This paper examines the cost of producing emission reduction credits under the Clean Development Mechanism. Using project-specific data, cost functions are estimated using alternative functional forms.
... Vea más + The results show that, in general, the distribution of projects in the pipeline does not correspond exclusively to the cost of generating anticipated credits. Rather, investment choices appear to be influenced by location and project type considerations in a way that is consistent with variable transaction costs and investor preferences among hosts and classes of projects. This implies that comparative advantage based on the marginal cost of abatement is only one of several factors driving Clean Development Mechanism investments. This is significant since much of the conceptual and applied numerical literature concerning greenhouse gas mitigation policies relies on presumptions about relative abatement costs. The authors also find that Clean Development Mechanism projects generally exhibit constant or increasing returns to scale. In contrast, they find variations among classes of projects concerning economies of time.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6262 NOV 01, 2012
Rahman, Shaikh M.; Dinar, Ariel; Larson, Donald F.
Greenhouse gas emissions are largely determined by how energy is created and used, and policies designed to encourage mitigation efforts reflect this reality.
... Vea más + However, an unintended consequence of an energy-focused strategy is that the set of policy instruments needed to tap mitigation opportunities in agriculture is incomplete. In particular, market-linked incentives to achieve mitigation targets are disconnected from efforts to better manage carbon sequestered in agricultural land. This is especially important for many countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia where once-productive land has been degraded through poor agricultural practices. Often good agricultural policies and prudent natural resource management can compensate for missing links to mitigation incentives, but only partially. At the same time, two international project-based programs, Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism, have been used to finance other types of agricultural mitigation efforts worldwide. Even so, a review of projects suggests that few countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia take full advantage of these financing paths. This paper discusses mitigation opportunities in the region, the reach of current mitigation incentives, and missed mitigation opportunities in agriculture. The paper concludes with a discussion of alternative policies designed to jointly promote mitigation and co-benefits for agriculture and the environment.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6080 JUN 01, 2012
Blankespoor, Brian; Dinar, Ariel; Larson, Donald F.
Water is increasingly becoming a limiting factor for sustainable economic growth and development in many countries. Its allocation has significant impacts on overall economic efficiency, particularly with growing physical scarcity in certain regions.
... Vea más + Greater water supply variability further increases vulnerability in affected regions. Water also has become a strategic resource involving conflicts among those who may be affected differently by various policies. This paper analyzes various policy interventions aimed at improving water allocation decisions, using a novel approach that incorporates macro and micro level considerations in a unified analytical framework. The framework facilitates assessment of various linkages among policies and their impacts within individual sectors and economy-wide. Drawing on country based studies in Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, and Mexico, the analysis reveals difficult tradeoffs among various policy objectives, including priorities placed on different sectors, regional advantages, and general economic efficiency gains versus broader social impacts. The comparison of policy impacts demonstrates the usefulness of the framework in information that policy makers can use to rank the policy interventions according to the emphasis placed on different policy objectives. The paper also compares approaches used in other studies that apply computable general equilibrium models in various contexts of water, environment and agriculture.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6068 MAY 01, 2012
International river basins will likely face higher hydrologic variability due to climate change. Increased floods and droughts would have economic and political consequences.
... Vea más + Riparians of transboundary basins governed by water treaties could experience non-compliance and inter-state tensions if flow falls below levels presumed in a treaty. Flow information is essential to cope with these challenges through water storage, allocation, and use. This paper demonstrates a simple yet robust method, which measures gauge station runoff with wetness values derived from satellite data (1988-2010), for expanding sub-basin stream flow information to the entire river basin where natural flow information is limited. It demonstrates the approach with flow level data that provide estimates of monthly runoff in near real time in two international river basins: Zambezi and Mekong. The paper includes an economic framework incorporating information on existing institutions to assess potential economic and political impacts and to inform policy on conflict and cooperation between riparians. The authors conclude that satellite data modeled with gauge station runoff reduce the uncertainty inherent in negotiating an international water agreement under increased hydrological variability, and thus can assist policy makers to devise more efficient institutional apparatus.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS5996 MAR 01, 2012
Many experts believe that low-cost mitigation opportunities in agriculture are abundant and comparable in scale to those found in the energy sector.
