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AbstractThe provision of environmental services on-farm by the improved fallow (an agroforestry technology) has largely remained empirically untested in sub-Saharan Africa. Where effects of planting trees have been used to estimate the impacts on consumption of fuel wood from public land, actual estimates of the size of fuel wood consumption changes have been lacking. Using data from a survey of 324 households in the Chongwe district of Zambia, we tested the hypothesis that households embracing improved fallows use less fuel wood from public land since the technology provides wood as a by-product. Estimates from ordered probit and matching strategies showed that the technology had a significant causal effect of reducing the consumption of fuel wood from public land. Therefore, in addition to promoting it for soil fertility improvement, the extension messages should explicitly reflect the technology's potential to provide on-farm environmental quality.

Leaving aside human and social capital for a future volume, the book should be viewed as a crucial first step in developing indicators for total wealth in the countries covered by the case studies, which include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mozambique and South Africa. These case studies experiment with implementing the SEAA in sub-Saharan nations known to suffer from the "resource curse": their wealth in resources and commodities has allowed inflows of liquidity, yet this cash has not funded crucial developments in infrastructure or education. What's more, resource-driven economies are highly vulnerable to commodity price mutability. The new measures of wealth deployed here offer more hope for the future in these countries than they themselves would once have allowed for.--

AbstractThe effect of preference uncertainty on estimated willingness to pay (WTP) is examined using identical payment cards and alternative uncertainty elicitation procedures in three split samples, focusing on air quality improvement in Nairobi. The effect of the stochastic payment card (SPC) and polychotomous payment card (PPC) are compared with a conventional payment card (PC). Substantial financial support is found for improved air quality in Nairobi, with approximately 85 per cent of the whole sample stating a positive WTP. The way WTP values are elicited, with and without ability to express preference uncertainty, has significant effect on WTP welfare estimate. Allowing respondents to express experienced uncertainty when stating WTP value yields more conservative but less accurate WTP values for inclusion in policy analysis. The PPC seems to hold more promise since it is easier to understand and imposes less cognitive burden on survey participants than the SPC in a developing country context.

This paper proposes that transboundary water governance needs to become an essential input to sustainable governance of protected natural reserves. The paper reviews the challenges and opportunities for such governance mechanisms, and identifies the factors behind successful practices. Successful transboundary governance of water and nature requires the reduction of associated transaction costs. Firstly, water diplomacy through joint research, data collection and monitoring, capacity building, dialogues for consensus building, promoting responsible leadership and providing advisory support can help in overcoming mistrust between stakeholders and create opportunities for cooperation. Secondly, power asymmetries may hinder transboundary water governance, therefore, there is a need to involve multi-scale links across stakeholders to counter-balance local power asymmetries and engage all stakeholders in consultations and negotiations. Thirdly, transboundary water governance is critically dependent on accurate and transparent data and analysis tools for informing policy decisions. Science-policy interactions for facilitating transboundary water governance were found to be most effective when the knowledge on joint water and nature governance is coproduced in a trans-disciplinary manner, in collaboration with wide-ranging informal networks of scientists, policy makers, and civil society. Finally, transboundary water governance organizations can serve as platforms for facilitating water diplomacy, building trust and cooperation, especially when they are granted the ability to enter into binding cooperative agreements regardless of external political pressures.

18-1802-152800-CSD UIDB/04085/2020 ; The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic and unprecedented impacts on both global health and economies. Many governments are now proposing recovery packages to get back to normal, but the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Global Assessment indicated that business as usual has created widespread ecosystem degradation. Therefore, a post-COVID world needs to tackle the economic drivers that create ecological disruptions. In this perspective, we discuss a number of tools across a range of actors for both short-term stimulus measures and longer-term revamping of global, national, and local economies that take biodiversity into account. These include measures to shift away from activities that damage biodiversity and toward those supporting ecosystem resilience, including through incentives, regulations, fiscal policy, and employment programs. By treating the crisis as an opportunity to reset the global economy, we have a chance to reverse decades of biodiversity and ecosystem losses. ; publishersversion ; published

While there is much debate on transformative change amongacademics and policymakers, the discussion on how to governsuch change is still in its infancy. This article argues thattransformative governance is needed to enable thetransformative change necessary for achieving globalsustainability goals. Based on a literature review, the articleunpacks this concept of transformative governance. It is:integrative, to ensure local solutions also have sustainableimpacts elsewhere (across scales, places, issues and sectors);inclusive, to empower those whose interests are currently notbeing met and represent values embodying transformativechange for sustainability; adaptive, enabling learning,experimentation, and reflexivity, to cope with the complexity oftransformative change; and pluralist, recognizing differentknowledge systems. We argue that only when these fourgovernance approaches are: implemented in conjunction;operationalized in a specific manner; and focused onaddressing the indirect drivers underlying sustainability issues,governance becomes transformative. ; publishedVersion