Browsing by Author "Paavola, Jouni"

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Can REDD+ Reconcile Local Priorities and Needs with Global Mitigation Benefits? Lessons from Angai Forest, Tanzania
(2012) Mustalahti, Irmeli; Bolin, Anna; Boyd, Emily; Paavola, Jouni
"The scope of the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) mechanism has broadened REDD+ to accommodate different country interests such as natural forests, protected areas, as well as forests under communitybased management. In Tanzania the REDD+ mechanism is still under development and pilot projects are at an early stage. In this paper, we seek to understand how local priorities and needs could be met in REDD+ implementation and how these expectations match with global mitigation benefits. We examine the local priorities and needs in the use of land and forest resources in the Angai Villages Land Forest Reserve (AVLFR) in the Liwale District of Lindi Region in Tanzania. Primary data was collected in two villages, Mihumo and Lilombe, using semistructured key informant interviews and participatory rural appraisal methods. In addition, the key informant interviews were conducted with other village, district, and national level actors, as well as international donors. Findings show that in the two communities REDD+ is seen as something new and is generating new expectations among communities. However, the Angai villagers highlight three key priorities that have yet to be integrated into the design of REDD+: water scarcity, rural development, and food security. At the local level improved forest governance and sustainable management of forest resources have been identified as one way to achieve livelihood diversification. Although the national goals of REDD+ include poverty reduction, these goals are not necessarily conducive to the goals of these communities. There exist both structural and cultural limits to the ability of the Angai villages to implement these goals and to improve forestry governance. Given the vulnerability to current and future climate variability and change it will be important to consider how the AVLFR will be managed and for whose benefit?"
Ecosystem Services, Governance, and Stakeholder Participation: An Introduction
(2013) Paavola, Jouni; Hubacek, Klaus
"The ecosystem services approach has gained popularity, and novel incentive-based ecosystem conservation strategies are increasingly being used. This calls for the reassessment and transformation of conceptual-theoretical, natural resource management, and governance approaches to conservation. In the past, conservation efforts focused on distinct components of ecosystems without regard for long-term human well-being. Natural resource management in turn sought to control nature to harvest products for direct consumption or for sale at markets. However, this singular focus on management ignored that ecosystems are complex, dynamic, adaptive systems with nonlinear feedback and thresholds and are tightly interlinked with human systems."
Environmental Policy as an Institution of Collective Ownership: Water Pollution Control Policy in the United States, 1850-1980
(1998) Paavola, Jouni
"My paper argues that the contemporary research in common property opens up an interesting avenue for economic analysis of environmental policies. It facilitates the conceptualization of environmental policies as institutions for the ownership and management of environmental resources that may have been established, formulated, maintained, and/or changed in part to forward values other than economic efficiency and welfare. Research in common property also offers a structural model of institutions for ownership and resource management that enables a more detailed analysis of these complex institutional arrangements than environmental economics and law and economics have been able to accomplish. Law and economics can in turn offer tools to examine how the formulation of institutions affects their enforceability, consequences, and viability. In what follows, the first section of my paper discusses in greater detail how research in common property can be extended to the analysis of environmental policies. "The subsequent parts of my paper aim at demonstrating that research in common property can fruitfully inform the analysis of environmental policies by examining water pollution control policies in the United States from the middle of the 19th century until the environmental decade of the 1970s. The second section will examine how riparian law governed the polluting use of watercourses by early industrial establishments in the 19th century. I will discuss how, in part to facilitate economic growth and development, riparian law constituted a use of water as a transferable asset and established market allocation of water quality. The third section will examine how early water pollution control statutes enacted in many states after the turn of the century established collective ownership and political allocation of water resources to protect public health. The fourth section will discuss how federal water pollution control legislation responded to the larger scale and broader range of water pollution problems in the postwar era and protected the quality of water also for recreational purposes and for their own sake. I will also discuss in each section to what degree institutions succeeded in forwarding these objectives. "My conclusions summarize my observation on the structure, functioning, performance, and evolution of water pollution control policies in the United States. I will also indicate the implications of common property research for the analysis of environmental policies and vice versa."
