Publication: Impact of Costa Rica's Program of Payments for Environmental Services on Land Use
Date
2008-10
ISSN
Published
2008-10
Author(s)
Sills, Erin
Arriagada, Rodrigo
Ferraro, Paul
Pattanayak, Subhrendu
Carrasco, Luis
Ortiz, Edgar
Cordero, Silvia
Caldwell, Katie
Andam, Kwaw
Abstract
Costa Rica's Program of Payments
for Environmental Services (Pago de Servicios Ambientales,
PSA) provides a unique opportunity to evaluate direct
payments as a conservation policy tool. This paper reports
evidence on how much more forest has been conserved in Costa
Rica as a result of PSA contracts with landowners. Such
evidence requires estimating a counterfactual outcome: how
much forest would have been preserved if there had been no
payments. By applying rigorous program evaluation methods
that have been recommended for identifying the causal
effects of conservation policies, we find that the PSA
program does result in a small but statistically significant
increase in the area of forest conserved.
Citation
“Sills, Erin; Arriagada, Rodrigo; Ferraro, Paul; Pattanayak, Subhrendu; Carrasco, Luis; Ortiz, Edgar; Cordero, Silvia; Caldwell, Katie; Andam, Kwaw. 2008. Impact of Costa Rica's Program of Payments for Environmental Services on Land Use. Payments for Environmental Services (PES)
learning paper;no. 2008-3. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17893 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”