Three Essays on Sustainable Development Interventions: Can Projects Catalyze Better Systems for People and Planet?

Abstract

The following dissertation presents three empirical papers and one qualitative conceptual framework related to the design and implementation of Sustainable Development (SD) programs. This thesis has the following structure: Chapters 1 & 2 focus on the topic that brought me to Duke, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). Chapter 1 explores a case study of an international intervention focused on promoting mercury-free technology to ASGM miners in Guyana. Chapter 2 presents a second study on ASGM interventions, this time directed toward women waste-rock collectors (jancheras) in Ecuador. The intervention in Chapter 2 focuses on the promotion of a different solution to mercury-use, ore-selling, in which miners sell raw ore directly to processing plants instead of processing it themselves with mercury. In Chapter 3, I transition from studying adoption of alternatives to mercury in gold mining to discuss the promotion of trees on private agricultural land in Southern India for public good provision (exploring how farmers’ preferences match with intended biodiversity ecosystem service provision improvements). Finally, in Chapter 4, I discuss how projects like the ones I studied in this thesis could collect higher-quality evidence to progressively improve design and impact. Then, I briefly conclude by revisiting the commonalities across the chapters and discuss extensions. The chapters of this thesis are unified by theme, sector, and methodology. Thematically, I study programs with SD objectives – with at least one human and one environmental intended outcome. In terms of sector, I focus on activities involved in land use and land cover change, with chapters focused on gold mining and reforestation. In each of the chapters, the individuals who would ultimately be responsible for changing production practices, the “target population”, are individuals or small groups of individuals working in rural areas of Low to Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) in the Global South. Methodologically, I employ quantitative social science research techniques, and, in two of the three chapters, I use discrete choice experiments (DCEs) to elicit preferences of program participants to inform program design. Another common theme across the empirical chapters (1-3) is the consideration of how SD solutions must be designed in light of heterogeneity of the target population and target context where the intervention takes place. For instance, the differences between the solutions promoted in the ASGM Chapters (1 & 2) relate to geology -- primary deposits in Ecuador and secondary deposits in Guyana. We point out in these chapters that geology and other heterogeneities (i.e. related to miner type) are relevant for design of effective Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) solutions for ASGM. In Chapter 3, we explore farmers’ heterogeneous preferences both for adopting tree-planting generally and for adopting certain types of tree-planting designs (defined by tree type and planting configurations). Based on our findings about heterogeneity, we make recommendations for public policy design. The main findings of my studies show that target populations are often not well identified and characterized before SD intervention implementation begins. SD interventions may be more effective in meeting their goals if they first clearly define target populations, then study the preferences of target populations, and finally use those preferences, along with expert technical guidance, to devise solutions that are “adoptable” and “impactful”. Ideally, well-design SD solutions should raise the well-being of program participants in order to make system changes permanent while also generating the public goods that justify SD funding. The studies in this thesis highlight that, even within a single sector and across relatively geographically small contexts, program participants are diverse. As a result, to ensure that programs scale equitably, programs should consider who can and cannot participate in which designs, and what complementary support may be necessary to support rural producers in the Global South to transition to more efficient, more sustainable practices.