Whether government has the political will and capacity to control pollution is crucial for environmental outcomes. A vast country such as China, with centralized policymaking but idiosyncratic local implementation of environmental regulations and drastic regional disparities in wealth, raises the question how does the central government stimulate local environmental commitment to accommodate such diversity?

The land competition between tropical bioenergy plantations and payments for forest carbon conservation (e.g., through an international scheme for Reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, REDD+) is modeled using spatially explicit data on biofuel feedstock (oil palm and sugar cane) suitability and forest biomass carbon stocks.

Little is known about land cover change in agroforestry systems, which often supply valuable ecological services. We use a spatial regression model to analyze clearing in El Salvador’s shade coffee–growing regions during the 1990s.

Understanding patterns of access rights, investments, and enforcement

This study looked into tree-growing behavior of rural households in Ethiopia. With data collected at household and parcel levels from the four major regions of Ethiopia, we analyzed the decision to grow trees and the number of trees grown, using such econometric strategies as a zero-inflated negative binomial model, Heckman’s two-step procedure, and panel data techniques.

This paper uses data from a 2003 rural survey to examine the determinants of household provision of environmental services under China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP), the largest payment for environmental services program in the developing world.

Where joint forest management has been introduced into Tanzania, ‘volunteer’ patrollers take responsibility for enforcing restrictions over the harvesting of forest resources, often receiving as an incentive a share of the collected fine revenue.

The article analyses the effects of changes in land cover and land use changes together with population changes on the livelihood of rural households, and also farming households' responses to these changes, in typical rural settings of north-eastern Ethiopia.

To support conservation planning, we ask whether a park's impact on deforestation rates varies with observable land characteristics that planners could use to prioritize sites. Using matching methods to address bias from non-random location, we find deforestation impacts vary greatly due to park lands' characteristics. Avoided deforestation is greater if parks are closer to the capital city, in sites closer to national roads, and on lower slopes.

Land is an essential factor of production. Institutions that govern its efficient use determine the sustainability of this essential resource. In Ethiopia all land is publicly owned. Such an institutional setting is said to have resulted in major degradation of Ethiopia’s land resources and dissipation of the resource rent. An alternative to this is assigning private property institution.