Assessing Environmental and Social Impacts ESI

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Assessing Environmental and Social Impacts ESI

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Donors want to move beyond directly measurable ... SPIA/IAFP work has evolved to consider NRM research and poverty impacts but ... Hedonic pricing technique ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Assessing Environmental and Social Impacts ESI


1
Assessing Environmental and Social Impacts (ESI)
2
The problem
  • Donors want to move beyond directly measurable
    economic impacts to account for environmental and
    social impacts (ESI)negative and positive
  • SPIA/IAFP work has evolved to consider NRM
    research and poverty impacts but still focused on
    economic impacts expressed through markets
  • Important exceptionspesticides and health,
    others?
  • This activity emerging from IAFP/Nairobi aims to
    explore and apply approaches to ESI

3
Exploring two broad approaches
  • A. Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) expanded to
    include nonmarket ESI
  • Convert all costs and benefits to monetary terms
  • Consultant--Jeff Bennett, ANU
  • B. Indicators and other measures of ESI that are
    considered separately with market costs and
    benefits
  • Variants--weighted indices, cost effectiveness
  • Consultantnon-economist?
  • Three stages
  • Desk review methods and identify relevant case
    studies
  • Case studies led by centers
  • Synthesize lessons and guidelines

4
Expanded CBA The short story
  • CBA offers a sound conceptual base for
    policy/project assessment
  • BUT the scope of Its application has been limited
  • Numerous innovations in application are advancing
    its analytical capacity and policy relevance
  • Non-market valuation techniques are being
    developed to estimate the values in monetary
    terms of environmental and social impacts
  • Stated preference techniques to estimate weights
    held by society across different groups within
    society (e.g., rich and poor - and/or across time
    e.g., current vs future generations)

5
Environmental valuation
  • Revealed Preference techniques for use and some
    indirect use values
  • Travel cost method costs people incur to visit
    environmental assets to infer their consumer
    surplus for the visit
  • Hedonic pricing technique uses the observed
    relationship between the market price for a good
    (e.g., houses) and environmental factors (noise,
    odour, scenic views, proximity to a green space,
    etc) to infer a value for those environmental
    factors

6
Stated Preference techniques for all value types
including non-use values
  • Contingent Valuation (CV) people asked in a
    survey if they would be willing to pay a stated
    amount for the provision of an environmental
    service
  • Option valuewillingness to pay for option to use
    a NR asset in the future (non-use value)
  • Choice Modelling (CM) people asked in survey to
    choose between hypothetical options, each of
    which delivers different outcomes for a different
    cost

7
Applications to environmental impacts
  • Wide range of applications mostly in developed
    countries (EU mandates their use)
  • Fewer developing country applications but growing
  • Environmental Economics Program South East Asia
    (EEPSEA) portfolios of studies
  • Forthcoming volume edited by Bennett and Birol
    (from IFPRI) to showcase developing country
    applications of choice modelling
  • Bennetts work on land-use change in China,
    wetland management in the Mekong River Delta,
    (also World Fish) http//www.crawford.anu.edu.au/s
    taff/jbennett.php
  • Application to research?

8
Social impacts
  • Non-use values extend to impacts on
  • Social structure (population concentrations and
    movements), social capital (networks,
    institutions), elements of social infrastructure
    (schools, churches, sports fields)
  • e.g., Trade offs between environmental services
    and rural community viability in Australia
  • Prospects for stated preference techniques to be
    applied in developing countries

9
Social impacts Equity
  • Sum of discounted streams of benefits and costs
    weighted according to impacts on different groups
    in society and/or over generations
  • Rawlsian society assumes weights are zero for all
    except the worst-off
  • Weights based on estimates of societal
    preferences (e.g., choice modelling)
  • Or leave to the political process
  • Applications

10
B. Use of Indicators of ESI
  • Monitor NR indicators at different scale levels
    (WB/CIAT/FAO)
  • Deforestation, nutrient balance, carbon
    footprint,
  • Soil quality, pollution
  • TFP and TSFP (sustainability)
  • Likewise social indicators at different scale
    levels
  • Poverty, incomes, equity
  • Nutritional levels (DALYs, Vitamin A blood test)
  • Empowerment, networks
  • Design of indicatorspolicy based (e.g., MDGs)
    vs participatory by stakeholders
  • Intermediate indicators
  • Use of indicators depends on level
  • Macrohave to disaggregate sources of change
    (e.g., IFPRI/IRRI rice impacts on poverty)
  • Localdirectly relate to intervention (e.g., CIP,
    CIMMYT and HP on nutrition)
  • Indicators can be modeled, estimated, observed,
    or subjective via surveys

11
Using indicators
  • Track along with economic costs and benefits
  • Dealing with substitution among variables
  • Reversible vs non-reversible degradation
  • How to deal with trade-offs
  • Use Multi-criteria analysisweighted scores
  • Bringing in the cost side
  • Cost per unit change in indicator
  • Convert to monetary valuesexpanded CBA!

12
Conclusions
  • CBA provides a rigorous conceptual framework
  • Recent developments in applying non-market
    valuation techniques to ESI
  • Promising initial applications in middle income
    developing countries
  • Difficult to apply for the poorest?lack of
    choices, numeracy and literacy skills
  • Indicators are more flexible approaches but
    usually provide several results with trade-offs
    and substitutions
  • Horses for coursesprobably need a combination of
    the approaches
  • Indicators needed as a first step to expanded CBA
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