The lack of cooperation and prevalence of free riding in efforts to reduce emissions reflects the public good dilemma synonymous with climate change: whereby individual incentives lead to sub-optimal outcomes. This study examines how cooperative norms can be fostered through democratic processes.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether community-based wildlife conservation can potentially be added in rural farmers’ investment portfolio to diversify and consequently reduce agricultural risk.

Design/methodology/approach – The correlation coefficient is computed from national data on the rates of return on agricultural production and wildlife conservation, to find out whether wildlife conservation is a feasible hedge asset.

The recreational and aesthetic values of coastal areas have a significant economic impact, and because they are enhanced by coastal protection, the latter should receive top priority in striving to achieve development goals

The study assesses the role played by high-end ecotourism at study sites in Malawi, Botswana and Namibia.

Analysis of dependency ratios, household income and social welfare impacts in the study indicate that rural communities are moving towards a heavier reliance on the market economy in the form of ecotourism operations. Analysis of the impact of employment on an appreciation of conservation and tourism also shows a positive relationship, though education was shown to play an even greater role.

This is a chapter in the new publication "Sustainable Tourism & the Millennium Development Goals: Effecting Positive Change" by The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) which will be launched this year at TIES annual conference, the Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference (ESTC) being held in Monterey, California, USA from Sept 17-19, 2012.

Focusing on the key challenges and opportunities for sustainable development, the book, through case studies, best practice examples and industry insights, discusses tourism's roles in:

Studies have shown that there are differences in cooperative behavior across countries. Furthermore, differences in the use and the reaction on the introduction of a norm enforcement mechanism have been documented in cross-cultural studies, recently. We present data which prove that stark differences in both dimensions can exist even within the same town. For this end, a unique data set was created, based on public goods experiments conducted in Cape Town, South Africa.

This paper investigates the use of charges and standards in dealing with a common externality, plastic litter from shopping bags in Botswana. The country passed a plastic bag tax (effective 2007) to curb the plastic bag demand. Interestingly, the legislation did not force retailers to charge for plastic bags, which they did voluntarily at different prices.