Browsing by Author "van Noordwijk, Meine"

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Can Rewards for Environmental Services Benefit the Poor? Lessons from Asia
(2009) Leimona, Beria; Joshi, Laxman; van Noordwijk, Meine
"Rewards for environmental services (RES) link global priorities on poverty reduction and environmental sustainability and are designed to balance effectiveness and efficiency with fairness and pro-poor characteristics. Yet, emerging RES approaches tend to focus primarily on the efficiency in provisioning the environmental services and often neglect the perspectives of various actors involved in natural resource management, their livelihood strategies and the multi-dimensional nature of poverty. This paper assesses some key issues associated with the design and implementation of RES in various Asian pilot sites by developing and exploring two propositions related to conditions required for RES to effectively contribute to poverty alleviation, and to preferred forms of pro-poor mechanisms. Our first proposition is that only under specific circumstances will actual cash incentives to individual RES participants contribute substantially to poverty alleviation in ES provider communities. The second proposition is that non-financial incentives to ES providers will contribute to reducing poverty by linking the community (participants and non-participants) to access to various types of capital (human, social, natural, physical and financial). A review of key ratios of relative numbers and wealth of service providers and beneficiaries supports the first proposition and rejects the notion of widespread potential for reducing upstream rural poverty through individual cash payments. Results of community focus group discussions support the second proposition through context-specific preferences for mechanisms by which RES can help trigger conditions for sustainable development."
Compensation and Rewards for Environmental Services in the Developing World: Framing Pan-Tropical Analysis and Comparison
(2009) Swallow, Brent M.; Kallesoe, Mikkel F.; Iftikhar, Usman A.; van Noordwijk, Meine; Bracer, Carina; Scherr, Sara J.; Raju, K. Vengamma; Poats, Susan V.; Duraiappah, Anantha Kumar; Ochieng, Benson O.; Mallee, Hein; Rumley, Rachael
"This is the first of a series of papers that review the state of knowledge and practice regarding compensation and rewards for environmental services in the developing world. The paper begins with an assessment of the historical development of compensation and reward mechanisms within a broader context of changing approaches to nature conservation and environmental policy. The assessment shows that greater interest in compensation and reward mechanisms has emerged within a policy context of changing approaches to nature conservation and flexible multi-stakeholder approaches to environmental management. In the developing world, an even greater variety of perspectives has emerged on the opportunities and threats for using compensation and rewards for environmental services. Within that background, the paper clarifies key concepts—including the distinction between compensation and reward —and presents a conceptual framework for typifying and characterizing different types of mechanisms that link ecosystem stewards, ecosystem service beneficiaries, and intermediaries."
Conflict, Cooperation, and Collective Action: Land Use, Water Rights, and Water Scarcity in Manupali Watershed, Southern Philippines
(2012) Piñon, Caroline; Catacutan, Delia; Leimona, Beria; Abasolo, Emma; van Noordwijk, Meine; Tiongco, Lydia
"Sustaining the environmental, social, and economic development in Manupali watershed in southern Philippines is highly dependent on equitable allocation of water use rights and judicious utilization of water as a scarce resource. There are many stakeholders and water users: smallholder farmers, indigenous people, multi-national companies, the local government, the National Irrigation Administration, and the National Power Corporation (Pulangui IV). As demand for water outstrips supply, conflict arises between different user groups over who can use water and how much each one can use. This paper reports initial results of an ongoing study that examines water rights and land use change to better negotiate for greater investment in watershed management. A key issue in Manupali is overall water scarcity, compounded by conflicting water rights of different users. To avoid hostile confrontation between different user groups and to manage competition of water use, some user groups have instituted voluntary agreements for water rights sharing. Viewed in terms of cooperation and collective action, these voluntary agreements facilitate conflict management of a disputed resource, but the fairness and equity of such agreements are in question, as the cooperating user groups extract benefits from non-cooperators who may have incurred the costs of protecting the upper watershed to maintain water supply. Supported by watershed hydrological data on water balance and its land use patterns, this paper argues that water rights sharing through voluntary agreements alone can only mediate short-term conflict but will not solve water scarcity in the longer term. The problems of water scarcity, allocation, and land use, require collective action beyond the current level if equitable distribution of benefits, sharing of responsibilities, and co-investments in watershed management are the goals."
