Forest conservation and slippage: Evidence from mexico's national payments for ecosystem services program

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2012-10-17

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Abstract

We investigate a Mexican federal program that compensates landowners for forest protection. We use matched controls from the program applicant pool to establish counterfactual deforestation rates. Deforestation was reduced by 50% in enrolled parcels, but expected average clearing rates without the program were low (0.8% per year), suggesting modest total avoided deforestation benefits. We test for two types of slippage: increased deforestation on other property belonging to program recipients and increased deforestation within markets where there are high levels of program participation. We find evidence of both, with substitution impacts reducing program effectiveness in common properties by about 4% on average. © 2012 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.

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Scholars@Duke

Shapiro - Garza

Elizabeth Shapiro - Garza

Associate Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy and Management in the Division of Environmental Science and Policy

Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy and Management at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. She serves as the Faculty Director for Engaged Scholarship for Duke University, the Director for Community Engagement for the Duke University Superfund Research Center and the Director of the graduate Certificate in Community-Based Environmental Management. 

Shapiro-Garza is Human-Environment Geographer whose research explores the ways in which human communities interact with environmental initiatives and approaches meant to influence their management practices and behaviors and the role that broader economic, political or policy trends, as well as inequality in access to power and resources, play in those dynamics and outcomes. She is a broadly trained social scientist with a primary methodological specialization in qualitative methods and analysis. Depending on the questions raised, she collaborates with economists, ecologists, remote sensing specialists, and environmental and public health researchers. Applying the framing and methods from these multiple disciplines, she conducts research on the following topics:

  • Market-Based Environmental Policies and Programs
  • Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico                                                                       
  • Climate Change Mitigation through Forest-Based Carbon Offsetting in Peru and Mexico
  • Climate Change Adaptation by Smallholder Coffee Producers in Latin America
  • Environmental Health and Justice in North Carolina

In exploring these topics, she has partnered with agricultural cooperatives, indigenous communities, government agencies and community-based non-profits in Mexico, El Salvador, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala and the southeastern United States. Her research is published in highly ranked, peer-reviewed journals in geography and in the fields of her collaborators, as well as in fora and formats relevant to the policy makers, practitioners and the communities with whom she partners. The most substantive funders of this scholarship are the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, the Tinker Foundation, and the International Institute for Impact Evaluation (3ie) Foundation.


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