Only One Tree from Each Seed? Environmental Effectiveness and Poverty Alleviation in Mexico’s Payments for Ecosystem Services Program | Zendy

Jennifer Alix-García | Zendy; Katharine R. E. Sims | Zendy; Patricia Yáñez-Pagans | Zendy

Open Access

Only One Tree from Each Seed? Environmental Effectiveness and Poverty Alleviation in Mexico’s Payments for Ecosystem Services Program

Author(s) -

Jennifer Alix-García,

Katharine R. E. Sims,

Patricia Yáñez-Pagans

Publication year - 2015

Publication title -

american economic journal economic policy

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 7.868

H-Index - 62

eISSN - 1945-7731

pISSN - 1945-774X

DOI - 10.1257/pol.20130139

Subject(s) - poverty , deforestation (computer science) , payment , ecosystem services , cash transfers , cover (algebra) , conditional cash transfer , natural resource economics , forest cover , cash , economics , business , agricultural economics , ecosystem , economic growth , ecology , finance , mechanical engineering , computer science , engineering , biology , programming language

Environmental conditional cash transfers are popular but their impacts are not well understood. We evaluate land cover and wealth impacts of a federal program that pays landowners for protecting forest. Panel data for program beneficiaries and rejected applicants allow us to control for fixed differences and time trends affecting both groups. We find the program reduces the expected land cover loss by 40-51 percent and generates small but positive poverty alleviation. Environmental gains are higher where poverty is low while household gains are higher where deforestation risk is low, illustrating the difficulty of meeting multiple policy goals with one tool. (JEL I32, I38, O13, O15, Q23, Q28, Q56)

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