Managing Watershed Externalities in India: Theory and Practice
Managing Watershed Externalities in India: Theory and Practice
复制标题
管理印度的流域外部性：理论与实践
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2007
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. J. James
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Kerr;G. Milne;Vasudha Chhotray;P. Baumann;A. J. James
流域开发是印度农村扶贫计划的重点。分水岭项目旨在解决外部性问题，但它们也造成了自身的外部性，导致成本和收益分配不均，破坏了项目目标，损害了穷人的利益。将外部性内部化的方法有很多，包括提高认识、道德劝说、投资补贴、监管限制和罚款、间接收益、合并和最近的创新，如支付环境服务和总量管制和交易。可以根据几个标准来判断这些问题；最好的方法将以成本效益的方式解决问题，并帮助或至少不伤害穷人。对印度的分水岭项目进行了审查，以确定将分水岭外部性内部化所采取的办法。投资补贴和间接就业福利在理论上是最不有效的方法，但它们是最常用的方法，最有可能是因为它们易于管理，并带来受欢迎的短期收益。其他地方使用的一些理论上有利的方法，比如支付环境服务费用，由于交易成本较高，在印度可能不会奏效。然而，一项可以很容易在印度应用的关键创新是，让投资补贴取决于业绩。其他有利的方法还需要法律支持和产权改革。
Watershed development is the focus of poverty alleviation programs in rural India. Watershed projects aim to solve problems of externalities, but they also create their own externalities, which cause uneven distribution of costs and benefits that undermine project objectives and harm the poor. Numerous approaches exist to internalize externalities, including awareness creation, moral suasion, investment subsidies, regulatory limits and fines, indirect benefits, mergers, and recent innovations like payment for environmental services and cap and trade. These can be judged on several criteria; the best approach would solve the problem cost effectively and help or at least not hurt poor people. Watershed projects in India were examined to identify the approaches taken to internalize watershed externalities. Investment subsidies and indirect employment benefits are the least effective approaches theoretically, but they are the most commonly applied, most likely because they are easy to administer and bring popular short term gains. Some theoretically favorable approaches that have been used elsewhere, such as payment for environmental services, may not work as well in India due to high transaction costs. However, one key innovation that easily could be applied in India is to make investment subsidies contingent on performance. Legal support and property rights reform would be needed for other favorable approaches.