Abstract: Despite the global environmental benefits of increasing the amount of protected areas, how these conservation policies affect the well-being of nearby individuals is still under debate. Using household surveys with highly disaggregated geographic references, we explored how national parks affect local wages in Costa Rica and how these effects vary within different areas of a park and among different social groups. We found that a park’s effects on wages vary according to economic activity and proximity to the entrance of the park. Wages close to parks are higher only for people living near tourist entrances. Workers close to entrances are not only employed in higher-paid activities (nonagricultural activities) but also receive higher wages for these activities. Agricultural workers, however, are never better off close to parks (neither close to or far from the entrances). Also, workers close to parks but far away from tourist entrances earn similar or lower wages than comparable workers far away from parks. Our results are robust to different econometric approaches (OLS and matching techniques). The location of national park entrances and the possibility that agricultural workers can switch to higher-paid service activities near tourist entrances may be important tools for helping local workers take advantage of the economic benefits of protected areas.

Abstract: World oil supply disruptions lead to U.S. economic losses. Because oil is fungible in an integrated world oil market, increased oil consumption, whether from domestic or imported sources, increases the economic losses associated with oil supply disruptions. Nevertheless, increased U.S. oil production expands stable supplies and dampens oil price shocks, whereas increased U.S. oil imports boosts the share of world oil supply that comes from unstable producers and exacerbates oil price shocks. Some of the economic losses associated with oil supply disruptions—gross domestic product losses and some transfers abroad—are externalities that can be quantified as oil security premiums. To estimate such premiums for domestic and imported oil, we take into account projected world oil market conditions, probable oil supply disruptions, the market response to oil supply disruptions, and the resulting U.S. economic losses. Our estimates quantify the security externalities associated with increased oil use, which derive from the expected U.S. economic losses resulting from potential disruptions in world oil supply.

Abstract: Most developed and developing country governments levy taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel used by motor vehicles. However, outside of the United States and Europe, automobile and heavy truck externalities have not been quantified, so policymakers have little guidance on whether prevailing tax rates are anywhere close to their corrective levels. This paper develops a general approach for roughly gauging the magnitude of motor vehicle externalities, and hence the corrective tax on gasoline and diesel, for individual countries, based on pooling local data sources with extrapolations from U.S. data. The analysis is illustrated for the case of Chile, though it could be readily applied to other countries with appropriate data collection.

Abstract: Trees have multiple purposes in rural Ethiopia, providing significant economic and ecological benefits. Planting trees supplies rural households with wood products for their own consumption, as well for sale, and decreases soil degradation. We used cross-sectional household-level data to analyze the determinants of household tree planting and explored the most important tree attributes or purpose(s) that enhance the propensity to plant trees. We set up a sample selection framework that simultaneously took into account the two decisions of tree growers (whether or not to plant trees and how many) to analyze the determinants of tree planting. We used logistic regression to analyze the most important tree attributes that contribute to households’ tree-planting decisions. We found that land size, age, gender, tenure security, education, exogenous income, and agro-ecology increased both the propensity to plant trees and the amount of tree planting, while increased livestock holding impacted both decisions negatively. Our findings also suggested that households consider a number of attributes in making the decision to plant trees. These results can be used by policymakers to promote tree planting in the study area by strengthening tenure security and considering households’ selection of specific tree species for their attributes.

Abstract: This paper is based on a World Bank–sponsored effort to develop a global estimate of adaptation costs, considering the implications of global climate change for industrial forestry. It focuses on the anticipated impacts of climate change on forests broadly, on industrial wood production in particular, and on Brazil, South Africa, and China. The aim is to identify likely damages and possible mitigating investments or activities. The study draws from the existing literature and the results of earlier investigations reporting the latest comprehensive projections in the literature. The results provide perspective as well as estimates and projections of the impacts of climate change on forests and forestry in various regions and countries. Because climate change will increase forest productivity in some areas while decreasing it elsewhere the impacts vary for positive to negative by region. In general, production increases will shift from low-latitude regions in the short term to high latitude regions in the long term. Planted forests will offer a major vehicle for adaptation.