scholarly journals Program Outcomes of Payments for Watershed Services in Brazilian Atlantic Forest: How to Evaluate to Improve Decision-Making and the Socio-Environmental Benefits

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 2441
Author(s):  
Flávio Monteiro dos Santos ◽  
Marcondes Coelho-Junior ◽  
Jéssica Chaves Cardoso ◽  
Vanessa Basso ◽  
André de Paula Marques ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Evaluation Methodology ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Program Outcomes ◽  
Efficiency Performance ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Watershed Services ◽  
Paraíba Do Sul River

In 2014, the Paraíba do Sul River Basin Integration Committee (CEIVAP) established its Pilot Program of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), focusing on water resources. The projects from this program share the same goal: to disseminate the use of PES as a tool for land management in watersheds. Contemplating 11 municipalities, including 84 landowners, conserving 718.63 ha and restoring 188.58 ha, this program was concluded in April 2020. Reviewing its historical and contextualizing features, we have observed that the outcomes from this program extend beyond these numbers. Here, we propose an evaluation methodology comparing the efficiency, performance, and impact of the PES projects. Based on new indicators that are easy to measure, we have identified key elements that have asymmetrically affected the projects. The complexity of the project scope and the execution of high-cost, and risky interventions on rural properties, have resulted in expensive projects with little tangible outputs. Our results support the upgrade of public policy for investment in ecosystem services by CEIVAP in the Paraíba do Sul watershed. In addition, our results can be more successful by improving the decision-making processes for similar projects in other watersheds.

scholarly journals Evaluating the environmental impact of payments for ecosystem services in Coatepec (Mexico) using remote sensing and on-site interviews

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASON SCULLION ◽  
CRAIG W. THOMAS ◽  
KRISTINA A. VOGT ◽  
OCTAVIO PÉREZ-MAQUEO ◽  
MILES G. LOGSDON
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Programme Implementation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Monitoring And Enforcement ◽  
Landsat Satellite

SUMMARYOver the last decade, hundreds of payments for ecosystem services (PES) programmes have been initiated around the world, but evidence of their environmental benefits remains limited. In this study, two PES programmes operating in the municipality of Coatepec (Mexico) were evaluated to assess their effectiveness in protecting the region's endangered upland forests. Landsat satellite data were analysed to assess changes in forest cover before and after programme implementation using a difference-in-differences estimator. Additionally, surveys and interviews were conducted with local residents and a subset of PES programme participants to evaluate the programmes’ social and environmental impacts, particularly the effect of the programmes on landowner behaviour. The remote-sensing data show that deforestation was substantially lower on properties receiving PES payments compared to properties not enrolled in the programmes, but the programmes did not prevent the net loss of forests within Coatepec. Moreover, the on-site interviews suggest that the payments may have had little impact on deforestation rates, and that other factors contributed to the conservation of forests in PES properties. These findings suggest that risk-targeted payments, robust monitoring and enforcement programmes, and additional conservation initiatives should be included in all PES schemes to ensure environmental effectiveness.

scholarly journals A környezeti hasznok rendszere (System of the environmental benefits)

2013 ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Hajnalka Ván
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Environmental Action ◽  
Accounting System ◽  
New Model ◽  
Environmental Decision Making ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Value Concept

A tanulmány a vállalati működés során megjelenő környezetvédelmi intézkedések vállalaton belüli hasznainak rendszerezésével foglalkozik. A hagyományos vállalati számviteli rendszerben a környezetvédelem alapvetően a költségoldalon jelenik meg. Azonban a környezetvédelmi tevékenység vállalaton belül megjelenő hasznainak is fontos szerepe van környezetvédelmi intézkedésekkel, beruházásokkal kapcsolatos döntések meghozatalában. Ennek ellenére a környezeti hasznok a szakirodalomban elnagyoltan, valamint nem a teljes vállalatra vonatkozóan jelennek meg. Ezért a tanulmány célja, hogy a környezeti hasznok számviteli rendszerben való kimutatására egyfajta megoldást keressen. Az elemzés eredménye egy olyan új modell felállítása, amely képes a tulajdonosi érték koncepciójához szorosan kapcsolódva a vállalaton belüli környezeti hasznokat átfogóan kimutatni. Az újonnan felállított modell a hazai és a nemzetközi gyakorlatban is újdonságértékkel bír, és nagy előnye a vállalati gyakorlatban való alkalmazhatóság. --------- The main focus of this paper is the systematization of the environmental benefits within the company. The environmental benefits related to the company’s environmental action. Environmental protection appears in the accounting system mostly on the cost side. However, environmental benefits incurring within the company play an important role in the company’s environmental decision making processes. Despite these facts, environmental benefits are not analyzed in detail by the accounting literature and do not cover the whole activity of the company. Consequently, these paper aims to gain a possible demonstration of environmental benefits in the accounting system. The main outcome of this paper is a new model, able to comprehensively present the environmental benefits of the whole company. The theory on which the model is based is the shareholders’ value concept. The model has significant novelty both in the Hungarian and international practice. Another advantage of the model is that it can be integrated into the company’s accounting system.

