Watershed protection, and associated in situ water quality improvements, has received considerable attention as a means for mitigating health risks and avoiding expenditures at drinking water ...treatment plants (DWTPs). This study reviews the literature linking source water quality to DWTP expenditures. For each study, we report information on the modeling approach, data structure, definition of treatment costs and water quality, and statistical methods. We then extract elasticities indicating the percentage change in drinking water treatment costs resulting from a 1% change in water quality. Forty-six elasticities are obtained for various water quality parameters, such as turbidity, total organic carbon (TOC), nitrogen, sediment loading, and phosphorus loading. An additional 29 elasticities are obtained for land use classification (e.g., forest, agricultural, urban), which often proxy source water quality. Findings indicate relatively large ranges in the estimated elasticities of most parameters and land use classifications. However, average elasticities are smaller and ranges typically narrower for studies that incorporated control variables consistent with economic theory in their models. We discuss the implications of these findings for a DWTP's incentive to engage in source water protection and highlight gaps in the literature.
•Drinking water providers are increasingly engaged in source water protection activities.•We review 24 studies statistically linking source water quality to treatment costs.•Improvements in source water quality lead to modest reductions in treatment costs.•Water quality elasticities are smaller in studies incorporating key control variables.•Addressing knowledge gaps is vital to improving source water protection decisions.
This paper studies the consequences of China's recent water pollution regulation. We find evidence that the regulation reduces pollution-intensive activity in highly regulated areas. Relative to the ...locations where regulations are more stringent (downstream cities), locations where regulations are less stringent (upstream cities) attract more water-polluting activity. As polluting activity concentrates upstream, a larger proportion of the river and more poor residents are exposed to high levels of pollution.
This paper applies a social return on investment (SROI) analysis to the issue of flood control and wetland conservation in the Smith Creek basin of southeastern Saskatchewan, Canada. Basin ...hydrological modeling applied to wetland loss and restoration scenarios in the study area provides local estimates of the ecosystem service (ES) provision related to flood control and nutrient removal. Locally appropriate monetary values are applied to these services to gauge the cost effectiveness of wetland conservation funding at two levels: flood control capacity alone and then incorporating a suite of ES. SROI ratios for flood control alone provide ratios between 3.17 (retention) and 0.80 (full restoration) over 30years; when other ES are included, the ratios increase, ranging from 7.70 (retention) to 2.98 (full restoration) over 30years. Retention of existing wetlands provides the highest SROI and therefore we argue that government policy should focus on preventing further loss of wetlands as a strategic investment opportunity. Overall, these results indicate that wetland retention is an economically viable solution to limit the financial, social and environmental damages of flooding in Saskatchewan specifically and the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) generally.
•Wetland drainage in the Smith Creek basin will increase downstream flood damages to local infrastructure and agriculture.•Flood control services provide a 3.17 return on investment. When other ES are added the return ranges from 7.70 to 2.98.•Retention of existing wetlands provides the highest SROI at 7.70 due to high restoration costs.•A SROI analysis is a conceptually straightforward method to inform sustainable land-use decisions regarding wetlands.•Wetland conservation can assist the Government of Saskatchewan meet the objectives in the Plan for Growth.
Conservation projects have a lifecycle; they are born, they grow, and they can die. However, researchers know little about how the legacy of a project that failed to deliver upon its promised goals ...affects former participants’ willingness to participate in future conservation programming. We utilize a natural experiment—an expiration of a Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Land Degradation (REDD+) readiness project that failed to yield payments in Pemba Zanzibar − to explore whether and how exposure to REDD+ has influenced residents’ willingness to participate in a proposed future payment for ecosystem initiative (PES). We develop a simple causal model and analyse willingness to accept data from treated and non-treated shehia (ward), showing how exposure to REDD+ affected former participants’ willingness to engage with future PES projects and how this is moderated by factors shown in previous studies to be key indicators of uptake. Contrary to our expectations, we find that exposure to REDD+ is associated with fewer protest bids and higher levels of expected future participation. We find strong evidence that use values, wealth, loss aversion, environmental attitudes, and social desirability mediate this effect. We discuss these findings concerning Pemba and end with suggestions for conservationists establishing programs with uncertain futures.