... Vea más + They are mostly located in developing countries and have to do with how land is used. By investing in projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), countries can tap these opportunities to meet their own Kyoto Protocol obligations. The CDM has been successful in financing some types of agricultural projects, including projects that capture methane or use agricultural by-products as an energy source. But agricultural land-use projects are scarce under the CDM. This represents a missed opportunity to promote sustainable rural development since land-use projects that sequester carbon in soils can help reverse declining soil fertility, a root cause of stagnant agricultural productivity. This paper reviews the process leading to current CDM implementation rules and describes how the rules, in combination with challenging features of land-use projects, raise transaction costs and lower demand for land-use credits. Procedures by which developed countries assess their own mitigation performance are discussed as a way of redressing current constraints on CDM investments. Nevertheless, even with improvements to the CDM, an under-investment in agricultural land-use projects is likely, since there are hurdles to capturing associated ancillary benefits privately. Alternative approaches outside the CDM are discussed, including those that build on recent decisions taken by governments in Copenhagen and Cancun.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS5621 APR 01, 2011
Dinar, Ariel; Frisbie, J. Aapris; Larson, Donald F.
This paper assesses the impact of water supply variability on treaty cooperation between international bilateral river basin riparian states. Climate change is anticipated to change the variability of water supply, as well as its expected magnitude.
... Vea más + Previous studies have focused mainly on water scarcity, measured in terms of mean precipitation or per capita water availability in the country, as a trigger for conflict or cooperation. The water variability measure used here captures both annual runoff variability and precipitation variability over periods of 30 and 100 years. The analysis used economic and international relations data to identify incentives for international cooperation in addressing water supply variability. The authors find that small-to-moderate increases in variability create an impetus for cooperation, although large increases in variability would reduce incentives for treaty cooperation. Stronger diplomatic and trade relations support cooperation, while uneven economic power inhibits cooperation. Various measures of democracy/governance suggest different impacts on cooperation across the basin riparians. The findings have policy implications in the context of preparedness for impacts of climate change on the water sector.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS5307 MAY 01, 2010
Under the Kyoto Protocol, developed countries can only tap mitigation opportunities in developing countries by investing in projects under the Clean Development Mechanism.
... Vea más + Yet Clean Development Mechanism investments have so far failed to reach many of the high-potential sectors identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This raises doubts about whether the Clean Development Mechanism can generate an adequate supply of credits from the limited areas where it has proved successful. This paper examines the current trajectory of mitigation projects entering the Clean Development Mechanism pipeline and projects it forward under the assumption that the diffusion of the Clean Development Mechanism will follow a path similar to other innovations. Projections are then compared with pre-Clean Development Mechanism predictions of the mechanisms potential market size to discern whether limits on the types of projects entering the pipeline have limited the expected supply of certified emission reductions. Parameter tests suggest that this is not the case and that currently identified Clean Development Mechanism investments will generate offsets in excess of early model predictions. In particular, under favorable circumstances, the mechanism is on track to deliver an average annual flow of roughly 700 million certified emission reductions by the close of 2012 and nearly to 1,100 million certified emission reductions by 2020.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS5239 MAR 01, 2010
Rahman, Shaikh M.; Dinar, Ariel; Larson, Donald F.
The Clean Development Mechanism, a provision of The Kyoto Protocol, allows countries that have pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to gain credit toward their treaty obligations by investing in projects located in developing (host) countries.
... Vea más + Such projects are expected to benefit both parties by providing low-cost abatement opportunities for the investor-country, while facilitating capital and technology flows to the host country. This paper analyzes the Clean Development Mechanism market, emphasizing the cooperation aspects between host and investor countries. The analysis uses a dichotomous (yes/no) variable and three continuous variants to measure the level of cooperation, namely the number of joint projects, the volume of carbon dioxide abatement, and the volume of investment in the projects. The results suggest that economic development, institutional development, the energy structure of the economies, the level of country vulnerability to various climate change effects, and the state of international relations between the host and investor countries are good predictors of the level of cooperation in Clean Development Mechanism projects. The main policy conclusions include the importance of simplifying the project regulation/clearance cycle; improving the governance structure host and investor countries; and strengthening trade or other long-term economic activities that engage the countries.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4786 NOV 01, 2008
This paper uses a cross sectional method to analyze irrigation choice and crop choice across 8,405 farmers in 28 provinces in China. The findings show that Chinese farmers are more likely to irrigate when facing lower temperatures and less precipitation.
