Francisco Alpizar

Public concern about environmental degradation is widespread, yet translating this concern into support for effective policies remains a major challenge. This study examines how perceptions of personal costs and the framing of lifestyle changes influence policy acceptability in three countries of the Global South. We conducted an online survey experiment with around 5,000 respondents in Ghana, Vietnam, and Costa Rica. Participants were randomly assigned to one of several treatments highlighting behavioral, financial, or asset-related costs—or, alternatively, positive low-carbon options—across four lifestyle sectors: transport, food, fashion, and waste. Our results show that support for environmental policies declines significantly when personal costs are emphasized, especially financial ones. However, presenting realistic and appealing alternatives increases acceptability, suggesting that positive framing can offset cost aversion. These findings provide new evidence from under-studied regions on how policy design and communication can bridge the gap between environmental concern and actual support.

Humpback whale-watching in Samaná Bay (BSE) is one of the region's most significant marine tourism activities. However, its recreational demand and economic value remain insufficiently quantified. This study estimates the economic value of whale-watching as a cultural ecosystem service using the Individual Travel Cost Method (ITCM), based on 359 on-site surveys collected during the 2023–2024 season. Because all respondents had made at least one visit by design, a zero-truncated Poisson model is used to correct for on-site sampling bias, which would otherwise attenuate travel-cost coefficients and overstate consumer surplus (CS). This specification yields an estimated CS of USD 757 per trip, implying an aggregate seasonal recreational welfare of approximately USD 37.9 million for an estimated 50,000 visitors, alongside direct observed expenditures of USD 9.2 million per season. Simulated increases in access costs of 10% and 20% reduce expected visit frequency by 4.08% and 8.03%, respectively, indicating inelastic demand and potential fiscal space for conservation financing instruments such as access fees and environmental surcharges. Whale-watching motivation and income emerge as the most robust determinants of visit frequency across specifications. These findings provide site-specific empirical evidence to support governance arrangements linking the recreational value of marine mammal tourism to conservation finance and local livelihood improvement.

Evidence of the impact of community-based forest management (CBFM) on conservation outcomes is mixed. Local governance is a key moderating factor, but what constitutes good governance is still up for debate. Desirable institutional features typically arise endogenously, which complicates the analysis of causality. We use an experimental design to analyze the impact on environmental outcomes of adding an externally implemented monitoring regime to an existing CBFM initiative in Ethiopia. We distinguish between bottom-up and top-down monitoring to improve the accountability of local leaders. We find that enhanced bottom-up monitoring by community members does not affect forest outcomes, but top-down monitoring promotes forest conservation. We also identify a mechanism linking top-down monitoring to conservation: leaders work harder to protect the forest, which “crowds in” effort by community members. Our results are not about reducing the role of communities in forest management, they are a plea for oversight by the relevant authority to help communities overcome local power asymmetries.

Agricultural practices of smallholder farming systems of Latin America can play an important role in reducing their exposure to the risks associated with climate extremes. To date, however, there is no systematic analysis of scientific evidence for the extent to which these practices can provide the multiple benefits needed for smallholders to adapt to climate extremes. In this paper, we searched scientific databases to review scientific evidence of the benefit provided by twenty-six practices in crops commonly farmed by smallholders in the region and highly relevant for their food and nutrition security; namely, coffee, maize and beans. We reviewed scientific documents (n = 304) published in the period 1953–2021 to register evidence of the practices’ effects on fifty-five benefits. Our analysis of these documents found measurement records (n = 924) largely based on field experiments (85%). Our results show strong evidence of the multiple benefits that some ecosystem-based practices (e.g., tree-based practices for coffee and no tillage for maize) can provide to support the adaptation to climate extremes of smallholder farming systems and enhance a farm’s natural assets (e.g., biodiversity, water, soil). We also found that the majority of research on practices in the region focused more on the socioeconomic dimension (54%) rather than on the capacity of practices to improve the natural assets of a smallholder farmers or reduce the impact of climate extremes. Given these knowledge gaps, we discuss the importance of a renovated investment in research to address existing knowledge gaps. Our concluding suggestions for future research include the need for systematizing existing knowledge from different sources (e.g., peer-reviewed, gray literature, farmers, extension agencies, etc.), and to assess the extent to which these practices can provide multiple benefits for smallholder farming systems by improving their wellbeing, reducing their vulnerability to different hydroclimatic extremes while also contributing to ecosystem services provision at the landscape level.