Current research projects:
What happens when payments stop? Collective resource management under the rise and fall of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) (2017-2020, PI Tanya Hayes & Co-PI Felipe Murtinho, Funded by NSF- SES1735041)
In June 2017, we were awarded a 3 year grant from the National Science Foundation to examine the social, institutional and behavioral impacts of payments for environmental services when the likelihood of future payments is uncertain. The goal of the new research project is to examine the extent to which the payments for conservation policy model prompts conservation behavior and communal resource management arrangements that endure, even when payments stop.
Influence of Economic Incentives on Common-Property Forest Management in Ecuador (2012-2015, PI Tanya Hayes, Co-PI Felipe Murtinho & Hendrik Wolf, Funded by NSF - SES1156271)
As part of a three year project, we investigated how the Ecuadorian payment for conservation program, Programa SocioBosque, interacts with the decision-making processes of rural peasant and indigenous communities living in the Ecuadorian Sierra. Using a quasi-experimental design to compare participant and non-participant communities, we examined the factors that influence the decision to participate, how program participation influences the governance of communal lands, and the degree to which program participation is influencing behavioral change. Data gathering included structured interviews with leaders in 67 communities, focus group discussions and land-use assessments in 12 communities, and a survey administered to 428 households.
We found that the PES program supported community resource management and has significantly reduced household use of ecologically valuable lands. When we compared household stated grazing behavior in 2008 to 2013 in participant and non-participant communities, we found that controlling for biophysical, community and household characteristics, the program reduced grazing behavior by approximately 12% across all participant communities. Our analysis also found that community governance attributes are critical for the conservation of communal lands. Households in more organized communities, with a history of land-use rules, and monitoring and enforcement mechanisms were more likely to have decided to stop using their collective lands for destructive grazing activities, irrespective of program participation. Within PES communities, grazing behavior decreased more if a community had a history of grazing rules and the organizational capacity to strengthen those rules. Preliminary analysis also indicate that households in less organized communities are more likely to question the fairness of the distribution of PES benefits and express concerns about the program’s potential to create conflict.
This Project was completed in collaboration with the Consorcio para el Desarrollo Sostenible de la Ecoregión Andina (CONDESAN), Ecuador and the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment. In addition, several Seattle University students helped analyze the data and presented the findings to participant communities. In summer 2014, three students worked as part of our research team to present findings and provide introductory workshops on ecotourism.
See our publications in: World Development, Ecological Economics and Environmental Management.
Undergraduate Research Opportunities
I am committed to providing research opportunities for undergraduate students. Such opportunities have included statistical analysis of data, conducting interviews and taking soil samples in southern Ecuador and putting on workshops on our research findings for rural communities in the central Andes of Ecuador. Current student research opportunities are posted HERE
Previous Projects
How do Payments for Environmental Services align with adaptive decision-making?
Research on the two different PES programs in Latin America (Colombia and Ecuador) seeks to understand how the system of payments and contractual agreements fits with peasants’ decision-making processes and the tenets of adaptive decision-making for sustainable resource management. Findings suggest a tension between the contractual model of many PES programs and adaptive decision-making in natural resource systems. PES programs are not inherently decentralized, flexible management tools, as PES contracts tend to restrict decision-making rights and offer minimal flexibility mechanisms to change resource-use practices over the duration of the contract period (Hayes et al. 2014; Hayes 2012).
Institutional Mapping of Complex Landscapes
As part of a project funded by CGIAR research program on Forests, Trees, and Agroforestry I am working to map the institutional arrangements that operate within and across scales in “sentinel” landscapes. My work focuses on designing the data gathering protocols to identify and assess resource management institutions and decision-making processes in the Western Amazon that includes the tri-national frontier region of Madre de Dios and Ucayali (Peru), Pando (Bolivia) and Acre (Brazil). Data is gathered on institutional arrangements at the national, regional, and local levels via secondary sources, semi-structured interviews and community case studies. Institutional data will be combined with socio-economic and ecological data to monitor and assess land-use and livelihood dynamics occurring in the region.
Property Rights, Protected Areas & Forest Conservation
My previous research examined the impact of different property-rights configurations and protected area policies on forest conservation and community resource management. In a cross-national study of 163 forests (of which approximately half were protected areas), I found that protected areas are not necessarily the most effective way of promoting forest conservation and that property-rights arrangements that permit resource users to make forest rules may significantly enhance forest conservation.(Hayes 2006; Hayes & Ostrom 2005). Similarly, my dissertation research assessed how tenure and decision-making rights in protected areas in the Mosquitia Forest Corridor of Honduras and Nicaragua influenced the ability to control agricultural expansion and support local forest governance systems. I found that protected area policies that supported local territorial tenure regimes and decision-making rights were more effective at controlling agricultural expansion in the region (Hayes 2007). The findings also suggested that the indigenous common-property systems were vulnerable to market pressures, but that property-rights policies and programs that reduce the transaction costs involved in organization and collective rule making may bolster the adaptive capacity of the indigenous residents to respond to outside pressure and sustain their common-property institutions (Hayes 2008, 2009).