economic benefits to tourists associated with the PBAE award on Costa Rican beaches.
Our hypothesis base on previous studies’ findings (see literature review section) suggest that so far PES are being assigned to big and relatively wealthy landowners, and that most landowners use the payment for investments within the property.
The projects objective is to identify local capabilities, assets, and activities that characterizes the livelihoods of small scale fishers in Costa Rica. A special attention will be given on how different regulations (external and internal) defining who, where, when, what, and how to fish might affect these livelihoods and the natural resource base.
In one of the major nesting beaches (La Flor), the Nicaraguan government has made an effort to enforce the prohibition to harvest by defining a protected area patrolled by governmental officers, and the army. However the effectiveness of this policy is questioned, particularly because of the difficulties to exclude people from turtle’s habitat, and the scarce governmental budgets dedicated to the enforcement of these regulations.
Various policies and programs aim to generate benefits to local people while conserving biodiversity or a particular species.
The Costa Rican PSA Program is widely cited in discussions about REDD+, including as a reference on the costs of implementing PES and the challenges of generating additionality and livelihood co-benefits (poverty reduction). As such, it is critical to document and extract lessons from the variation in payment levels and targeting criteria employed by Costa Rica´s National Forestry Fund (F
Reducing a country´s dependence on fossil fuels is central to mitigate climate change and to promote the use of cheaper energy sources. In Costa Rica most energy is generated using hydro-electrical plants, however the fact that energy consumption is lumped in peak hours forces the use of fossil fuel (mostly diesel and bunker) based electricity generation.
Understanding farmers’ responses to climate change is fundamental for the design of adaptation strategies in developing countries.
The purpose of this project is to test a bargaining game developed by Saborio-Rodriguez, Kwasnica and Shortle (2013) using experiments in a laboratory. In the game an environmental agreement to deal with water pollution is negotiated among three players located along a river. Negotiation leads to social optimum reduction in emission accompanied by a set of monetary transfers.
Beijing has notoriously severe air pollution and traffic congestion problems. Like many mega-cities in developing countries, it seeks to mitigate these problems by restricting vehicles from being driven one day per week based on the last digit of their license plate. Our project will use the contingent valuation method to estimate the cost this policy imposes on drivers.
This thematic program examines marine resource conservation. This multi-center collaborative project, the first within this thematic program, focuses on improving policy to promote coastal conservation through marine protected areas (MPAs) and related management tools. Because signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity have committed to establishing MPAs on 10 percent of their coastal waters, a widespread expansion of these areas is underway worldwide.
This project is funded by the Inter-American Development Bank
This project is a UN-REDD Program in Panama and is funded by the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program).
This project is funded by IDRC’s Climate Change and Water program (CCW).
In Central America there are approximately 24,000 organizations responsible for providing water for domestic consumption (CBDWO). These organizations are key agents in the generation of human well-being and reduction of poverty in the region.
Project contribute to reducing vulnerability to climate change and to help promoting the development of adaptation strategies that guarantee the human right to water for poor villagers in rural areas.
The project estimate to what extent migration movements within a country are explained by occurrence of extreme weather events in Guatemala.
CASCADE project promotes adaptation to climate change in vulnerable communities of smallholder farmers in Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala, through Ecosystem-based Adaptation strategies (EbA).
A highly selected interdisciplinary group of experts working on water and climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean met in Panama City, Panama from Thursday, September 29th to Saturday, October 1st, 2011.
Con el proyecto se busca promover la creación de capacidad de investigación, análisis y la evaluación del impacto del cambio climático y agua, utilizando las herramientas de la economía ambiental
This project addresses whether increasing uncertainty about the beneficial consequences of collected waste or other aspects of the collection-recycling process affect contribution levels and in turn prosocial attitudes.
To understand under which conditions a co-management alternative (a shared effort between the central government and the local community) might work to guarantee the sustainable use of a complex mobile common pool resource such as marine turtles.
This project explores the effects and the role of safety nets in adaptation to climate change in Central America.
The objective of this project is to estimate to what extent migration movements within a country are explained by occurrence of extreme weather events in general and more specifically by floods.
EfD-CA at CATIE began study sponsored by The Tinker Foundation
Methodology based on environmental economics principles, to be replicated in wildlife protected areas
Metodología del EfD-CA en CATIE basada en principios de economía ambiental por replicarse en áreas silvestres protegidas // Methodology based on environmental economics principles created by EfD-CA at CATIE soon to be replicated in other protected areas.
The parks’ entrance location and the possibility of agricultural workers to switch to service activities can be important tools to take advantage of the economic benefits of parks.
The objective is to evaluate the performance of Costa Rica’s voluntary Blue Flag certification program, focusing on beach communities.
Our research aims to develop a conceptual and empirical framework for analyzing the benefits and costs of various options for reforming pricing transportation in San José, and to use it to develop concrete policy recommendations.
The objective is to identify the drivers of the adoption of sustainable land management practices by coffee farmers in Costa Rica
This research project analyze the incidence of a fuel taxes in four Central American and Caribbean countries—Costa Rica, Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Panama—using household-level expenditure data.
What would have been the deforestation rate within and around protected areas if these protected areas had not been established? This project will allow to determine the impact of land conservation policies on deforestation and, with expenditure figures, the costs of saving an additional hectare of forest.
The aim of the study is to identify the factors affecting the performance of local organizations compared to centralized institutions in the administration and operation of aqueducts in order to make recommendations for improvements and for the future expansion of the decentralization process in the drinking water sector.
The purpose of this paper, is to test the absolute as well the relative importance of anonymity, reciprocity and information of others contribution on voluntary contributions to a national park in Costa Rica.
The project investigates the determinants of contributions (compulsory and voluntary) to national parks, understanding the motivations behind the contribution and how external factors influence the level of the contribution.
This project analyze the determinants of farmers adaptation to climate change using field experiments to reflect the main characteristics of damages associated with climate change under uncertainty, ambiguity , role of communication and monetary incentives.