Doctoral Dissertation Research: Incentives, Livelihoods, and Forest Ecology Related to Payments for Ecosystems Services

博士论文研究：与生态系统服务付费相关的激励措施、生计和森林生态

• 批准号: 1536302
• 负责人: Tracey Osborne
• 金额: $ 1.6万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-15 至 2018-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1536302&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Incentives; Livelihoods

This doctoral dissertation research project will investigate the ability of conservation payments to achieve their intended goals of both improving ecosystem health and enhancing rural livelihoods. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are thought to influence conservation via payments to those who own or manage land. Many programs pay for services provided by forests, such as water filtration or carbon sequestration, or for management practices assumed to provide these services. Despite the rapid growth of hundreds of PES programs across the globe, there is little consensus regarding their development or conservation successes, leading many scholars, conservationists, and development practitioners to call for interdisciplinary investigations into these initiatives. This project will provide new insights regarding how PES initiatives affect forest and agricultural ecosystem health and also the lives and governance structures of rural participants. The project will test assumptions that incentivized activities or increased forest cover necessarily equate to improved ecosystem services and benefits to land users, because it will employ a quasi-experimental design that compares the actions of participants and non-participants to examine what might have occurred if PES interventions had not taken place. Project results will contribute new information and insights to discussions about the world's largest PES program, the United Nations' Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative, which is being implemented in developing nations across the globe, because studies of existing PES programs can inform the choices of potential participants and shape REDD+'s currently contested design. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.The doctoral student will undertake a political ecological analysis of a PES program by exploring the connections between social and ecological systems in Guatemala and by linking local practices to international calls for conservation. She will use a mixed methods approach of semi-structured interviews, livelihood surveys, and forestry plots to determine how payments affect who makes forest management decisions; what decisions are made; benefits and costs associated with different forest uses; and impacts on ecosystem services. Comparisons across land tenure patterns, socioeconomic situations, and deforestation rates will illustrate what factors influence the ability of PES programs to achieve their goals. Focusing on the measureable ecosystem services of carbon capture and agrobiodiversity in conjunction with interviews and surveys, the student will examine assumptions that incentivized activities necessarily equate to improved ecosystem services and benefits to land users. She also will investigate the capacity for these programs to empower or dispossess rural communities by changing existing systems of governance and access to the benefits of land.

本博士论文研究项目将调查保护支付的能力，以实现改善生态系统健康和提高农村生计的预期目标。 生态系统服务付费被认为通过向土地所有者或管理者付费来影响保护。 许多项目为森林提供的服务付费，如水过滤或碳固存，或为提供这些服务的管理实践付费。 尽管地球仪上的数百个生态系统服务项目迅速增长，但关于它们的发展或保护成功的共识很少，导致许多学者，保护主义者和发展实践者呼吁对这些举措进行跨学科的调查。 该项目将提供关于生态系统服务付费倡议如何影响森林和农业生态系统健康以及农村参与者的生活和治理结构的新见解。 该项目将检验以下假设，即受到激励的活动或森林覆盖率的增加必然等同于生态系统服务的改善和对土地使用者的惠益，因为该项目将采用一种准实验性设计，比较参与者和非参与者的行动，以审查如果没有生态系统服务付费系统干预措施，可能会发生什么情况。 项目成果将为关于世界上最大的生态系统服务补偿方案的讨论提供新的信息和见解，该方案是联合国减少毁林和森林退化所致排放量（REDD+）倡议，该倡议正在地球仪的发展中国家实施，因为对现有生态系统服务补偿方案的研究可以为潜在参与者的选择提供信息，并形成REDD+目前有争议的设计。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将为有前途的学生提供支持，使其能够建立强大的独立研究事业。博士生将通过探索危地马拉社会和生态系统之间的联系，并将当地实践与国际保护呼吁联系起来，对PES计划进行政治生态分析。 她将使用半结构化访谈，生计调查和林业地块的混合方法来确定付款如何影响谁做出森林管理决策;做出什么决定;与不同森林用途相关的收益和成本;以及对生态系统服务的影响。 土地保有模式、社会经济状况和森林砍伐率之间的比较将说明哪些因素影响生态系统服务补偿方案实现其目标的能力。 重点放在可测量的生态系统服务的碳捕获和农业生物多样性结合访谈和调查，学生将检查假设，激励活动必然等同于改善生态系统服务和土地使用者的利益。 她还将调查这些方案通过改变现有的治理制度和获得土地利益来增强或剥夺农村社区的能力。