... Vea más + Farmers in warmer places are more likely to choose oil crops, maize, and especially cotton and wheat, and are less likely to choose vegetables, potatoes, sugar, and especially rice and soybeans. In wetter locations, farmers are more likely to choose soybeans, oil crops, sugar, vegetables, cotton, and especially rice, and they are less likely to choose potatoes, wheat, and especially maize. The analysis of how Chinese farmers have adapted to current climate, provides insight into how they will likely adapt when climate changes. Future climate scenarios will cause farmers in China to want to reduce irrigation and shift toward oil crops, wheat, and especially cotton. In turn, farmers will shift away from potatoes, rice, vegetables, and soybeans. However, adaptation will likely vary greatly from region to region. Policy makers should anticipate that adaptation is important, that the magnitude of changes depends on the climate scenario, and that the desired changes depend on the location of each farm.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4758 OCT 01, 2008
The scale of investment needed to slow greenhouse gas emissions is larger than governments can manage through transfers. Therefore, climate change policies rely heavily on markets and private capital.
... Vea más + This is especially true in the case of the Kyoto Protocol with its provisions for trade and investment in joint projects. This paper describes institutions and policies important for new carbon markets and explains their origins. Research efforts that explore conceptual aspects of current policy are surveyed along with empirical studies that make predictions about how carbon markets will work and perform. The authors summarize early investment and price outcomes from newly formed markets and point out areas where markets have preformed as predicted and areas where markets remain incomplete. Overall the scale of carbon-market investment planned exceeds earlier expectations, but the geographic dispersion of investment is uneven and important opportunities for abatement remain untapped in some sectors, indicating a need for additional research on how investment markets work. How best to promote the development and deployment of new technologies is another promising area for study identified in the paper.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4761 OCT 01, 2008
Dinar, Ariel; Rahman, Shaikh Mahfuzur; Entler, Rebecca; Ambrosi, Philippe; Larson, Donald F.
This paper examines the distribution of climate change impacts across the 16 agro-ecological zones in Africa using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization combined with economic survey data from a Global Environment Facility/World Bank project.
... Vea más + Net revenue per hectare of cropland is regressed on a set of climate, soil, and socio-economic variables using different econometric specifications "with" and "without" country fixed effects. Country fixed effects slightly reduce predicted future climate related damage to agriculture. With a mild climate scenario, African farmers gain income from climate change; with a more severe scenario, they lose income. Some locations are more affected than others. The analysis of agro-ecological zones implies that the effects of climate change will vary across Africa. For example, currently productive areas such as dry/moist savannah are more vulnerable to climate change while currently less productive agricultural zones such as humid forest or sub-humid zones become more productive in the future. The agro-ecological zone classification can help explain the variation of impacts across the landscape.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4599 APR 01, 2008
Mendelsohn, Robert; Dinar, Ariel; Hassan, Rashid; Seo, S. Niggol; Kurukulasuriya, Pradeep
This paper quantifies how African farmers have adapted their crop and irrigation decisions to their farm's current agro-ecological zone. The results indicate that farmers carefully consider the climate and other conditions of their farm when making these choices.
... Vea más + These results are then used to forecast how farmers might change their irrigation and crop choice decisions if climate changes. The model predicts African farmers would adopt irrigation more often under a very hot and dry climate scenario but less often with a mild and wet scenario. However, farms in the deserts, lowland humid forest, or mid elevation humid forest would reduce irrigation even in the very hot and dry climate scenario. Area under fruits and vegetables would increase Africa-wide with the very hot and dry climate scenario, except in the lowland semi-arid agro-ecological zone. Millet would increase overall under the mild and wet scenario, but decline substantially in the lowland dry savannah and lowland semi-arid agro-ecological zones. Maize would be chosen less often across all the agro-ecological zones under both climate scenarios. Wheat would decrease across Africa. The authors recommend that care must be taken to match adaptations to local conditions because the optimal adaptation would depend on the agro-ecological zone and the climate scenario.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4600 APR 01, 2008
Mendelsohn, Robert; Seo, Niggol; Dinar, Ariel; Hassan, Rashid; Kurukulasuriya, Pradeep
This paper examines how farmers have adapted their livestock operation to the current climate in each agro-ecological zone in Africa. The authors examine how climate has affected the farmer's choice to raise livestock or not and the choice of animal species.
