OCTOBER 13-17, 2014 | LISBON, PORTUGAL

DIME WORKSHOP

1

tinyurl.com/dime-lisbon

#IEKnowEE

What is the Problem?

Development Challenges in Energy and

Environment

Chair: Jed Friedman, World Bank

Presenters: Daniel Miller, World Bank

Teevrat Garg, Cornell University

Michael Price, Georgia State University

2

Big challenges and the state of impact evaluation in forestry

Daniel C. Miller

October 13, 2014

DIME Workshop, Lisbon, Portugal

Significance of forests for development

• Close to 20 percent of humanity (~1.3 billion people) rely on forests & forest products for their livelihoods; the majority subsist on < $1.25 a day

• Income derived from forests in many poor communities is on average equal to revenue from agriculture

• Forest ecosystem services also key to agriculture, energy, and other sectors

(Angelsen et al. 2014; Shepherd 2012)

… Yet the value of forests to development are often hidden.

Key limiting factor: weak evidence

• forest-poverty nexus

• how to maximize impact of forestry interventions

“The monitoring and reporting systems of the World Bank forest sector operations are inadequate to verify whether its operations are supporting forest management in an environmentally and socially sustainable way.”

Forest sector IE challenges (I)

Timing

• Benefits take time to materialize

• Lag between environmental impacts and socio-economic ones

Forest sector IE challenges (II)

Attribution

• Complexity of forest sector projects: – multiple objectives – integration of socio-

economic AND ecological expertise

• Confounding factors: – other interventions – economic fluctuation – political change – climatic and

ecosystem variability

Forest sector IE challenges (III)

Data and capacity

• Biophysical data now much more widely available: – Hansen et al. 2014/Global Forest Watch

– Innovative remote sensing, etc.

• Socio-economic data sorely lacking

• Capacity to collect & analyze both types of data often weak

• Funding limited for data collection

Rigorous forestry IE remains in its infancy

• Most studies are ex post using quasi-experimental designs

• Little or no published studies using experimental designs

Countries with IE study on forest condition

Countries with forestry IE study on poverty

Key forestry IE needs: Better data

• Data on poverty and socio-economic characteristics of households generally collected over time

• Spatially explicit data on institutional development and on density and variation in policy and project implementation

• Ecological data beyond trees (e.g. wildlife, biodiversity, water)

• Linking biophysical and social data

Outputs Outcomes Inputs Activities Outputs Outcomes

Pre-Activity During-Activity Post-Activity

• Explain links in results chain

• Articulate assumptions

Development Impacts

• More clearly articulated theories of change

Key forestry IE needs: Theory development

Key forestry IE needs: Theory development

• More clearly articulated theories of change

• Identification of causal mechanisms

• Joint analysis of multiple outcomes

• Variation in impacts by socio-political & biophysical context

Key forestry IE needs: Policy relevance

• Moving beyond IEs as snapshots in time

– Ex ante experimental designs

– Link IE results to policy and practice

• Complementary means to assess impacts

– Development of predictive proxies

– Remeasuring indicators to build evidence on proxy robustness

World Bank efforts to address IE needs

• DIME support for IE in World Bank Operations

• PROFOR support:

– Assessment of forest governance and forest certification project impacts

– Developing predictive proxies as means to assess long-term impacts of projects in the forests sector

– Building evidence base on contribution of forests and trees to household welfare at national scale

– Showcasing ICT applications for data collection and M&E of forestry projects

• Results Measurement and Evidence Stream (RMES)

MUITO OBRIGADO!

Email: dmiller3@worldbank.org Web: http://profor.info www.worldbank.org/forests

OCTOBER 13-17, 2014 | LISBON, PORTUGAL

DIME WORKSHOP

19

tinyurl.com/dime-lisbon

#IEKnowEE

Governing the Commons: Water

Teevrat Garg (& Florence Kondylis)

Cornell University (& DIME)

October 13, 2014

Why Care?

• Access to irrigation – lowers risk associated with chemical fertilizer use

– enables a transition away from subsistence farming and into cash cropping

• Yet, making these transitions may require lifting additional barriers to adoption – Credit constraint / time inconsistencies

– Access to inputs

– Information constraints • Both supply and demand sides

Major Challenges

• UPTAKE: Classic public goods problem

– Social marginal benefit > private marginal benefit

• OPTIMAL USE: Tragedy of the Commons (Harding)

– Private benefit from exploitation exceeds private benefit from conservation

– Leading to over exploitation

Uptake

• Large gains from irrigation technology

• Yet, only 6% of cultivated land in Africa is irrigated (IFPRI, 2010)

• Why?

– Liquidity Constraints

– Information Asymmetry

– Free Riding/ Property Rights

Collective Action Problem

• Joint Investment

• Group v. Individual Ownership

• Property Rights over Water

OPTIMAL USE/ MAINTENANCE

• Coordination Failures

• Lack of Established Property Rights

• Free Riding over Maintenance Tasks

Maintenance Free Riding

Underinvestment

NOT ALL BAD NEWS

Learning on the ground

• Irrigation schemes have historically not beenvery successful

• Visits to failed schemes are often puzzling

– pumps mostly left in functional state

– small works:

• broken strap; broken plastic pipe; collapsed tertiary earth canals

– lack of inputs (fuel)

Departures from Social Optimum

• Common pool resources lead to externalities: – Individuals make decisions that affect others in their

community – but they do not account for those external effects

• Individuals make decisions that are not socially optimal due to these externalities – For example, no individual undertakes any maintenance

activities, although it would be socially optimal for everyone to contribute a little

– Over-use of water is hurting every single user in the long run (even the abusers may run out of water before end of planting) yet individuals do it

Opportunities for Impact Evaluation

• Water Users Associations are a major avenue for improved governance of water use.

• Test:

– Size

– Targeting

– Structures

Sizing up or down?

Olson, 1965

monitoring

Empower monitors at the WUA level?

Or publish use /

repayment stats?

water budgeting

CLTS-inspired budgeting exercises

Include end-tail farmers in management of the resource

(where the water gap lies)

side payments

• In the presence of water scarcity

– Allow farmers to set up an auction market for water >> bargaining to achieve more efficient outcome and compensation

Governing the Commons: Water

Teevrat Garg (& Florence Kondylis)

tg236@cornell.edu (fkondylis@worldbank.org)

Cornell University (& DIME)

October 13, 2014

OCTOBER 13-17, 2014 | LISBON, PORTUGAL

DIME WORKSHOP

38

tinyurl.com/dime-lisbon

#IEKnowEE