Introduction:The central premise underlying international payments for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation(REDD+)is that offering governments ex post payments for verified success in reducing ...Introduction:The central premise underlying international payments for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation(REDD+)is that offering governments ex post payments for verified success in reducing emissions will motivate them to protect and restore forests.However,the extent to which performance-based payments motivate governments to protect and restore forests has yet to be evaluated quantitatively.Researchers have only quantitatively evaluated performance-based payments to non-governments for forest outcomes(e.g.payments for ecosystem services)and to governments for non-forest outcomes(e.g.results-based aid).Methods:We describe how researchers now have an opportunity to more easily evaluate performance-based payments to governments for forest outcomes thanks to India’s new ecological fiscal transfers(EFTs),which provide$6-12 billion per year to Indian states in proportion to their forest cover.Discussion:India’s EFTs differ from REDD+programs in that they pay for states’stock of forest area in the recent past rather than reductions in the rate of forest carbon loss in the near-future.Nevertheless,India’s EFTs focus on a single outcome and have many recipient governments,significant financial scale,lack of contemporaneous confounding policy changes,universal participation,and long-term data collection.Conclusion:These features make India’s EFTs especially useful for testing the payment-forperformance premise of REDD+.展开更多
文摘Introduction:The central premise underlying international payments for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation(REDD+)is that offering governments ex post payments for verified success in reducing emissions will motivate them to protect and restore forests.However,the extent to which performance-based payments motivate governments to protect and restore forests has yet to be evaluated quantitatively.Researchers have only quantitatively evaluated performance-based payments to non-governments for forest outcomes(e.g.payments for ecosystem services)and to governments for non-forest outcomes(e.g.results-based aid).Methods:We describe how researchers now have an opportunity to more easily evaluate performance-based payments to governments for forest outcomes thanks to India’s new ecological fiscal transfers(EFTs),which provide$6-12 billion per year to Indian states in proportion to their forest cover.Discussion:India’s EFTs differ from REDD+programs in that they pay for states’stock of forest area in the recent past rather than reductions in the rate of forest carbon loss in the near-future.Nevertheless,India’s EFTs focus on a single outcome and have many recipient governments,significant financial scale,lack of contemporaneous confounding policy changes,universal participation,and long-term data collection.Conclusion:These features make India’s EFTs especially useful for testing the payment-forperformance premise of REDD+.