... Vea más + To measure adaptation, the analysis regresses the farmer's choice on climate, soil, water flow, and socio-economic variables. The findings show that climate does in fact affect the farmer's decision about whether to raise livestock and the species. The paper also simulates how future climates may alter these decisions using forecasts from climate models and the estimated model. With a hot dry scenario, livestock ownership will increase slightly across all of Africa, but especially in West Africa and high elevation agro-ecological zones. Dairy cattle will decrease in semi-arid regions, sheep will increase in the lowlands, and chickens will increase at high elevations. With a mild and wet scenario, however, livestock adoption will fall dramatically in lowland and high latitude moist agro-ecological zones. Beef cattle will increase and sheep will fall in dry zones, dairy cattle will fall precipitously and goats will rise in moist zones, and chickens will increase at high elevations but fall at mid elevations. Livestock adaptations depend on the climate scenario and will vary across the landscape. Agro-ecological zones are a useful way to capture how these changes differ from place to place.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4601 APR 01, 2008
Mendelsohn, Robert; Dinar, Ariel; Seo, S. Niggol; Kurukulasuriya, Pradeep
Using economic data from more than 8,500 household surveys across 10 African countries, this paper examines whether the choice of farm type depends on the climate and agro-ecological zone of each farm.
... Vea más + The paper also studies how farm type choice varies across farmers in each zone, using a multinomial logit choice model. Farmers are observed to choose from one of the following five types of farms: rainfed crop-only, irrigated crop-only, mixed rainfed (crop and livestock), mixed irrigated, and livestock-only farming. The authors compare current decisions against future decisions as if the only change were climate change. They focus on two climate scenarios from existing climate models: the Canadian Climate Centre scenario, which is hot and dry, and the Parallel Climate Model scenario, which is mild and wet. The results indicate that the change in farm types varies dramatically by climate scenario but also by agro-ecological zone. Policy makers must be careful to encourage the appropriate suite of measures to promote the most adapted farm type to each location.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4602 APR 01, 2008
Mendelsohn, Robert; Seo, Niggol; Dinar, Ariel; Hassan, Rashid; Kurukulasuriya, Pradeep
The success of development programs, including water resource projects, depends on two key factors: the role of underlying institutions and the impact synergies from other closely related programs.
... Vea más + Existing methodologies have limitations in accounting for these critical factors. This paper fills this gap by developing a methodology, which quantifies both the roles that institutions play in impact generation and the extent of impact synergies that flows from closely related programs within a unified framework. The methodology is applied to the Kala Oya Basin in Sri Lanka in order to evaluate the impacts of three water-related programs and the roles of 11 institutions in the context of food security. The results provide considerable insights on the relative role of institutions and the flow of development synergies both within and across different impact pathways. The methodology can also be used to locate slack in impact chains and identify policy options to enhance the impact flows.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4498 JAN 01, 2008
Several studies addressing the supply and demand for food in China suggest that the nation can largely meet its needs in the coming decades. However, these studies do not consider the effects of climate change.
... Vea más + This paper examines whether near future expected changes in climate are likely to alter this picture. The authors analyze the effect of temperature and precipitation on net crop revenues using a cross section consisting of both rainfed and irrigated farms. Based on survey data from 8,405 households across 28 provinces, the results of the Ricardian analysis demonstrate that global warming is likely to be harmful to China but the impacts are likely to be very different in each region. The mid latitude region of China may benefit from warming but the southern and northern regions are likely to be damaged by warming. More precipitation is beneficial to Chinese farmers except in the wet southeast. Irrigated and rainfed farmers have similar responses to precipitation but not to temperature. Warmer temperatures may benefit irrigated farms but they are likely to harm rainfed farms. Finally, seasonal effects vary and are offsetting. Although we were able to measure the direct effect of precipitation and temperature, we could not capture the effects of change in water flow which will be very important in China. Can China continue feeding itself if climate changes? Based on the empirical results, the likely gains realized by some farmers will nearly offset the losses that will occur to other farmers in China. If future climate scenarios lead to significant reductions in water, there may be large damages not addressed in this study.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4470 JAN 01, 2008
The environment and security literature has argued that freshwater scarcity often leads to inter-state conflict, and possibly acute violence. The contention, however, ignores the long history of hydro-political cooperation exemplified by hundreds of documented agreements.
