Economics

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The author regrets that there is a missing differential operator, [Formula presented], in Eqs. (8)–(10). This error does not affect the rest of the paper. The correct equations should read: [Formula presented] © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

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Land Use Policy

Corrigendum to “Optimal mangrove restoration through community engagement on coastal lands facing climatic risks: The case of Sundarbans region in India” (Land Use Policy (2019) 81 (736–749), (S0264837718306276) (10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.11.047))

This paper explores the role of REDD+ programs in promoting community led preservation and restoration of forests in the Himalayan region of India. As there often exists a direct conflict between generating carbon credits through forest conservation and forestry-based livelihood sustenance activities, we consider the role of cooking gas subsidy in reducing communities’ reliance on forests. Findings indicate that a price of 13 USD per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent can induce a switch away from fuelwood to lpg based cooking and promote carbon sequestration. However, for such an incentive to work, a community's combined earnings from non-timber forest products, farm income and livestock-based earnings also play an important role. Curtailing access to forests can reduce forestry-based incomes, which in turn, would require a higher carbon price incentive. If no subsidy is provided, carbon price would need to be increased to 27 USD per ton for a complete switch away from fuelwood consumption. Finally, afforestation in degraded lands can be successfully undertaken by the community when restoration costs are low at 2000 INR per ha. However, restoration costs exceeding 10,000 INR per ha or high forest fire risks are not conducive to community led restoration efforts even with the REDD+ incentives. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Journal of Environmental Management

Combining carbon pricing with LPG subsidy for promoting preservation and restoration of Uttarakhand forests

This paper explores the design of a forestry-based payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme, which improves stream water supply while simultaneously helping conserve forests and supporting livelihoods in communities of Uttarakhand, India. Under a PES arrangement, upstream communities reduce fuelwood harvesting to restore forest quality and improve stream flow in the downstream communities. Results suggest that such PES projects can play a crucial role in supporting forest conservation efforts and mitigating water scarcity in the region. For instance, PES-based payments required to meet the water needs of downstream communities can be three times lower than the costs of municipal water supply. Whereas, if communities do not receive any monetary incentives for reducing fuelwood harvesting, it results in a significant degradation of the forests in the long run. However, hydrological and ecological constraints can reduce the effectiveness of PES programs in the region. A high displacement of oak forests by the pine forests would lower the benefits from PES participation for the local communities. When the shifting species composition of forests also increases the failure risk of PES projects, optimal response requires further restricting fuelwood harvesting. © 2019 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Water Economics and Policy

A Simulation Modeling of Forest Water Supply under Community-Managed PES Schemes

Restoration of mangrove forests through community involvement offers the promise of reaping multiple environmental dividends while simultaneously helping local communities augment their livelihoods through generating payments from ecosystem services. However, there exist several challenges to the success of such restoration projects. In this paper, one such key challenge, that of the risk of extreme climatic events, is considered. Optimal rate of mangrove restoration on public coastal lands is derived in the presence of a future risk of extreme cyclones decimating the mangrove forests. Using the context of the Sundarbans region of India, which has the largest mangrove forests on the planet, we develop a model of community led restoration efforts where local inhabitants receive credit for carbon sequestered in the process. Results indicate that when communities do not receive outside support through wages or reimbursement of plantation costs, restoration efforts get spread over a longer time horizon. Presence of a risk of future cyclone events that could destroy the restored forests prompts speedier restoration, which may not be an optimal outcome from the perspective of global carbon mitigation efforts. An optimal plan that is primarily concerned with deriving sequestration benefits from newly restored mangroves leads to lower restoration levels in the presence of higher cyclone risks. However, irrespective of the institutional setting under which restoration is incentivized, given the relatively stable nature of underground carbon stored in mangroves, it is optimal to undertake higher restoration efforts when climatic risks are low. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Optimal mangrove restoration through community engagement on coastal lands facing climatic risks: The case of Sundarbans region in India

This paper addresses management challenges associated with conserving endangered wildlife facing multiple threats from illegal poaching, habitat encroachment, and climate and land-use change-induced flooding. While poaching and encroachment challenges in conservation parks are of immediate nature, climate-related risks exist in the long term. The park manager faces a utility function that includes as its arguments local community’s incomes, benefits to the larger society from preserving threatened species and the financial costs of monitoring and land-use change efforts. Using the case of single-horned rhinos in the Kaziranga National Park, India, an optimal mix of monitoring and land-use changes is designed in presence of tradeoffs between short- and long-term management efforts. As monitoring only addresses immediate challenges associated with poaching and encroachment, long-term climatic risks remain ignored. Land-use management offers riskprotection as well as risk-insurance benefits with respect to climate change-induced flooding of the park. Recommendations for Resource Managers • It is important to incorporate both short- and longterm risks posed to endangered wildlife while investing in conservation efforts. There may exist a tradeoff between mitigating short- and long-run risks due to financial and physical resource constraints. However, ignoring long-term risks to wildlife habitats can jeopardize past conservation efforts. • Land-use management, both within and outside of conservation reserves, enhances resilience to climatic shocks through reducing flooding risks and must be an essential part of wildlife conservation efforts. • Conservation efforts ignoring local community welfare considerations can become suboptimal as they lead to reduced cooperation and potential conflicts. When wildlife conservation efforts account for local community welfare implications, optimal management plans could result in lower species abundance in the short term. However, increasing the park size through additional land enrollment can mitigate some of this tradeoff. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Natural Resource Modeling