The Effects of Scales, Flows and Filters on Property Rights and Collective Action in Watershed Management
(2001) Swallow, Brent M.; Garrity, Dennis P.; van Noordwijk, Meine
"Research and policy on property rights, collective action and watershed management requires good understanding of ecological and socio-political processes at different social-spatial scales. On-farm soil erosion is a plot or farm-level problem that can be mitigated through more secure property rights for individual farmers, while the sedimentation of streams and deterioration of water quality are larger-scale problems that may require more effective collective action and/or more secure property rights at the village or catchment scale. Differences in social-political contexts across nations and regions also shape property rights and collective action institutions. For example, circumstances in the Lake Victoria basin in East Africa require particular attention to collective action and property rights problems in specific 'hot spot' areas where insecure tenure leads to overuse or under-investment. Circumstances in the uplands of Southeast Asia require analysis of the opportunities for negotiating more secure rights for farmers in exchange for stronger collective action by farmer groups for maintaining essential watershed functions."
Hot Spots of Confusion: Contested Policies and Competing Claims in the Peatlands of Central Kalimantan (Indonesia)
(2011) Galudra, Gamma; van Noordwijk, Meine; Suyanto; Sardi, I.; Pradhan, Ujjwal; Catacutan, Delia
"In the peatlands of Central Kalimantan, expectations of payments for carbon emission reduction currently shape the discourse over natural resource management as a means of influencing policy and exercising power. Discourses on ‘what is correct and what is not’ are embedded in a struggle over property rights and influence. This article examines the discursive strategies in the struggle over property rights in a failed development project (‘ex-Mega Rice Area’) in Central Kalimantan and traces their changes and development in justification for policy influence in the face of REDD implementation. Different types of actors have their own choice of argument and interpretation of facts, rules and norms over the disputed issue. Shifting national policies affect the distribution of power that shape the practice and use of forest peatland. This case study can help to provide directions and outline the key issues that need to be addressed in targeting climate change mitigation efforts."
Impact of Cropping Methods on Biodiversity in Coffee Agroecosystems in Sumatra, Indonesia
(2004) Gillison, Andrew N.; Liswanti, Nining; Budidarsono, Suseno; van Noordwijk, Meine; Tomich, Thomas V.
"The sustainable management of biodiversity and productivity in forested lands requires an understanding of key interactions between socioeconomic and biophysical factors and their response to environmental change. Appropriate baseline data are rarely available. As part of a broader study on biodiversity and profitability, we examined the impact of different cropping methods on biodiversity (plant species richness) along a subjectively determined land-use intensity gradient in southern Sumatra, ranging from primary and secondary forest to coffee-farming systems (simple, complex, with and without shade crops) and smallholder coffee plantings, at increasing levels of intensity. We used 24 (40 x 5 m) plots to record site physical data, including soil nutrients and soil texture together with vegetation structure, all vascular plant species, and plant functional types (PFT's readily observable, adaptive, morphological features). Biodiversity was lowest under simple, intensive, non-shaded farming systems and increased progressively through shaded and more complex agroforests to late secondary and closed-canopy forests. The most efficient single indicators of biodiversity and soil nutrient status were PFT richness and a derived measure of plant functional complexity. Vegetation structure, tree dry weight, and duration of the land-use type, to a lesser degree, were also highly correlated with biodiversity. Together with a vegetation, or V index, the close correspondence between these variables and soil nutrients suggests they are potentially useful indicators of coffee production and profitability across different farming systems. These findings provide a unique quantitative basis for a subsequent study of the nexus between biodiversity and profitability."
The Impacts and Opportunities of Oil Palm in Southeast Asia: What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Know?
(2009) Sheil, Douglas; Casson, Anne; Meijaard, Erik; van Noordwijk, Meine; Gaskell, Joanne; Sunderland-Groves, Jacqui; Wertz, Karah; Kanninen, Markku
"The ongoing expansion of oil palm plantations in the humid tropics, especially in Southeast Asia, is generating considerable concern and debate. Amid industry and environmental campaigners' claims, it can be hard to perceive reality. Is oil palm a valuable route to sustainable development or a costly road to environmental ruin? Inevitably, any answer depends on many choices. But do decision makers have the information they require to avoid pitfalls and make the best decisions? "This review examines what we know and what we don't know about oil palm developments. Our sources include academic publications and grey literature, along with expert consultations. Some facts are indisputable: among these are that oil palm is highly productive and commercially profitable at large scales, and that palm oil demand is rising. "Implementing oil palm developments involves many tradeoffs. Oil palm's considerable profitability offers wealth and development where wealth and development are needed--but also threatens traditional livelihoods. It offers a route out of poverty, while also making people vulnerable to exploitation, misinformation and market instabilities. It threatens rich biological diversity--while also offering the finance needed to protect forest. It offers a renewable source of fuel, but also threatens to increase global carbon emissions. "We remain uncertain of the full implications of current choices. How can local, regional and international benefits be increased while costs are minimised? While much important information is available, it is often open to question or hard to generalise. We conclude this review with a list of pressing questions requiring further investigation. Credible, unbiased research on these issues will move the discussion and practice forward."
