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Relaxing constraints as a conservation policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2014

Ben Groom  and
Charles Palmer
Ben Groom
Affiliation:
Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
Charles Palmer
Affiliation:
Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Eco-entrepreneurs in developing countries are often subject to market or institutional constraints such as missing markets. Conservation interventions which relax constraints may be both cost effective and poverty reducing. A simulation using data from an intervention in Madagascar to relax the technological constraints of forest honey production investigates this possibility. Cost-effectively achieving dual environment-development goals is shown to depend on the severity of constraints, relative prices, along with the nature and efficiency in use of technology. Success is more likely for technologies exhibiting close to constant returns to scale or high-input complementarity. Forest honey does not meet these requirements. Ultimately, where market or institutional constraints are present, knowledge of the recipient technology is required for more informed, efficient and perhaps more politically acceptable conservation policy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , August 2014 , pp. 505 - 528
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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