Two researchers from NENRE EfD-Chile have been awarded research funds from the Scientific and Technological Development Fund (FONDECYT). These awards, given in a highly competitive national context, also gave EfD Chile researchers Carlos Chávez and Manuel Estay recognition in the "regular" and "initiation" categories, respectively.
Carlos Chávez, Associate Researcher in Socioeconomic Sustainability at the INCAR Center, Professor at the University of Talca, and member of EfD Chile, was awarded a Regular Fondecyt 2023 to carry out his research project The Endogenous Formation of Common Pool Resource Coalitions under Uncertainty and Exclusion. Other participants in the project are James Murphy from the University of Alaska Anchorage, and John Stranlud of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Highlights the protection of resources
This project uses experimental economics tools to analyze how the formation of groups, unions, local organizations, and others that are commissioned to manage and protect resources, is affected by access restrictions, exclusion, and uncertainty about the quantity of natural resources. The latter may be related to climate change as well as a level of exploitation.
The design and method of this project can be applied to various environmental problems such as the establishment of territorial use rights in fishing, concessions and permits to develop aquaculture, management of regional and international fisheries, cooperatives for water management, property titles of land for local communities, and community forest management.
Carlos Chávez pointed out that the impact of this research is directly related to the fact that government agencies must learn what role they should play to promote the use of common property natural resources in a responsible, efficient and sustainable manner.
Seeks to reduce negative impacts of aquaculture
Manuel Estay, Associate Researcher in Socioeconomic Sustainability at the INCAR Center, Assistant Professor of the University of Concepción (UdeC), and member of EfD Chile, was awarded the Fondecyt funding for Research Initiation 2023 with his project Efficient regulatory options for industries with spatially differentiated pollution, endogenous location and endogenous number of companies. An empirical study of regulatory alternatives for Chilean salmon farming, sponsored by UdeC.
Manuel Estay's project aims to find regulatory alternatives that reduce the negative impacts of the salmon aquaculture industry in Chile, allowing a better balance between resource protection and economic development. He evaluates the instruments that currently regulate the activity, looks at empirical models to evaluate the regulations of each zone and limitations to production, and other tools that can be applied to analyze external negative factors in the production.
About the Fondecyt: The National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development, (Fondecyt in Spanish) aims to stimulate and promote the development of basic scientific and technological research, and it is the main fund of this type in the country. Created in 1981, it has financed more than 16,000 research projects whose impacts have benefited both the scientific community and society in general.