Doctoral Dissertation Research: Incentives, Livelihoods, and Forest Ecology Related to Payments for Ecosystems Services

博士论文研究：与生态系统服务付费相关的激励措施、生计和森林生态

• 批准号: 1536302
• 负责人: Tracey Osborne
• 金额: $ 1.6万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-15 至 2018-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1536302&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Incentives; Livelihoods

This doctoral dissertation research project will investigate the ability of conservation payments to achieve their intended goals of both improving ecosystem health and enhancing rural livelihoods. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are thought to influence conservation via payments to those who own or manage land. Many programs pay for services provided by forests, such as water filtration or carbon sequestration, or for management practices assumed to provide these services. Despite the rapid growth of hundreds of PES programs across the globe, there is little consensus regarding their development or conservation successes, leading many scholars, conservationists, and development practitioners to call for interdisciplinary investigations into these initiatives. This project will provide new insights regarding how PES initiatives affect forest and agricultural ecosystem health and also the lives and governance structures of rural participants. The project will test assumptions that incentivized activities or increased forest cover necessarily equate to improved ecosystem services and benefits to land users, because it will employ a quasi-experimental design that compares the actions of participants and non-participants to examine what might have occurred if PES interventions had not taken place. Project results will contribute new information and insights to discussions about the world's largest PES program, the United Nations' Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative, which is being implemented in developing nations across the globe, because studies of existing PES programs can inform the choices of potential participants and shape REDD+'s currently contested design. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.The doctoral student will undertake a political ecological analysis of a PES program by exploring the connections between social and ecological systems in Guatemala and by linking local practices to international calls for conservation. She will use a mixed methods approach of semi-structured interviews, livelihood surveys, and forestry plots to determine how payments affect who makes forest management decisions; what decisions are made; benefits and costs associated with different forest uses; and impacts on ecosystem services. Comparisons across land tenure patterns, socioeconomic situations, and deforestation rates will illustrate what factors influence the ability of PES programs to achieve their goals. Focusing on the measureable ecosystem services of carbon capture and agrobiodiversity in conjunction with interviews and surveys, the student will examine assumptions that incentivized activities necessarily equate to improved ecosystem services and benefits to land users. She also will investigate the capacity for these programs to empower or dispossess rural communities by changing existing systems of governance and access to the benefits of land.

该博士学位论文研究项目将调查保护支付的能力，以实现其预期的目标，以改善生态系统健康和增强农村生计。 人们认为生态系统服务（PES）的付款通过向拥有或管理土地的人的付款来影响保护。 许多计划为森林提供的服务支付，例如水过滤或碳固存或假定提供这些服务的管理实践。 尽管全球数百个PES计划迅速增长，但关于其发展或保护成功的共识几乎没有共识，领导许多学者，保护主义者和发展从业人员呼吁对这些举措进行跨学科的调查。 该项目将提供有关PES计划如何影响森林和农业生态系统健康以及农村参与者的生活和治理结构的新见解。 该项目将测试激励活动或增加森林覆盖的假设一定等同于改善生态系统服务和对土地用户的利益，因为它将采用准实验设计，比较参与者和非参与者的行动，以检查如果不进行PES干预措施，可能会发生的情况。 项目结果将为有关世界上最大的PES计划的讨论提供新的信息和见解，即联合国从森林砍伐和森林退化（REDD+）倡议中减少排放（REDD+）倡议，该倡议正在全球发展中国家中实施，因为现有PES计划的研究可以为潜在的参与者和现有竞赛设计的潜在参与者的选择提供信息。 作为博士学位论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，以使有前途的学生能够建立强大的独立研究职业。 她将使用半结构化访谈，生计调查和林业地块的混合方法来确定付款如何影响谁做出森林管理决策；做出了什么决定；与不同森林用途相关的收益和成本；并影响生态系统服务。 跨土地权限模式，社会经济状况和森林砍伐率的比较将说明哪些因素会影响PES计划实现其目标的能力。 为了重点关注碳捕获和农业多样性的可衡量的生态系统服务，并结合访谈和调查，学生将研究激励活动的假设，必须等同于改善生态系统服务和对土地用户的利益。 她还将通过改变现有的治理体系和获得土地利益的方式来调查这些计划的能力赋予农村社区权能或消除农村社区的能力。