•How do project failures affect former participants’ willingness to participate in future projects?•Exposure to a failed REDD+ program increased expected future participation and decreased protests.•Exposure to REDD+ dampens the moderating effect of use-values, social pressure, and environmental concern.•There is little evidence of a commodification of nature or motivational crowding out.
In the context of globalizing transboundary environmental challenges, strategies to protect and secure the local commons such as water resources have been increasingly scaled up. Consequently, local ...communities have started to engage in transnational mobilisations to defend their rights and express their concerns. This often implies the adoption and institutionalisation of emerging global norms, principles and modes of framing and claiming – such as the Human Right to Water or the Rights of Nature – which will interfere with and may even go against local understandings, meaning, and rooted struggles or initial claims made by grassroots movements. On the one hand, the appropriation of expert knowledge and technical idiom may improve their recognition and access to political and financial support. On the other hand, transnational involvement may (re)produce misrecognition or exclusion on the ground for community-based organisations. Studying cases from Latin American countries, and combining commons and social movements theories, this paper examines in what ways professionalisation and commensuration strategies as deployed and implemented by transnational grassroots movements impact the local commons.
While early attempts at land titling in Africa were often unsuccessful, factors such as new legislation, low-cost methods, and increasing demand for land have generated renewed interest. A ...four-period panel allows use of a pipeline and difference-indifferences approach to assess impacts of land registration in Ethiopia. We find that the program increased tenure security, land-related investment, and rental market participation and yielded benefits significantly above the cost of implementation.
The expansion of agricultural land remains one of the main drivers of deforestation in tropical regions. Stronger land property rights could possibly enable farmers to increase input intensity and ...productivity on the already cultivated land, thus reducing incentives to expand their farms by deforesting additional land. This hypothesis is tested with data from a panel survey of farm households in Sumatra. The survey data are combined with satellite imageries to account for spatial patterns, such as historical forest locations. Results show that plots for which farmers hold formal land titles are cultivated more intensively and are more productive than untitled plots. However, due to land policy restrictions, farmers located at the historic forest margins often do not hold formal titles. Without land titles, these farmers are less able to intensify and more likely to expand into the surrounding forest land to increase agricultural output. Indeed, forest closeness and past deforestation activities by households are found to be positively associated with current farm size. In addition to improving farmer's access to land titles for non-forest land, better recognition of customary land rights and more effective protection of forest land without recognized claims could be useful policy responses.
•Land titles raise farming intensity and productivity in Sumatra, Indonesia.•Thus, farmers with land titles have lower deforestation incentives to increase production.•Farmers at the forest margins are unlikely to hold land titles, hence less able to intensify.•Farmers at the forest margins have larger farms, are more involved in deforestation.•More land titling could incentivize forest-sparing agricultural intensification.
An in-depth understanding of the complex patterns of ecosystem services (ESs) interactions (i.e., synergies or trade-offs) based on social-ecological conditions is an important prerequisite for ...achieving sustainable and multifunctional landscapes. This study aimed to explore how ESs interactions are influenced by social-ecological factors. Taking the Sutlej-Beas River Basin as a case study area, where the linkages between ESs interactions and social-ecological processes are poorly understood, ESs interactions were identified through principal component analysis and correlated with a range of social-ecological factors, which were explored spatially based on ES bundles. The results revealed two dominant types of ESs interactions, namely multifunctionality-related synergies and grain production-related trade-offs. Population, nighttime light, precipitation, temperature, and soil clay content were all positively correlated with the two ESs interactions. Contrarily, elevation and soil sand content were negatively correlated with the two ESs interactions. Four main ES bundles were identified, which spatially describe the presence of ESs synergies and/or trade-offs in relation to social-ecological factors. This study provides a feasible way to explore the spatial differentiation and influencing factors impacting the interactions between ESs, which can provide a basis for an integrated watershed-based management of ESs.
•Identifying different types of ecosystem services interactions.•Exploring socio-ecological impacts on interactions among ecosystem services.•Comparing the trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem service bundles.
Yet shells harbour useful chemicals - protein, calcium carbonate and chitin, a polymer similar to cellulose, but which contains nitrogen (see 'Shell biorefinery'). The potential value of such shells ...for the chemical industry is being ignored. Scientists should work out sustainable ways to refine crustacean shells, and governments and industry should invest in using this abundant and cheap renewable resource.
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