Correction: Emerging Evidence on the Effectiveness of Tropical Forest Conservation.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Sustained participation in a Payments for Ecosystem Services program reduces deforestation in a Mexican agricultural frontier.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) provide conditional incentives for forest conservation. PES short-term effects on deforestation are well-documented, but we know less about program effectiveness when participation is sustained over time. Here, we assess the impact of consecutive renewals of PES contracts on deforestation and forest degradation in three municipalities of the Selva Lacandona (Chiapas, Mexico).

Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation.

Carbon offsets from voluntary avoided-deforestation projects are generated on the basis of performance in relation to ex ante deforestation baselines. We examined the effects of 26 such project sites in six countries on three continents using synthetic control methods for causal inference. We found that most projects have not significantly reduced deforestation.

Coronavirus, macroeconomy, and forests: What likely impacts?

Much uncertainty persists about how the coronavirus (COVID-19) and its derived crisis effects will impact both the economy and forests. Here we conceptualize a recursive model where an initial COVID-19 supply-side shock hits first the Global North that, mediated by country-specific epidemic management strategies and other (fiscal, monetary, trade) policy responses feeds through to financial markets and the real economy. Analytically we distinguish two stylized scenarios: an optimistic V-shaped recovery where effective policy responses render most economic damages transitory, versus a pessimistic pathway of economic depression, where short-run pandemic impacts are dwarfed by the subsequent economic breakdown.

Adding rewards to regulation: The impacts of watershed conservation on land cover and household wellbeing in Moyobamba, Peru.

We estimate the effects of Peru's oldest watershed payments for environmental services (PES) initiative in Moyobamba (Andes-Amazon transition zone) and disentangle the complex intervention into its two main forest conservation treatments. First, a state-managed protected area (PA) was established, allowing sustainable use but drastically limiting de facto land use and land rights of households in the upper watershed through command-and-control interventions. Second, a subset of those environmentally regulated households also received incentives: PES-like voluntary contracts with conditional in-kind rewards, combined with access to participation in sustainable income-generating activities of the integrated conservation and development project (ICDP) type.

Emerging Evidence on the Effectiveness of Tropical Forest Conservation.

The PLOS ONE Collection "Measuring forest conservation effectiveness" brings together a series of studies that evaluate the effectiveness of tropical forest conservation policies and programs with the goal of measuring conservation success and associated co-benefits. This overview piece describes the geographic and methodological scope of these studies, as well as the policy instruments covered in the Collection as of June 2016. Focusing on forest cover change, we systematically compare the conservation effects estimated by the studies and discuss them in the light of previous findings in the literature.

Subjective wellbeing and income: Empirical patterns in the rural developing world.

A commonality in the economics of happiness literature is that absolute income matters more for the subjective wellbeing of people at low income levels. In this article, we use a large sample of people in rural areas of developing countries with relatively low income levels to test whether subjective wellbeing an increasing function of absolute income in our sample, and to analyze the existence of adaptation and social comparison effects on subjective wellbeing. Our sample includes 6973 rural households in 23 countries throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Global Patterns in the Implementation of Payments for Environmental Services.

Assessing global tendencies and impacts of conditional payments for environmental services (PES) programs is challenging because of their heterogeneity, and scarcity of comparative studies. This meta-study systematizes 55 PES schemes worldwide in a quantitative database. Using categorical principal component analysis to highlight clustering patterns, we reconfirm frequently hypothesized differences between public and private PES schemes, but also identify diverging patterns between commercial and non-commercial private PES vis-à-vis their service focus, area size, and market orientation.

Spatial patterns of carbon, biodiversity, deforestation threat, and REDD+ projects in Indonesia.

There are concerns that Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) may fail to deliver potential biodiversity cobenefits if it is focused on high carbon areas. We explored the spatial overlaps between carbon stocks, biodiversity, projected deforestation threats, and the location of REDD+ projects in Indonesia, a tropical country at the forefront of REDD+ development. For biodiversity, we assembled data on the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates (ranges of amphibians, mammals, birds, reptiles) and plants (species distribution models for 8 families).

Mixing carrots and sticks to conserve forests in the Brazilian Amazon: a spatial probabilistic modeling approach.

Annual forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon had in 2012 declined to less than 5,000 sqkm, from over 27,000 in 2004. Mounting empirical evidence suggests that changes in Brazilian law enforcement strategy and the related governance system may account for a large share of the overall success in curbing deforestation rates. At the same time, Brazil is experimenting with alternative approaches to compensate farmers for conservation actions through economic incentives, such as payments for environmental services, at various administrative levels.

Combining auctions and performance-based payments in a forest enrichment field trial in Western Kenya.

Cost-effectiveness is an important aspect in the assessment of payments for environmental services (PES) initiatives. In participatory field trials with communities in Western Kenya, we combined procurement auctions for forest enrichment contracts with performance-based payments and compared the outcomes with a baseline scenario currently used by the Kenyan Forest Service. Procurement auctions were the most cost-effective.

Rural income and forest reliance in highland Guatemala.

This paper estimates rural household-level forest reliance in the western highlands of Guatemala using quantitative methods. Data were generated by the way of an in-depth household income survey, repeated quarterly between November 2005 and November 2006, in 11 villages (n = 149 randomly selected households). The main sources of income proved to be small-scale agriculture (53 % of total household income), wages (19 %) and environmental resources (14 %).

Global cost estimates of reducing carbon emissions through avoided deforestation.

Tropical deforestation is estimated to cause about one-quarter of anthropogenic carbon emissions, loss of biodiversity, and other environmental services. United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change talks are now considering mechanisms for avoiding deforestation (AD), but the economic potential of AD has yet to be addressed. We use three economic models of global land use and management to analyze the potential contribution of AD activities to reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

The efficiency of payments for environmental services in tropical conservation.

Payments for environmental services (PES) represent a new, more direct way to promote conservation. They explicitly recognize the need to address difficult trade-offs by bridging the interests of landowners and external actors through compensations. Theoretical assessments praise the advantages of PES over indirect approaches, but in the tropics PES application has remained incipient.