Shooting at the poachers while the rhinos drown: Managing short- and long-term threats to endangered wildlife in conservation reserves

Entrepreneurial ventures potentially offer a way out for farmers facing stagnant livelihoods in drought-ridden farming. We develop a model where entrepreneurial success of marginal farmers is linked to their ability to overcome the challenges posed by the existent socio-economic and environmental inequalities. Farmers with lower socio-economic status receive an unequal share of irrigation water from common reservoirs, which impedes their ability to accumulate financial capital and start an enterprise. Findings suggest that less endowed farmers could end up inefficiently dedicating resources towards reducing social inequality through a process of social friction, which adversely affects their livelihood prospects. When both farming and entrepreneurial ventures are prone to failure, farmers may stay within farming for longer despite higher failure risk. When agricultural exit risk is higher and enterprise failure risk lower, farmers are forced to invest more time in farming and mitigating such risks, which, in turn, delays their success in business. © 2018, European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).

European Journal of Development Research

How Socio-Economic and Natural Resource Inequality Impedes Entrepreneurial Ventures of Farmers in Rural India

Lakes provide significant ecological and economic benefits to society. However, they are prone to over-exploitation and degradation. In this paper, we address the challenge of protecting Chilika Lake in India from heavy siltation caused by land degradation in its catchment areas. Community led afforestation is explored as a management tool for reducing soil erosion and improving fish yields in the lake. Optimal afforestation by a forestry-dependent community is compared to that from the perspective of a manager who maximizes the joint utility of the forestry and fishery-based communities. Additionally, a payment for ecosystem services (PES) mechanism is designed, which pays the forest community on the basis of reduced siltation loading in the lake while also allowing it to benefit from fuelwood harvesting in the newly restored forests. Through relating the impact of fuelwood harvesting by the forestry-based communities on fish yields of the fishing community, a dynamic optimization model evaluates the various trade-offs between environmental services provided by the forest and lake ecosystems. Findings indicate that paying the forestry-based communities for restoration can help improve the lake's lifespan in absence of other interventions. Increasing afforestation levels in the lake's catchment region to 1000 km2 can result in additional fish yield of half a million tonnes over the next hundred years, generating more than a billion dollars in revenues for the fishing communities. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

Forest Policy and Economics

A forestry-based PES mechanism for enhancing the sustainability of Chilika Lake through reduced siltation loading

Exotic invasive fish species, when introduced into pristine natural environments, threaten the survival of many endemic species. Management challenges associated with controlling their further spread and protecting endemic species can be exacerbated when the same exotic fish species also provide gastronomical benefits to humans. Local human populations can switch their consumption preferences toward the exotic fish species, leading to an increase in their spread rate and control costs. Using the example of the African Catfish invasion in a freshwater lake, we develop a bioeconomic model of its optimal control, which also incorporates the behavioral challenges arising from a gastronomical preference for the exotic fish species. In particular, the cost of catfish control increases with its consumption demand, which, through altering the inter-species dynamics, threatens the survival of endemic fish species. The manager has at his disposal the market and non-market values of the endemic fish species to invest toward their preservation efforts. The non-market value of the endemic species is further modeled as endogenous to the community’s preference switching. Results suggest that a late detection of the exotic fish species in freshwater bodies can increase their control costs enough to make their eradication challenging, especially when the manager faces financial resource constraints. The presence of behavioral effects adds to this challenge — directly, through increasing the control costs, and indirectly, through lowering the non-market value of the endemic fish species. © 2018 Ram Ranjan. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

PLoS ONE

Protecting endemic species from African Catfish invasion when community behavioral responses get in the way

Illegal logging is a significant problem in Indonesia, which is one of the few countries with a large forest area. In this study, we investigate the factors that affect harvesting and supply of illegal timber from Indonesia to China and Japan. Moreover, we investigate the factors that lead to the demand of Indonesian illegal timber from China and Japan. A simultaneous-equation econometric model of illegally logged timber demand and supply is developed and tested using the annual data over the period 1996–2010. We find that corruption and decentralization in Indonesia have significant and positive impacts on the illegally logged timber supply while excess demand in Japanese construction and furniture industries as well as Japan’s housing starts are the significant factors that affect the illegal logging in Indonesia. The law enforcement or policies aimed at reducing illegal harvesting in Indonesia are found to be more effective than the policies targeting the import of illegally logged timber into Japan and China. © 2017 Taylor & Francis.

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Journal of Sustainable Forestry

Determinants of illegal logging in Indonesia: An empirical analysis for the period 1996–2010

Having a bank account is widely regarded as the first step toward financial inclusion of the poor. Funds deposited in a bank account are also observed to lead to higher savings. Exploiting special features of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) of India, our estimates indicate that households that receive NREGS wages through a bank do not appear to spend more on education than other comparable households that receive cash payment. The district level intention to treat specification produces similar results. The findings suggest that the rural poor face constraints in accessing their bank accounts due to financial illiteracy and other problems. © 2017, © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.