This paper explores the contribution of forests to the livelihoods of local communities in Kenya. The paper uses survey data to explore resource extraction and the economic reliance of households on forests. The results suggest that both rich and poor households depend on forests, and that membership in forest user groups, and therefore participation in forest activities, may be based on a household's monetary rather than asset income. The results imply that forests support the living standards of the poor through the diversification of household income sources.

In previous studies on public policy under relative-consumption concerns, leisure comparisons have been ignored. In this paper, we consider a two-type optimal non-linear income tax model, in which people care about both their relative consumption and their relative leisure. Increased consumption positionality typically implies higher marginal income tax rates for both ability types, whereas leisure positionality has an offsetting role.

Eco-certification can generate private benefits for tourism operators in developing countries and therefore has the potential to improve their environmental performance.

Investment in natural capital restoration is rapidly increasing as a response to the widespread ecological degradation of dryland areas in Latin America. Nonetheless, few attempts have been made to evaluate the costs and benefits of restoration initiatives in dryland ecosystems. By combining ecological and economic information, we assessed the benefits and costs of restoring ecosystem services in a dryland forest landscape in the Colliguay Valley, in central Chile. An active restoration program was evaluated by comparing its benefits and costs over a twenty five-year period.

In 1998 the Chinese government implemented the Natural Forest Protection Program, NFPP, which included logging restrictions, protected areas, replanting, and a range of other policies aimed at safeguarding the state of the country’s forests and reducing the risk of erosion and flooding.

Presently, the mountain gorilla in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo is endangered mainly by poaching and habitat loss. This paper sets out to investigate the possible resolution of poaching involving the local community by using benefit sharing schemes with local communities.

Populations of the African penguin Spheniscus demersus have decreased dramatically over the past century, due in part to competition for food with commercial fisheries, and the species is now endangered as a result. Economic arguments are used to favour fisheries over the needs of penguins, but penguins have direct value to the South African economy thanks to penguin-based tourism at several breeding colonies.

Traditionally, siting and sizing decisions for parks and reserves reflected ecological characteristics but typically failed to consider ecological costs created from displaced resource collection, welfare costs on nearby rural people, and enforcement costs.

Forest managers in developing countries enforce extraction restrictions to limit forest degradation. In response, villagers may displace some of their extraction to other forests, which generates “leakage” of degradation.

Our findings provide some of the first evidence that eco-certification can generate private benefits for tourism operators in developing countries and therefore has the potential to improve their environmental performance.