The Emergence and Persistence of Payments for Watershed Services Programs in Mexico

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly W. Jones

Payments for watershed services programs (PWS) have become a prominent tool to protect ecosystems and hydrological services but little is known about where these innovative financing tools and governance systems emerge and persist. In 2008, the Mexican government started a program where they match funding from local partners to establish user-financed PWS programs, leading to the creation of 145 programs between 2008 and 2019. We study the factors that led to the emergence and persistence of these local PWS programs across Mexico. We assemble a unique database on these programs, as well as biophysical, economic and socio-cultural, and institutional variables, at the municipality level. We use logistic regression to analyze the variables that led to the emergence and persistence of PWS. We find that PWS programs are more likely to emerge in municipalities with lower opportunity costs; that are wealthier and more populated; that have complementary conservation programs; and that have more collective land tenure and protected areas. PWS programs are more likely to persist in municipalities with poorer water quality and more floods; that have more protected areas; and that have a non-governmental organization or water utility involved as the local counterpart. These results suggest that the emergence and persistence of local, user-financed PWS could be facilitated through better information on the condition of watershed services to signal need for hydrological protection; capacity building and institutional strengthening efforts that provide the social capital needed for collective action; and involvement of decentralized non-state actors that are politically neutral and can provide more sustainable financing.

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Verónica Iñiguez-Gallardo ◽  
Fabián Reyes-Bueno ◽  
Olga Peñaranda

The perceptions and values that local communities have towards protected areas are of great value for the improvement of these territories’ management. Such perceptions and values are often absent in the conservation planning process, particularly in those privately protected areas that are established in areas where the land tenure system is based not only on ownership but also on customary uses. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data obtained through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and members of communities surrounding a privately protected area in southern Ecuador, we identify that the level of collaboration with the managers, the distance to the protected area, the percentage of untitled land, and the dependence on the resources (customary uses) are among the variables affecting these perceptions and values. Positive perceptions towards protected areas and naturalistic values are developed among those who collaborate with the protected area managers, whereas negative perceptions, and a mix of naturalistic and biospheric values are developed among those who have a sense of a lack of attention to social needs although supporting nature conservation at the same time. The evidence presented shows the importance of matching local peoples’ expectations with conservation goals during the establishment of a protected area.


Africa ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 614-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilal Butt

ABSTRACTAcross the world, the presence of domestic animals in protected areas (PAs) is considered an ‘incursion’ that threatens the economic and ecological viability of these areas. Dominant narratives about incursions inaccurately describe the relationships between people and PAs because they lack adequate contextualization. In this paper, I rely on a political-ecological framework to argue for an alternative narrative. Through a case study from a PA in southern Kenya, I demonstrate how incursions are instead modern co-productions that arise from the intersections between changing political geographies of resource control and variable animal geographies of resource utilization – thus clarifying a long-standing debate about the presence of domestic animals in PAs. I rely on direct empirical and supporting evidence from place-based studies to illustrate the spatial and temporal differences in resource access strategies of wildlife and livestock within and outside the PA. I contrast these against changing land tenure and resource management policies to highlight how livestock movements into PAs are patterned in ways that reflect the changing nature of PA management, the material conditions of the landscape, and the agency of animals. Through these investigations, this paper provides a more accurate and nuanced explanation for livestock movements into PAs.


1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Majken Schultz

Different work settings in a governmental organization are socially defined as symbolic domains. Each domain represents distinct ways of framing and inter preting talk and action. Members of the organization must be able to keep all symbolic domains in mind and switch back and forth between them, as they cross different work settings. The paper claims that rites of transition facilitate switches between symbolic domains directing the entry to and the exit from symbolic domains. The social definitions of symbolic domains and the transitions between them are analyzed on the basis of a study of the interaction between a group of managers and the political minister.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (13) ◽  
pp. 5312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa de Noronha ◽  
Eric Vaz

This theoretical review aims to create a comprehensive and systematic analysis based on previously published literature explaining how contemporary technological developments may promote new paths for small and medium-sized towns (SMTs) and their networking systems. Much has been said concerning the capacity of towns to absorb strategic knowledge, which is highly dependent on local governance systems. In this paper, five levels of multidisciplinary approaches will be addressed so as to pinpoint the theoretical grounds for the promotion and advocacy of small and medium-sized towns (SMTs) as major drivers of regional sustainability: agglomeration advantages and networking efficiencies—representing strict economic accounting of cost and benefits; clustering in a context of online environments, and its extension to open networking systems; sustainable innovation processes for SMTs, technology, and knowledge transfer in open innovation systems—both settings for discussions within the framing of new technological developments and artificial intelligence; knowledge and new technological developments with local spillovers—to be enhanced employing new educational programs and learning diffusion at advanced levels; the social functions of small and medium-sized towns—to be addressed in the areas of sociology, architecture, and planning.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Versanudin Hekmatyar ◽  
Fentiny Nugroho

Abstract: The objective of this study is to describe the pattern of land tenure and forms of livelihood diversification in rural area. By using qualitative approach, data was collected and presented descriptively. The results are as follows, first, land is an important production factors as capital and labor. Land in Kedungprimpen village is still closely linked to the livelihoods of its inhabitants. High level of dependence of the population on agricultural land is also closely related to the local community's view that underlies the social differentiation of the rich, ample and poor. Second, this fact further encourages households todeal with the crisis, undertake series of livelihood activities to meet their basic needs. The selection of diversified forms of livelihood is mainly based on rational reasons related to the types of resources that can be optimized. Generally, livelihood diversification in Kedungprimpen Village is on agricultural andnon-agricultural sectors. Agricultural sector includes land cultivation, sharecrop, rent, mortgage, and labor system. Non-agricultural sector includes trade, handicrafts production, stockbreeding, and carpentry.Keywords: pattern of land tenure, land tenure, land diversification, peasant