IoT for Hospitality Industry

2020 ◽  
pp. 1388-1408
Author(s):  
Asim Sinan Yuksel ◽  
Ibrahim Arda Cankaya ◽  
Sadi Fuat Cankaya
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Quality Of Service ◽  
Service Quality ◽  
Customer Service ◽  
Hospitality Industry ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Decision Making Processes

Creating and updating meal tags, printing them on small-sized papers raise the costs, cause workload and affect the service quality negatively at the hotels with all-you-can-eat buffet system. Over the last few years, we have seen that many hotels started to make use of tablets to improve the service quality, decrease the costs, provide customers ability to order foods, make reservations, manage their rooms, etc. Going paperless and including more features by adopting new technologies increase the quality of service, help customer's and staff's decision-making processes more effective, improve customer and service personnel experience. In this chapter, authors designed and developed a flexible, cost effective, easy-to-use, customer-friendly and staff oriented paperless buffet management system for the restaurants that have all-you-can-eat buffet. Through this system, they aimed to achieve enhanced customer service, increased efficiency and customer satisfaction; save time, paper and printing costs; provide environmental benefits and efficient buffet management.

QUALITY AND OUTCOMES: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT IN BRAZIL

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (02) ◽  
pp. 1450011 ◽  
Author(s):  
VÍTOR MARGATO ◽  
LUIS E. SÁNCHEZ
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Environmental Assessment ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Strategic Environmental Assessment ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Technical Quality ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Environmentally Sound ◽  
High Level

In a context of unregulated practice, strategic environmental assessment (SEA) contribution to environmentally sound decision-making may be difficult to gauge. Recent Brazilian experience, where there is no legal requirement for SEA, was studied by reviewing cases selected by considering distinctive drivers for undertaking an assessment, varied locations and different consultancies hired to prepare the report. A quality review checklist was used to evaluate the contents of SEA reports according to: (i) adherence to good practice; (ii) technical quality and adequacy to decision-making processes; (iii) achievement of sound and enduring environmental benefits. Interviews aimed at gauging their actual influence. SEAs reached a relatively high level of technical quality and procedural effectiveness, but very low substantive effectiveness. Influence on decision-making varied from null to limited consideration of information in developing programs. The main challenge for SEA in unregulated contexts is to demonstrate its value to decision-makers and citizens' organisations.

Community-Based Payments for Ecosystem Services (CB-PES): Implications of community involvement for program outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 100974 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Brownson ◽  
Elizabeth Guinessey ◽  
Marcia Carranza ◽  
Manrique Esquivel ◽  
Hilda Hesselbach ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Community Involvement ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Program Outcomes ◽  
Community Based

scholarly journals How Experts’ Opinions and Knowledge Affect Their Willingness to Pay for and Ranking of Hydrological Ecosystem Services

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 10055
Author(s):  
Li-Chun Peng ◽  
Wan-Yu Lien ◽  
Yu-Pin Lin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Economic Cost ◽  
Water Yield ◽  
Expert Opinions ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
Sediment Export

To ensure that ecosystem services are included in decision-making processes, many studies have relied on expert opinions and knowledge to identify, rank, and assess willingness to pay. In this study, expert opinions according to their expertise in hydrology, ecology, and sociology were surveyed and compared in terms of (1) recognition and ranking of hydrological ecosystem services (HESs) and (2) willingness to pay for HESs. The decision-making process was also investigated, specifically the rankings of factors in experts’ plans for climate change adaptation. The experts’ recognition of and opinions concerning HESs were positively correlated at various levels with intention to pay (i.e., whether respondents were willing to pay for HESs). Most experts recognized the importance of HESs and allocated high average scores of 9.15, 8.17, and 8.41 to water yield, sediment export, and nutrient export, respectively, using a scale from 1 (least important) to 10 (most important). The percentage of sociologists (100%) exhibited greater intention to pay than those of hydrologists (70%) and ecologists (93%), respectively. Experts prioritized environmental impact over economic cost in policy decision-making, and they differed significantly by field in terms of their rankings of the functional, economic, environmental, and social considerations of decision-making. The results revealed significant differences among experts in their decision-making preferences according to their fields of knowledge. The experts of a specific study field may be more willing to pay for that than for another. Greater intellectual exchange and analysis among experts should be implemented and diverse expert opinions should be solicited in policy decision-making.

scholarly journals The effectiveness of Payments for Ecosystem Services at delivering improvements in water quality: lessons for experiments at the landscape scale

PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e5753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin L. Pynegar ◽  
Julia P.G. Jones ◽  
James M. Gibbons ◽  
Nigel M. Asquith
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Environmental Management ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Randomised Trial ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Management Interventions

