The small-scale water provider in Paraguay: bringing private sector efficiency to water resource use and the provision of drinking water to the poor

This article provides a case study of small-scale private sector provision of water supply in Paraguay, where the Government has sought sector policy reforms that would encourage private investment in drinking water supply. Ironically, while the Government has focused almost entirely on garnering the interest of large private international water companies, much smaller local firms have already made significant investments in drinking water services for the poor, all without any participation or encouragement from the Government. Outside Paraguay's two major cities, Asunción and Ciudad del Este, large numbers of aguateros currently provide piped potable water to lower-income people. Though the aguateros have little legal footing — they are in many respects informal and unregulated —they have constructed as much as one third of all the new drinking water connections in these two cities over the past 20 years. The small-scale water systems in Paraguay offer a model of financial, economic, and water-use efficiency. This article asserts that an abundance of groundwater resources, cheap access to electricity for pumping, and a spirit of informal investment, among other variables, has spawned widespread use of this approach. This article documents and analyzes the features of these independent small-scale water providers in Paraguay and the efficiency they bring to the use of water resources in meeting drinking water demands among the poor. It also cautions against policies that may trample on such entrepreneurial spirit in the name of State-managed privatization.     

Collective action: an alternative institutional arrangement for reducing water pollution in an industrial estate in India

This study explores the possibility of collective action as an alternative option for reducing water pollution for a cluster of small-scale industries. A case study of the Nandesari Industrial Estate in Gujarat, India, demonstrates the roles played by different agents, such as affected parties, polluters, non-governmental organizations, regulators and the court. The study empirically estimates the 'benefits' and 'costs' of water pollution abatement for a cluster of 250 small-scale industries at Nandesari, and uses these estimates for a social cost-benefit analysis. Benefits are estimated using the contingent valuation method, with a 'willingness to accept' format for the rural areas, and a 'willingness to pay' format for the urban area of the nearby Vadodara city. The article considers costs of command and control, market-based solutions and the option of common effluent treatment as alternative scenarios. It discusses how collective action and joint abatement at a common effluent treatment plant (CETP) by the 250 industries efficiently comply with the State Pollution Control Board norms, which had not been possible for the factories acting individually over the last 20 years. Finally, a detailed social cost-benefit analysis has been undertaken to estimate the net present social benefits with and without CETP. The cost-benefit analysis shows the economic advantage and social desirability of 'collective action' (joint treatment with CETP institutional arrangement) for water pollution abatement with respect to all possible scenarios comprising shadow prices of investment, foreign exchange, unskilled labour and equity considerations.     

The stone forum: Implementing a consensus building methodology to address impacts associated with small mining and quarry operations

Small-scale mining, including quarry operations, continues to play an important social and economic role in hundreds of communities throughout Brazil. Often operating outside the formal economy, conflicts between the owners of small-scale mining operations, the mineworkers, various government agencies, and other stakeholders have contributed to the progressive degradation of the environment, poor health and safety standards, and low productivity. The Centre for Mineral Technology (CETEM) of Brazil is implementing a consensus building methodology in order to produce dimension stone by small-scale miners on a more sustainable basis in the Pádua region, located in the northwest of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The approach being used by CETEM is based on its own experience in working with gold prospectors in the Amazon, and lessons and experiences learned from Canadian officials and industry representatives. The lessons and insights gained from this project may prove to be useful to those involved in addressing similar problems elsewhere in Brazil, South America and around the world.     

The relationship of social capital and fishers’ participation in multi-level governance arrangements

The need for effective multi-level governance arrangements is becoming increasingly urgent because of complex functional interdependencies between biophysical and socioeconomic systems. We argue that social capital plays an important role in such systems. To explore the relationship between social capital and participation in resource governance arenas, we analyzed various small-scale fisheries governance regimes from the Gulf of California, Mexico. The components of social capital that we measured include levels of fishers’ structural ties to relevant groups and levels of trust in different entities (i.e. cognitive component). We collected data using surveys and interviews with residents of small-scale fishing communities adjacent to marine protected areas. We analyzed the data using a logistic regression model and narrative analysis. The results of our quantitative analysis highlight the multidimensional nature of social capital and reveals complex relationships between different types of social capital and fisher participation in monitoring, rulemaking and MPA design. Furthermore our qualitative analysis suggests that participation in fisheries conservation and management is not fully potentialized due to the social and historical context of participatory spaces in Mexico.     

Graduated stringency within collective incentives for group environmental compliance: Building coordination in field-lab experiments with artisanal gold miners in Colombia

Small-scale gold mining is important to rural livelihoods in the developing world but also a source of environmental externalities. Incentives for individual producers are the classic policy response for a socially efficient balance between livelihoods and the environment. Yet monitoring individual miners is ineffective, or it is very costly, especially on frontiers with scattered small-scale miners. We ask whether monitoring at a group level effectively incentivizes cleaner artisanal mining by combining lower-cost external monitoring with local collective action. We employ a mining-framed, threshold-public-goods experiment in Colombia's Pacific region, with 640 participants from frontier mining communities. To study compliance with collective environmental targets, we vary the target stringency, including to compare increases over time in the stringency versus decreases. We find that collective incentives can induce efficient equilibria, with group compliance – and even inefficient overcompliance – despite the existence of equilibria with zero contributions. Yet, for demanding targets in which the reward for compliance barely outweighs the cost, compliance can collapse. Those outcomes improve with past successes for easier targets, however, so our results suggest gain from building coordination via graduated stringency.     

自然保护区社区共管模式的四个维度研究

绿色发展理念和生态文明建设为自然保护区的建设与管理、发展与保护带来了新机遇.探讨了中国自然保护区事业的发展现状和建设中存在问题.从生态伦理、生态补偿、环境立法和耗散结构理论四个维度视角出发,厘清了社区共管模式的优越性和必要性.提出了构建自然保护区协调发展管理新构想,认为社区共管模式应是一种在生态法则基础上,由政府主导、社区参与、资源共享、权力均等、义务均担,生态环境有序健康演进和社区经济持续发展的双赢模式.本研究旨在为实现自然保护区社区共管的科学性提供支撑和范式.