Negotiation Support Models for Integrated Natural Resource Management in Tropical Forest Margins
(2002) van Noordwijk, Meine; Tomich, Thomas V.; Verbist, Bruno
"Natural resource management research has to evolve from a focus on plans, maps, and regulations to an acknowledgment of the complex, sometimes chaotic, reality in the field, with a large number of actors making their own decisions. As outside actors, we can only try to facilitate and support a process of negotiation among the stakeholders. Such negotiation involves understanding the perspectives of all stakeholders, analyzing complementarities in views, identifying where differences may be settled by 'science,' where science and social action can bring innovative alternatives for reconciliation, and where compromises will be necessary to move ahead. We distinguish between natural resource management problems at village level, within country, or transboundary, and those that relate local stakeholder decisions to global issues such as biodiversity conservation. Tree-based systems at plot or landscape level can minimize conflicts between private and public interests in local environmental services, but spatial segregation of functions is an imperative for the core of global biodiversity values. The complex agroforests developed by farmers as alternatives to food-crop-based agriculture integrate local and global environmental functions, but intensification and specialization may diminish these non-local values. For local biodiversity functions, a medium-intensity 'integrate' option such as agroforests may be superior in terms of resilience and risk management. Major options exist for increasing carbon stocks by expanding tree-based production systems on grasslands and in degraded watersheds through a coherent approach to the market, policy, and institutional bottlenecks to application of existing rehabilitation technologies. Agroforestry mosaics may be an acceptable replacement of forests in upper watersheds, provided they evolve into multistrata systems with a protective litter layer. Challenges to INRM research remain: how should the opportunities for adaptive response among diverse interest groups, at a number of hierarchical levels, be included in the assessment of impacts on the livelihoods of rural people?"
Principles for Fairness and Efficiency in Enhancing Environmental Services in Asia: Payments, Compensation, or Co-Investment?
(2010) van Noordwijk, Meine; Leimona, Beria
"The term payments for environmental services (PES) has rapidly gained popularity, with its focus on market-based mechanisms for enhancing environmental services (ES). Current use of the term, however, covers a broad spectrum of interactions between ES suppliers and beneficiaries. A broader class of mechanisms pursues ES enhancement through compensation or rewards. Such mechanisms can be analyzed on the basis of how they meet four conditions: realistic, conditional, voluntary, and pro-poor. Based on our action research in Asia in the Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services (RUPES) program since 2002, we examine three paradigms: commoditized ES (CES), compensation for opportunities skipped (COS), and co-investment in (environmental) stewardship (CIS). Among the RUPES action research sites, there are several examples of CIS with a focus on assets (natural + human + social capital) that can be expected to provide future flows of ES. CES, equivalent to a strict definition of PES, may represent an abstraction rather than a current reality. COS is a challenge when the legality of opportunities to reduce ES is contested. The primary difference between CES, COS, and CIS is the way in which conditionality is achieved, with additional variation in the scale (individual, household, or community) at which the voluntary principle takes shape. CIS approaches have the greatest opportunity to be pro-poor, as both CES and COS presuppose property rights that the rural poor often do not have. CIS requires and reinforces trust building after initial conflicts over the consequences of resource use on ES have been clarified and a realistic joint appraisal is obtained. CIS will often be part of a multiscale approach to the regeneration and survival of natural capital, alongside respect and appreciation for the guardians and stewards of landscapes."
Social Role-Play Games Vs Individual Perceptions of Conservation and PES Agreements for Maintaining Rubber Agroforests in Jambi (Sumatra), Indonesia
(2011) Villamor, Grace B.; van Noordwijk, Meine
"Financial incentives can both support and undermine social norms compatible with environmental service enhancement. External co-investmente.g., through incentives from programs to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) and eco-certificationneeds to synergize with local efforts by understanding local dynamics and conditions for free and prior informed consent. We assessed the perceptions and behavior of rubber agroforest farmers under existing conservation agreements as a step toward institutionalized reward schemes for agro-biodiversity using questionnaires and roleplaying games (RPG). To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to apply such a combination of methods to explore the perceptions of payments for environmental services (PES). Results revealed a strong conservation belief system and social norms in the research site, with indications that individual interest in converting old rubber agroforest to oil palm, with consequent private gain and loss of local social agrobiodiversity benefits, is suppressed in the social context of a role-playing game. In the game, all financial bids by external agents to secure an oil palm foothold in the village, were rejected despite indications of declining income in the village. Agents promoting an eco-certification scheme in the RPG had success and the responses obtained in the game can assist in the actual rollout of such a scheme without creating unrealistic expectations of its financial benefits. Co-investment schemes that require higher levels of trust and clarity of performance measures will have to address the potential discrepancy between individual preferences and community-level planning and decisions, while recognizing that social norms color the responses of individuals when presented with alternatives."