What types of investment can most cost-effectively ensure ecosystem service provision? A randomized program evaluation

减缓森林砍伐和森林退化的最有效方法是什么？我们如何才能最好地从收集非木材森林产品中增加收入？教育和信息提供能否真正改变人们的行为，从而更好地保护生态系统服务？经过几十年更好地保护亚马逊森林及其提供的生态系统服务的努力，我们仍然不知道这些问题的答案是什么。此外，尽管生态系统服务很重要，但我们几乎没有证据表明哪种政策干预措施最能确保提供服务和减轻贫困。因此，一个基本的需要是开发“项目评估”方法，以测试政策或干预的有效性。在中等海拔的玻利维亚，就像在发展中世界的许多地区一样，农业决策产生了负面的环境外部性，降低了环境服务提供的质量和数量。森林退化往往与大规模放牧有关，会降低水质和水量，并增加与山体滑坡和洪水有关的风险。维护这些亚马逊上游分水岭森林不仅是因为它们在减缓气候变化方面的作用，也是因为它们的保护将通过维持旱季供水来帮助当地社区适应气候变化，这是全球和当地的利益所在。尽管这些生态系统对当地减贫很重要，但当地社区继续放牧牛，超过了森林的承载能力，从而造成了公地的悲剧，森林砍伐、水污染和洪水增加，人类福利受到影响。我们提议的研究将探索行为改变的替代机制，以减轻森林退化造成的负面外部性。我们的第一个假设是，通过提供有针对性的当地信息，或以其他方式建设当地机构能力，我们可以降低社区层面的集体行动障碍，这将允许通过制裁或积极补偿在当地施加激励。作为另一种假设，外部捐助者通过直接付款可以更好地为改善放牧做法提供这种激励(即，一种环境服务付款形式)。严格的实验设计将使我们能够确定提供有针对性的信息和财政激励与由此产生的行为和生物物理结果衡量之间的普遍关系。通过在项目的第二年分阶段付款，我们还将观察集体行动和外部提供的激励之间的相互作用。尽管活动清单听起来相对深奥，但这项研究的意义将是深远的。我们将开发和完善最适合生态系统服务提供评估的项目评估工具，然后提供第一个强有力的实验分析，说明什么对环境服务提供和扶贫有效，以及为什么。我们的研究将表明，如果捐赠者有50万英镑可以用于适应气候变化，那么在封存二氧化碳、保护供水或改善生计方面，对他们来说，投资于当地能力建设、信息提供或直接支付计划是否是最有效的。

What is the most effective way to slow deforestation and forest degradation? How can we best increase incomes from collection of non-timber forest products? Can education and information provision lead to real changes in behavior that better protects ecosystem services? After decades of attempts to better protect Amazonian forests and the ecosystem services that they provide, we still have no idea what the answers are to these questions. Further, notwithstanding the importance of ecosystem services, we have little evidence about which policy interventions can best ensure service provision and alleviate poverty. A fundamental need is thus for the development of 'program evaluation' methods in order to test policy or intervention effectiveness. In mid-altitude Bolivia, as in many parts of the developing world, agricultural decisions generate negative environmental externalities, reducing the quality and quantity of environmental service provision. Forest degradation, often associated with extensive cattle grazing, diminishes water quality and quantity and increases risks associated with landslides and flooding. There is a global and local interest in maintaining these upper Amazonian watershed forests both for their role in mitigating climate change, but also because their conservation will help local communities adapt to climate change through the maintenance of dry season water supplies. Despite the importance of these ecosystems for local poverty alleviation, local communities continue to graze more cattle than the carrying capacity of the forests, thus creating a tragedy of the commons in which deforestation, water pollution and flooding increase, and human welfare suffers. Our proposed research will explore alternative mechanisms for behavior change to mitigate the negative externalities that result from forest degradation. Our first hypothesis is that by providing targeted local information, or otherwise building local institutional capacity, we can lower collective action barriers at the community level, which will allow for locally imposed incentives through sanctions or positive compensation. As an alternative hypothesis, external donors, through direct payments, may better provide such incentives for improved grazing practices (i.e. a form of payments for environmental services). A rigorous experimental design will allows us to identify generalisable relationships between the provision of targeted information and financial incentives and resulting behavioral and biophysical outcome measures. By phasing in payments in the second year of the project, we will also observe the interaction between collective action and externally provided incentives. Although the list of activities sounds relatively esoteric, the implications of this research will be profound. We will develop and refine the program evaluation tools that are most appropriate for evaluations of ecosystem service provision, and then provide the first robust experimental analysis of what works for environmental service delivery and poverty alleviation and why. Our research will show that if a donor has, e.g. £500,000 to spend on climate change adaptation, whether it will it be most efficient for them, in terms of CO2 sequestered, water supplies protected, or livelihoods enhanced, to invest in local capacity building, information provision or direct payments schemes.