Die Wirkung von eingestellten Zahlungen für Ökosystemleistungen auf den Kohlenstoffhaushalt, Entwaldung, Kollektivhandlungen und intrinsische Motivation für den Umweltschutz.
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
Environmental degradation and biodiversity loss remains a global concern, necessitating innovative policies that balance conservation and human development. In tropical countries, deforestation driven by agriculture poses significant challenges, particularly for smallholder farmers. Additionally, tropical forests play a crucial role in carbon capture as they absorb and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping mitigate the impacts of climate change. In response, Payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes have emerged as a vital complement to protected areas, incentivizing landholders for conservation efforts. This project focuses on a largescale asset-building PES scheme, the 'Sofala Carbon Community Project' (SCCP), which operated from 2005 to 2014 in Mozambique. The SCCP went beyond conventional PES schemes, offering individual payments to farmers for adopting agroforestry practices, alongside broader development opportunities and community-based REDD+ incentives. Initially, the project aimed to assess the SCCP's environmental effectiveness and its impact on intrinsic pro-environmental values and social norms of smallholder farmers. The crowding out effect refers to the phenomenon where the introduction of external incentives, such as monetary rewards for engaging in a particular activity diminishes an individual's intrinsic motivation to perform that activity. This effect has been widely studied in various contexts and suggests that relying heavily on external incentives can sometimes undermine individuals' inherent interest, satisfaction, or sense of purpose in performing a task. However, during the course of the study, evidence emerged suggesting that crowding-out of conservation motivations due to monetary incentives was rare. This was supported by two studies conducted by members of the team in Uganda (Vorlaufer, Tobias, Stefanie Engel, Joost de Laat, and Björn Vollan. 2023 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120 (18)) and Colombia (Blanco, Esther, Lina Moros, Alexander Pfaff, Ivo Steimanis, Maria Alejandra Velez, and Björn Vollan. 2023. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, May, 102826). This led to a shift in focus towards evaluating the SCCP's long-term environmental effectiveness and well-being effects. The project site, located in central Mozambique, spans over 6,160 km² and encompasses the EU pilot and Envirotrade phases of the SCCP. Data collection involved a household survey and remote sensing analysis, enabling the assessment of forest cover changes between 1996 and 2019. The findings reveal significant positive effects of the SCCP on forest cover, particularly in the EU pilot area. Forest covers were notably higher compared to the control group, indicating a substantial reduction in deforestation. Spillover effects also suggest the potential for successful conservation efforts to positively influence neighboring regions. In terms of well-being, respondents from SCCP villages reported higher wealth, household incomes, and perceived economic situations. The effects were most pronounced for those who benefited the most from the SCCP, indicating the importance of comprehensive project design. The study also explored motivational crowding effects, finding no support for the crowding-out of intrinsic motivations. On the contrary, participants exposed to the SCCP displayed higher intrinsic motivations, suggesting a positive impact on conservation efforts. This was somehow surprising as crowding-out of intrinsic motivation has been documented before extensively, mainly in the Global North, but can vary depending on the nature of the activity, the individual's pre-existing motivation, and the design of the incentive system. The SCCP project was perceived as supportive rather than controlling and no unintended consequences emerged. Overall, the SCCP demonstrated its effectiveness in reducing deforestation and improving well-being, particularly for those deeply involved in the project. The sustained and substantively significant impact observed within the EU pilot area, in contrast to none or very little additionality found for other PES programs (Wunder et al. 2020; West et al. 2023), is an intriguing result. This disparity seems to underscore the importance of adopting a holistic approach, emphasizing that mere financial support to farmers by non-governmental organizations such as Envirotrade in this case study, via the distribution of certificates for agroforestry activities, does not suffice as a standalone solution. The key factor contributing to the sustained and enduring effects, on both the environment and for local communities, lay in the integration of conservation policies with development initiatives.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
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No crowding out among those terminated from an ongoing PES program in Colombia. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 120, 102826.
Blanco, Esther; Moros, Lina; Pfaff, Alexander; Steimanis, Ivo; Velez, Maria Alejandra & Vollan, Björn
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Payments for ecosystem services did not crowd out pro-environmental behavior: Long-term experimental evidence from Uganda. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(18).
Vorlaufer, Tobias; Engel, Stefanie; de Laat, Joost & Vollan, Björn
