Jul 21, 2021
When can states implement policies against the opposition from powerful interest groups? Research on state capacity has examined bureaucratic sources of capacity, leaving unexplained why countries with similar levels of bureaucratic capacity vary in goal attainment. We introduce the notion of strategic state capacity to explain this puzzle. It refers to the ability of the state to mobilize or demobilize interest groups in pursuit of policy goals. We identify four general types of strategies states use to counter opposition: recruiting allies, aligning interests, limiting access, and quieting interests. We examine these in cases on climate and clean energy policymaking in California, France, Germany, and the United States. Climate politics is an increasingly important field of distributive politics with powerful opposition from interest groups. The concept of strategic state capacity complements bureaucratic notions of capacity to show how the state actively organizes its relations with interest groups to advance policy goals.
Jul 21, 2021
Despite substantial investments in high-frequency, remote-sensed forest monitoring in the Amazon, early deforestation alerts generated by these systems rarely reach the most directly affected populations in time to deter deforestation. We study a community monitoring program that facilitated transfer of early deforestation alerts from the Global Forest Watch network to indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon and trained and incentivized community members to patrol forests in response to those alerts. The program was randomly assigned to 39 of 76 communities. The results from our analysis suggest that the program reduced tree cover loss, but the estimated effects from the experiment are imprecise: We estimate a reduction of 8.4 ha per community in the first year (95% CI [−19.4, 2.6]) and 3.3 ha in the second year (95% CI: [−13.6, 7.0]) of monitoring. The estimated reductions were largest in communities facing the largest threats. Data from monitoring records and community surveys provide evidence about how the program may affect forest outcomes. Community members perceived that the program’s monitors were new authorities with influence over forest management and that the monitors’ incentivized patrols were substitutes for traditional, unincentivized citizen patrols that suffer from free riding and inhibit timely community detection of and responses to deforestation. Should our findings be replicated elsewhere, they imply that externally facilitated community-based monitoring protocols that combine remote-sensed early deforestation alerts with training and incentives for monitors could contribute to sustainable forest management.
Jul 21, 2021
Pervasive overuse and degradation of common pool resources (CPRs) is a global concern. To sustainably manage CPRs, effective governance institutions are essential. A large literature has developed to describe the institutional design features employed by communities that successfully manage their CPRs. Yet, these designs remain far from universally adopted. We focus on one prominent institutional design feature, community monitoring, and ask whether nongovernmental organizations or governments can facilitate its adoption and whether adoption of monitoring affects CPR use. To answer these questions, we implemented randomized controlled trials in six countries. The harmonized trials randomly assigned the introduction of community monitoring to 400 communities, with data collection in an additional 347 control communities. Most of the 400 communities adopted regular monitoring practices over the course of a year. In a meta-analysis of the experimental results from the six sites, we find that the community monitoring reduced CPR use and increased user satisfaction and knowledge by modest amounts. Our findings demonstrate that community monitoring can improve CPR management in disparate contexts, even when monitoring is externally initiated rather than homegrown. These findings provide guidance for the design of future programs and policies intended to develop monitoring capabilities in communities. Furthermore, our harmonized, multisite trial provides sustainability science with a new way to study the complexity of socioecological systems and builds generalizable insights about how to improve CPR management.
Jul 21, 2021
The clean energy transition has long been framed in terms of its technological and economic feasibility. An increasingly salient constraint lies in its political feasibility. The transition requires vigorous public support to be completed. Yet increased consumer costs associated with the deployment of renewable electricity could make voters – and, by extension, governments – less supportive of it. As a result, overly aggressive government support for renewables could lead to its own downfall. To examine this threat, I document two stylized facts. First, the expansion of renewable electricity capacity has been followed by an increase in household electricity bills, and this has mostly happened because of energy-specific taxes. An increase of renewable electricity capacity by one within-country standard deviation raises a typical household’s bill by EUR 5.7 per MWh (95% CI: [3, 8.3]), most of which comes from an increase in non-VAT taxes (+EUR 3.8/MWh [2.6; 5.1]). Second, these taxes have hurt popular support for aggressive renewable energy policy. An increase of non-VAT taxes by one standard deviation increases the share of people who find renewable energy too ambitious by 0.7 percentage points (95% CI: [0.1; 1.3]). Climbing costs could therefore undermine further political support toward renewable electricity deployment and threaten its contribution to greenhouse gas reductions.
Jun 18, 2021
Despite multiple approaches over the last several decades to harmonize conservation and development goals in the tropics, forest-dependent households remain the poorest in the world. Durable housing and alternatives to fuelwood for cooking are critical needs to reduce multi-dimensional poverty. These improvements also potentially reduce pressure on forests and alleviate forest degradation. We test this possibility in dry tropical forests of the Central Indian Highlands where tribal and other marginalized populations rely on forests for energy, construction materials, and other livelihood needs. Based on a remotely-sensed measure of forest degradation and a 5000 household survey of forest use, we use machine learning (causal forests) and other statistical methods to quantify treatment effects of two improved living standards – alternatives to fuelwood for cooking and non-forest based housing material – on forest degradation in 1, 2, and 5 km buffers around 500 villages. Both improved living standards had significant treatment effects (-0.030±0.078, -0.030±0.023, 95% CI) respectively, with negative values indicating less forest degradation, within 1 km buffers around villages. Treatment effects were lower with increasing distance from villages. Results suggest that improved living standards can both reduce forest degradation and alleviate poverty. Forest restoration efforts can target improved living standards for local communities without conflicts over land tenure or taking land out of production to plant trees.