Governing Atmospheric Sinks: Architecture of Entitlements in the Global Commons
(2006) Paavola, Jouni
"This paper revisits key works on the management of common- pool resources under common property arrangements, in order to elicit a broader notion of collective ownership which can be used as an analytical concept to describe and analyse institutional arrangements that govern the use of environmental resources such as water and air quality, biodiversity and atmospheric sinks. Large-scale environmental resources such as these are typically governed by formal legal institutions such as national environmental policies or international environmental conventions. The paper demonstrates that these arrangements can be usefully characterised as particular forms of collective ownership, and that many observations about the design of successful common property arrangements also provide useful insights into the design of these formal environmental governance institutions. "The paper examines the emerging governance framework for global atmospheric sinks in detail as a case study to exemplify the usefulness of conceptualising formal governance institutions as forms of collective ownership. The paper discusses the physical resource attributes of global atmospheric sinks and their uses and users, indicating what the main challenges in governing them are. The paper then contrasts the international multi-level governance framework for atmospheric resources to observations made in the literature on the design principles of successful common property arrangements. The paper indicates how crucial parts of the governance framework are still missing. Entitlements to the use of atmospheric sinks have not yet been adequately formalised and attenuated and instead remain based on 'capture'. As a result, the current institutional framework has not overcome the 'tragedy of the commons' in the use of atmospheric sinks. Other key problems include highly unequal distribution of benefits from the use of atmospheric sinks and the inability of affected parties to participate in decisions that affect them. Together these problems hinder the attainment of mutually agreed-upon solutions for the governance of atmospheric sinks through international negotiations. The paper suggests that in the future the governance solution for global atmospheric sinks has to 1) cap the use of atmospheric sinks, instead of only prescribing relative cuts in its use as in the Kyoto Protocol; 2) provide for a more equitable benefit sharing by introducing responsibility for the adverse impacts of greenhouse gas emissions through carbon taxation or other means; 3) provide for compensation of climate change impacts and assistance for adaptation to climate change impact; and 4) create institutional solutions for enhancing participation in environmental decisions, particularly across the levels of governance, in order to guarantee progress in and legitimacy of the governance framework."
Governing Atmospheric Sinks: The Architecture of Entitlements in the Global Commons
(2008) Paavola, Jouni
"This article revisits key works on the management of common-pool resources under common property arrangements, in order to elicit a broader notion of collective ownership for analysing institutional arrangements that govern the use of large-scale environmental resources such as biodiversity and atmospheric sinks. The article proposes a model for analysing the institutional design of governance solutions which draws attention to 1) tiers and levels, 2) organisation of generic governance functions, and 3) formulation of specific institutional rules. The article exemplifies these analytical solutions by examining the emerging governance framework for global atmospheric sinks. The article indicates how crucial parts of the institutional framework for governing atmospheric sinks are still missing, a shortcoming which maintains the tragedy of the commons in their use. The article suggests that a workable governance solution for global atmospheric sinks has to 1) cap the use of atmospheric sinks; 2) provide for a more equitable benefit sharing; 3) provide for compensation of climate change impacts and assistance for adaptation to climate change impacts; and 4) create institutional solutions for enhancing participation in environmental decisions in order to guarantee progress in and legitimacy of the governance framework."
Participation and Protected Areas Governance: the Impact of Changing Influence of Local Authorities on the Conservation of the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, Poland
(2012) Niedzialkowski, Krzysztof; Paavola, Jouni; Jedrzejewska, Bogumila
"According to the new conservation paradigm, protected areas should contribute to the socioeconomic development of host communities, and the latter ought to be included in participatory decision making concerning these areas. However, the understanding of participation is ambiguous and there are at least three major approaches, which may have different impacts on the governance of protected areas. We examine the case of the Bialowieza Primeval Forest in order to trace the effectiveness of changing modes of participation as well as to discuss the limitations and problems of public participation. Between 1918 and 2010, the role of local authorities changed from no influence to limited control over decision making regarding designation and enlargement of the Bialowieza National Park (BNP). As a result of these changes, attempts to enlarge the BNP over the whole forest were undermined. The evidence shows that power relations and instrumental reasons constituted the main drivers of the changing participation pattern with deliberative rationale lacking. As a result, the conservation goals were only partially achieved. We argue that when interests are clearly conflicting and win-win solutions are difficult to reach, room for constructive participation may be limited. In these circumstances, public involvement may turn into yet another venue for a power play between actors with vested interests, without bringing gains in legitimacy or new policy options. This is especially the case for countries with a relatively short democratic record where the government lacks the consistency and capacity to steer the process over the longer term."
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+): Transaction Costs of Six Peruvian Projects
(2013) Thompson, Olivia R. Rendón; Paavola, Jouni; Healey, John R.; Jones, Julia P. G.; Baker, Timothy R.; Torres, Jorge
"Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) has received strong support as a major component of future global climate change policy. The financial mechanism of REDD+ is payment for the ecosystem service of carbon sequestration in tropical forests that is expected to create incentives for conservation of forest cover and condition. However, the costs of achieving emissions reduction by these means remain largely unknown. We assess the set-up, implementation, and monitoring costs, i.e., collectively the transaction costs, of six of the first seven REDD+ project designs from the Peruvian Amazon and compare them with established projects in Brazil and Bolivia. The estimated costs vary greatly among the assessed projects from US$0.16 to 1.44 ha-1 yr-1, with an average of US$0.73 ha-1 yr-1, though they are comparable to earlier published estimates. The results indicate that the costs of implementing REDD+ are highly uncertain for participating developing countries because of issues such as inadequate project design and how additionality is determined. Furthermore, some insight is obtained into how different activities to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, the type of implementer, and project location affect implementation costs of REDD+ projects. Even with these first estimates, the cost of preserving existing intact forests in the Peruvian Amazon may have been underestimated."