Browsing by Author "Pascual, Unai"

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Domestication of Payments for Ecosystem Services: New Evidence from the Andes
(2015) Drucker, Adam G.; Narlock, Ulf; Pascual, Unai; Soto, José Luis; Pinto, Milton; Midler, Estelle; Valdivia, Enrique; Rojas, Wilfredo
"The current project has sought to assess i) the potential of agricultural biodiversity-focused PES to serve as a cost-effective and socially equitable domesticated diversity conservation incentive scheme, as well as ii) how economic incentive mechanisms such as PES can be designed to build on and complement local institutions of collective action. Results are presented from pilot Payment for Agrobiodiversity Conservation (PACS) schemes and framed field experiments implemented in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes aimed at sustaining diversity within quinoa, a traditional Andean grain. Findings indicate that opportunity costs of conservation vary widely not only between the two study sites, but also between community-based groups within each site. This creates opportunities to minimize intervention costs by selecting least-cost conserving farmers. However, as shown with respect to the role of wealth and cooperation in determining opportunity costs, this also has implications for the type of farmer to be included in the conservation programme. Promisingly, depending on the fairness principle deemed most important in the local context, there does not necessarily have to be a significant trade-off between the schemes’ potential cost-effectiveness and equity outcomes. The observed behavior in the farmer experimental games further supports such findings and suggests that understanding farmer perceptions of fairness can have important implications for the design of conservation incentive mechanisms, particularly given the important influence of such perceptions on the pro-social behavior that underlies much de facto conservation. Incentive mechanisms, such as PACS, that can support socially valued ends not only by harnessing selfish preferences to public ends but also by evoking public-spirited motives are also more likely to be sustainable over the long-term. The use of PACS incentives for the maintenance of traditional crop varieties and the improvement of smallholder farmer livelihoods thus appears promising for further development and up-scaling."
Institutions and Agency in Creating Collective Action for Common Pool Resources
(2012) Ishihara, Hiroe; Pascual, Unai
"This paper argues that despite the importance of agency in the creation of collective action and common pool resource (CPR) management, the relationship between agency and institutions has not been appropriately linked in the CPR literature. We argue that one school of thought in the CPR literature, namely the Collective Action School (CAS) based on rational choice model, has largely disregarded the recursive relationship between agency and CPR institutions, i.e. the fact that agency is enabled as well as constrained by the CPR institutions and different type of rationalities, such as ‘deontological rationality’ which play a key role in making decisions regarding the CPR institution. Similarly, the Structure Based School (SBS) of thought, does not take into account a key aspect regarding agency: its ability to create institutional change and to introduce new institutions based on ‘reflexive deliberation’. The paper links agency and institution through utilization of the concept of ‘collective intentionality’. This creates room for both (a) ‘habitus’/ habitualized thought for action which ultimately leads to the reproduction of the CPR institution, and (b) ‘reflexive deliberation’ which leads to a new way of action which leads to the production of the new CPR institutions. We argue that individual decision which leads to creation of collective action prescribed by CPR institution depends on the complex interplay of these ‘habitus’ and ‘reflexive deliberation’."
A Model of Optimal Labour and Soil Use with Shifting Cultivation
(2001) Pascual, Unai; Barbier, Edward
"This paper analyses the relationship between rural poverty and soil degradation in the context of a shifting cultivating community. A deterministic optimal control model demonstrates how a representative household's labour allocation affects the natural resource base on which its livelihood largely depends. The comparative static examination of relevant parameters and welfare effects of changes in the real wage rate are discussed. The theoretical results obtained are calibrated with data from the Yucatan, Mexico."
The Role of Social Capital for Environmental Governance: A Socio- Ecological Critique
(2008) Ishihara, Hiroe; Pascual, Unai
"This paper argues that the current Social Capital (SK) theories cannot explain why SK has the ability to create collective action; rather they mystify the process. To open the black box of SK, the paper will argue that; i) the ability of SK to foster collective action lies in its ability to create common knowledge and to proliferate it among the community members and; ii) which knowledge becomes common is a matter of symbolic power, as well as rational calculation. In other words, each agent has different cost and benefit according to their social position they occupy inside the social structure; however, for collective action to be successful we need to create a common understanding of our cost and our benefit. Here, symbolic power refers to the ability of the dominant group to impose their own perception of cost and benefit as common knowledge, jettisoning the other alternative as irrational and unthinkable. By further understanding SK in relation to symbolic power, we argue that we are able to capture two fundamental aspects of SK; i) agents do not have a free-hand to craft SK in term of rational behaviour, ii) at the same time, agents do not blindly follow the incentive mechanisms created by SK, instead they some times misunderstand and even challenge these mechanisms. This implies that SK is not a stable instrument to provide optimal solutions for market failure, nor a cheap enforcement mechanism for rules and norms. Creating collective action for CPR management is a more complex issue than the rational choice theory may suggest."
Social Preferences in Conservation under External Rewards and the Role of Group Heterogeneity and Market Orientation: Experimental Evidence from the Andes
(2011) Narlocha, Ulf; Pascual, Unai; Drucker, Adam
"External reward mechanisms may provide resource users with an incentive to cooperate in common resource dilemmas so as to conserve that what benefits wider society, such as public ecosystem services. Yet relatively little is known so far about the extent to which these formal institutions interact with existing social preferences subject to group heterogeneities and different market contexts. This paper seeks to contribute to filling this research gap, by building on an impure public goods game incorporating unequal initial resource endowments, as well as different payment modes, in the context of agrobiodiversity conservation. Field experiments were conducted with farmers in market orientated communities from Bolivia and subsistence based ones from Peru. Findings indicate that farmers from commercial orientated backgrounds tend to free-ride on one another, whereas in subsistence-based communities inequality aversion plays an important role in determining conservation levels. Further, it is found that in the latter context, where pro-social behaviour is strong, rewards from outside the community might do more harm than good by spurring free-riding behaviour. Promisingly though, in communities that have suffered from an erosion of pro-social norms, certain reward systems appear to reverse anti-social dynamics and thus may contribute to solving conservation problems. These results highlight the importance of existing social preferences in determining the effectiveness of external rewards and the social costs involved by such interventions."