BackgroundRandomised Control Trials (RCTs) are used in impact evaluation in a range of fields. However, despite calls for their greater use in environmental management, their use to evaluate landscape scale interventions remains rare. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) incentivise land users to manage land to provide environmental benefits. We present the first RCT evaluation of a PES program aiming to improve water quality.Watersharedis a program which incentivises landowners to avoid deforestation and exclude cattle from riparian forests. Using this unusual landscape-scale experiment we explore the efficacy ofWatersharedat improving water quality, and draw lessons for future RCT evaluations of landscape-scale environmental management interventions.MethodsOne hundred and twenty-nine communities in the Bolivian Andes were randomly allocated to treatment (offeredWatersharedagreements) or control (not offered agreements) following baseline data collection (includingEscherichia colicontamination in most communities) in 2010. We collected end-line data in 2015. Using our end-line data, we explored the extent to which variables associated with the intervention (e.g. cattle exclusion, absence of faeces) predict water quality locally. We then investigated the efficacy of the intervention at improving water quality at the landscape scale using the RCT. This analysis was done in two ways; for the subset of communities for which we have both baseline and end-line data from identical locations we used difference-in-differences (matching on baseline water quality), for all sites we compared control and treatment at end-line controlling for selected predictors of water quality.ResultsThe presence of cattle faeces in water adversely affected water quality suggesting excluding cattle has a positive impact on water quality locally. However, both the matched difference-in-differences analysis and the comparison between treatment and control communities at end-line suggestedWatersharedwas not effective at reducingE. colicontamination at the landscape scale. Uptake ofWatersharedagreements was very low and the most important land from a water quality perspective (land around water intakes) was seldom enrolled.DiscussionAlthough excluding cattle may have a positive local impact on water quality, higher uptake and better targeting would be required to achieve a significant impact on the quality of water consumed in the communities. Although RCTs potentially have an important role to play in building the evidence base for approaches such as PES, they are far from straightforward to implement. In this case, the randomised trial was not central to concluding thatWatersharedhad not produced a landscape scale impact. We suggest that this RCT provides valuable lessons for future use of randomised experiments to evaluate landscape-scale environmental management interventions.

scholarly journals Effectiveness and equity of Payments for Ecosystem Services: Real-effort experiments with Vietnamese land users

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lasse Loft ◽  
Stefan Gehrig ◽  
Dung Ngoc Le ◽  
Jens Rommel
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Conservation Policy ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Real Effort ◽  
Conservation Effort ◽  
Payment Schemes ◽  
Conflicting Goals

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are widespread in conservation policy. In PES, environmental effectiveness and social equity are often perceived as conflicting goals. Empirical studies on the relationship between popular design features, such as payment differentiation and payment conditionality, and effectiveness and equity are scarce. Further, they struggle with measuring and separating ecological and equity outcomes. In this study, we combine two incentivized lab-in-the-field experiments with 259 land users from eight villages in North-Western Vietnam to assess both individual conservation effort and community-level equity perceptions under four different PES designs. Effort is measured in a real-effort task with real-world environmental benefits; equity perceptions about payment designs in the real-effort task are measured in a coordination game. We demonstrate that payment design affects both effort and equity perceptions. Payments which are differentiated and are solely conditional on individuals’ contributions of effort are perceived as most equitable. They are also more effective in motivating conservation effort than other designs, although the differences are small and not significant for all comparisons. By working out the positive correlation of effectiveness and equity across the four payment schemes, we show that these objectives are not necessarily conflicting goals in incentive-based conservation policy. Further, we can show that women exert greater conservation efforts. We discuss how greater equity and effectiveness could be achieved with reforms towards more input-based distribution criteria in Vietnam’s PES legislation and the limitations and opportunities of the experimental paradigm for research on PES.

scholarly journals Hierarchical Decision-making using a New Mathematical Model based on the Best-worst Method

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 710-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Hashemi Tabatabaei ◽  
Maghsoud Amiri ◽  
Mohammad Ghahremanloo ◽  
Mehdi Keshavarz-Ghorabaee ◽  
Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Model ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Evaluation Methodology ◽  
Hierarchical Decision Making ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Multi Criteria Evaluation ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Hierarchical Decision ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Best Worst Method

Decision-making processes in different organizations often have a hierarchical and multilevel structure with various criteria and sub-criteria. The application of hierarchical decision-making has been increased in recent years in many different areas. Researchers have used different hierarchical decision-making methods through mathematical modeling. The best-worst method (BWM) is a multi-criteria evaluation methodology based on pairwise comparisons. In this paper, we introduce a new hierarchical BWM (HBWM) which consists of seven steps. In this new approach, the weights of the criteria and sub-criteria are obtained by using a novel integrated mathematical model. To analyze the proposed model, two numerical examples are provided. To show the performance of the introduced approach, a comparison is also made between the results of the HBWM and BWM methodologies. The analysis demonstrates that HBWM can effectively determine the weights of criteria and sub-criteria through an integrated model.

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