... Vea más + Building on a theory that considers the relationship between scarcity and hydro-political cooperation, this paper empirically investigates why treaties are negotiated for some rivers and between some riparians, and not others. The paper suggests that long-term water scarcity has a significant influence on levels of cooperation. Additional variables considered include trade, level of governance among the riparian states, and the geography of the river. Findings confirm that cooperation and scarcity embody a concave (inverted U curve) relationship. Governance has a positive impact on cooperation. In addition, riparians may either arrange the use of their scarce water resources via a treaty or trade (and indirectly exchange [virtual] water). Scarcity, governance, and trade were found to be most salient in explaining levels of cooperation while geography is significant in some of the estimates.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4294 JUL 01, 2007
This report offers four carefully analyzed case studies in various countries that together may offer a reasonable framework to learn from. Moreover, the case studies present important indicators and demonstrate the inherent potential that technology and institutions have to improve cost recovery implementation.
... Vea más + The first chapter -- cost recovery of irrigation and drainage projects: wishful thinking or difficult reality -- provides information collected in various agencies about the range of cost recovery collection strategies and introduces discussion that will take place. Chapter two -- canal automation and cost recovery -provides an overview of a canal automation system. The third chapter -- satellite measurements to assess and charge for groundwater abstraction -- focuses on a relatively new method that computes evapotranspiration (ET), net groundwater-use, and groundwater abstractions in irrigated areas using satellite-based measurements of land surface temperature and surface reflectance with a minimum of field data. The fourth chapter, -- cost recovery in the irrigation and drainage sector : user's participation as a mechanism for its promotion -- focuses on an approach that charges for irrigation and drainage in Egypt. Chapter five -- advancing irrigation cost recovery in the Republic of Yemen : a community cost-sharing approach -- presents an approach applied in Yemen, a water-scarce country. Chapter 6 -- what is common and what is specific in initiatives aiming to improve cost recovery : a synthesis of case studies -- integrates the set of experiences and analyzes the common issues and themes in technical and institutional approaches to improve cost recovery.
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Documento de trabajo (Serie Numerada) 38716 JAN 01, 2007
Governments and developing agencies promote participatory approaches in solving common pool resource problems, such as in the water sector. Two main participatory approaches have been applied separately, namely negotiation and mediation.
... Vea más + In this paper the authors apply the Role-Playing Game that is a component of the Companion Modeling approach, a negotiation procedure, and the Cooperative Game Theory (Shapley value and the Nucleolus solution concepts) that can be mirrored as a mediated mechanism to a water allocation problem in the Kat watershed in South Africa. While the absolute results of the two approaches differ, the negotiation and the cooperative game theory provide similar shares of the benefit allocated to the players from various cooperative arrangements. By evaluating the two approaches, the authors provide useful tips for future extension for both the Role-Playing Games and the Cooperative Game Theory applications.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4083 DEC 01, 2006
Patrone, Fioravante; Dinar, Ariel; Farolfi, Stefano; Rowntree, Kate
This paper provides a review of various applications of cooperative game theory (CGT) to issues of natural and environmental resources. With an increase in the level of competition over environmental and natural resources, the incidents of disputes have been at the center of allocation agreements.
... Vea más + The paper reviews the cases of common pool resources such as fisheries and forests, and cases of environmental pollution such as acid rain, flow, and stock pollution. In addition to providing examples of cooperative solutions to allocation problems, the conclusion from this review suggests that cooperation over scarce environmental and natural resources is possible under a variety of physical conditions and institutional arrangements. CGT applications to international fishery disputes are especially useful in that they have been making headway in policy-related agreements among states and regions of the world. Forest applications are more local in nature, but of great relevance in solving disputes among communities and various levels of governments.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS4073 NOV 01, 2006