We used locally-sourced and other relevant information to value ecosystem services provided by South Africa's
terrestrial, freshwater and estuarine habitats. Our preliminary estimates suggest that these are worth at least
R275 billion per annum to South Africans. Notwithstanding benefits to the rest of the world, natural systems
provide a major source of direct income to poor households, and generate significant value in the economy
through tourism and property markets, as well as providing considerable non-market benefits. Higher values

The first chapter of my dissertation Heterogeneous Local Spillovers from Protected Areas in Costa Rica (with Juan Robalino & Alexander Pfaff) offers a contribution to the literature estimating the impact of protected areas (PAs) on preventing tropical deforestation. It extends previous work by looking at how the establishment of national parks affects land use change in the neighboring private land. This is a relevant question as most analyses to date examine the realized deforestation impacts of PAs only within their borders, generally finding reduced deforestation effects.

The long-run relationship between carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and economic activity level is estimated for Uruguay between 1882 and 2010. We apply cointegration techniques and estimate a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) for testing whether these variables are endogenous over the long-rung while also considering the short-run dynamics. The economic productive structure, the degree of openness, and the share of clean sources on total energy supply are also considered as explanatory variables.

Spillovers can significantly reduce or enhance the net effects of land-use policies, yet there exists little rigorous evidence concerning their magnitudes. We examine how Costa Rica’s national parks affect deforestation in nearby areas. We find that average deforestation spillovers are not significant in 0–5 km and 5–10 km rings around the parks. However, this average blends multiple effects that are significant and that vary in magnitude across the landscape, yielding varied net impacts.

Conservation programs have increased significantly, as has the evaluation of their impacts. However, the evaluation of their potential impacts beyond program borders has been scarce. Such spillovers can significantly reduce or increase net impacts. In this review, we discuss how conservation programs might affect outcomes beyond their borders and present some evidence of when they have or have not. We focus on five major channels by which spillovers can arise: (1) input reallocation; (2) market prices; (3) learning; (4) nonpecuniary motivations; and (5) ecological-physical links.

Recent academic endeavours have questioned whether the rapidly unfolding Payments for Environmental Services (PES) may have profound influence on land tenure which would in turn impact the conservation efficacy of PES. This paper developed a game-theory model in the context of rural China, which describes the endogenous formation of land rights as a bargaining process between ordinary villagers and village leaders.

This paper uses a bio-economic model to analyze wildlife conservation in two habitats adjacent to a national park by two types of communities in Zimbabwe. One community is made up of peasant farmers operating under a benefit-sharing scheme such as CAMPFIRE, while the other is made up of commercial farmers practicing game farming in a conservancy. Both communities exploit wildlife by selling hunting licenses to foreign hunters but with different levels of success. The park agency plays a central role by authorizing the harvest quota for each community.