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tibor Hartel ◽  
Ben C Scheele ◽  
Laurentiu Rozylowicz ◽  
Andra Horcea-Milcu ◽  
Dan Cogalniceanu

Many human-shaped landscapes support viable amphibian populations due to the habitats created and/or maintained as a consequence of human actions. The challenges and approaches required to achieve the persistence of amphibians in human-shaped landscapes are markedly different from approaches commonly applied in protected areas. Contrary to protected areas or natural landscapes where amphibian conservationists can have direct control over management, in human-shaped landscapes, management options are best approached through understanding local communities’ values and socio-economic aspirations. However, consideration of the social aspects of amphibian conservation are vastly under-represented in the amphibian conservation literature. We propose that amphibian conservationists should: (i) assess the controllability of their mitigation actions for achieving long-term sustainability, (ii) understand the values and attitudes of individual landowners towards amphibians and amphibian-friendly management (local scale) and land stewardship on which amphibian conservation initiatives can be built (landscape scale), and (iii) understand the social and economic drivers of land-use change operating at regional levels, which is crucial for building adaptive potential in conservation programs. Since targeted amphibian conservation initiatives are limited in many human-shaped landscapes, consideration of the socio-economic context conducive to amphibian persistence is crucial.


Oryx ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Dudley ◽  
Craig Groves ◽  
Kent H. Redford ◽  
Sue Stolton

AbstractProtected areas are regarded as the most important tool in the conservation toolbox. They cover > 12% of the Earth's terrestrial area, with over half of this designated since 1970, and are thus a unique example of governments and other stakeholders consciously changing management of land and water at a significant scale. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has a global programme to complete ecologically-representative protected area networks, and this is driving the creation of large numbers of new protected areas. But there is also growing criticism of protected areas because of the social costs of protection and doubts about their effectiveness. We acknowledge this criticism but believe that it is over-stated and applied to a protected area model that has already been replaced by newer thinking. As protected areas are becoming more complex in concept and more complicated in management, we review the six most important changes affecting them over the last 2 decades: (1) a new protected area definition with more emphasis on nature conservation; (2) a plurality of management and governance models; (3) acknowledgement of wider protected area benefits beyond nature conservation; (4) greater social safeguards for protected areas; (5) evidence that protected areas are effective conservation tools; and (6) a new emphasis on larger protected areas, transboundary protected areas, connectivity conservation and landscape approaches. We conclude by considering fresh challenges as a result of policy changes and the global criminal wildlife trade, and consider the potential of the forthcoming 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress.


Author(s):  
Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor

The first phase of the development of land tenure in Mexico, from the desamortization laws in 1856 to agrarian reform, was completed in 1940 by the Lázaro Cárdenas administration. While between 1856 and 1910 property reforms served to concentrate land and stimulate latifundio, from the violent Mexican Revolution of 1910–1917 until 1992 a policy of social justice was implemented that sought to give land to peasant families, thereby generating a better distribution of land, though without improving its productivity. This signifies that if postrevolutionary modernity assumed, echoing neo-institutionalism or old trends such as positivism or regeneracionismo, that land redistribution was a necessary condition to generate economic growth, in reality it was the social dimension and not the economic that gave character to Mexican agrarian reform between 1920 and 1992. As a backdrop to this, the analysis of literature and history shows a truncated and limited agrarian reform in which traditional figures such as the cacique persisted. The traditional and official vision of the agrarian reform is misguided, in which it is understood as a product of restitutive justice, the result of peasants regaining the lands from which they had been evicted due to the desamortization laws and the greed of landowners hungry for land who had annexed the land of the pueblos. To the contrary, agrarian reform is distributive, allocating land to peasants who requested it, while the hacienda was not the source of all the evils that gave rise to the revolution. Nor can the situation of the Mexican countryside be portrayed as the fight of the peones against the hacendados or caciques hungry for land. This erroneous vision of the Mexican countryside should be demystified, because it does not take into account that agrarian reform became the touchstone to give an agrarian nature to a very diversified Mexican Revolution and convert it into an instrument for the postrevolutionary governments to champion the peasant struggle in 20th-century Mexico, becoming the key to economic growth and social justice in the rural Mexican world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 100919 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana N. Johnson ◽  
Carena J. van Riper ◽  
Maria Chu ◽  
Sophia Winkler-Schor

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fidelis Akunke Atuo ◽  
Jun Fu ◽  
Timothy John O’Connell ◽  
Jonathan Akomaye Agida ◽  
Jennifer Arubemi Agaldo

SummaryThe scope and scale of wildlife crimes around the world have risen in intensity and complexity, yet current enforcement strategies have often not delivered desired effects on illegal activities, even within protected areas. Tackling the array of illegal activities by emphasizing law enforcement above other options is challenging and potentially unsustainable. We explored the potential for social norms, community regulations and socioeconomic factors to promote compliance with wildlife laws by interviewing 334 respondents in 28 villages that share boundaries with protected areas in Nigeria. Using an anonymous direct questioning approach, we recorded a high prevalence of non-compliance behaviours in all studied communities. Injunctive norms (i.e., perceptions of acceptable behaviour within a social group) significantly predicted compliance, as respondents with no complicit friends or family members were more likely to comply with wildlife regulations. Perceived likelihood of community-level sanctions played a more salient role than the fear of arrest by rangers in influencing compliance. In addition, non-compliance increased with number of dependents, but reduced with average monthly household income. Our study demonstrates that clear knowledge of the social norms that drive local behaviour as well as the authorities that enforce them is integral to understanding the forces that drive community involvement and participation in conservation. Incorporating local communities in planning enforcement interventions may help protect threatened species and landscapes.


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