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The present study investigates the role of ecotourism as a potential catalyst for land sparing in Latin America, with a particular focus on indigenous and community-based ecotourism. The research question is investigated within a comprehensive empirical land sparing–agricultural expansion framework, which uses the Jevons paradox as its theoretical foundation. It also allows for environmental governance and includes several socioeconomic control variables. In doing so, a panel data set based on secondary data from institutional sources and comprising 10 Latin American countries for the period from 1995 to 2015 is employed, which resulted in 209 observations in total. Panel estimation results show that there is only moderate evidence of land sparing associated with ecotourism, when it occurs on indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ land. To achieve land sparing through ecotourism, titling land to indigenous peoples and local communities as stakeholders is therefore crucial, but this beneficial effect should not be overestimated.

Author(s): Ulrich Gunter, Graziano M. Ceddia

Publication date: 2020

Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0047287520949687

Agricultural expansion remains an important cause of deforestation in Latin America. There is an on-going debate about whether increasing agricultural productivity leads to land-sparing or Jevons paradox. At the same time, recognizing the customary rights of indigenous peoples and local communities can be particularly effective at slowing down deforestation. We consider ten Latin American countries over the period 1990 to 2010 and use dynamic panel data models to assess whether: a) there is a difference between short-run and long-run effects of improvements in agricultural productivity and b) different land tenure systems are capable of directing the process of agricultural intensification towards land-sparing. Our results allow us to draw a number of stylised conclusions. In general, we observe that higher agricultural productivity per-se is land-sparing, albeit the long-run effects appear smaller than the short-run effects. Most importantly, the overall effect of increased productivity crucially depends on the institutional context. In this respect, increasing the forest area owned or managed by indigenous peoples promotes land-sparing, while increasing the forest area administered by governments and/or owned by private individuals and companies promotes Jevons paradox. In the long-run, the agricultural expansion effects of increasing the forest areas owned by private individuals and companies are stronger than those associated with the expansion of forest areas administered by the government. We also note that the formal recognition of land ownership to indigenous peoples and local communities manifests its beneficial effects in the long-run.

Author(s): Graziano M. Ceddia, Ulrich Gunter, Pasquale Pazienza

Publication date: 2019

Volume: 109

Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2019.102001

Drawing on the positive experience from Costa Rica, the study examines whether international ecotourism makes a significant contribution to comprehensive economic development for the Central American and Caribbean region and contributes to comprehensive economic convergence. Following a standard empirical growth model, a dynamic panel regression model is estimated using time-series data from 1995 until 2012 for a cross section of seven countries. The interaction of international tourism and various established sustainability indicators is employed allowing ecotourism to be consistently quantified across countries, while numerous country-specific structural characteristics are controlled for. The estimation results show that international ecotourism has a statistically significant positive effect on both traditional economic development (real GDP per capita) and comprehensive economic development (adjusted net savings; ANS per capita), which is a measure of a society’s potential future well-being, thus providing evidence in support of the tourism-led growth hypothesis and pointing towards an important role for ecotourism in driving comprehensive economic convergence.

Author(s): Ulrich Gunter, Graziano M. Ceddia, David Leonard, Bernhard Tröster

Publication date: 23. 1. 2018

Pages: 1-16

Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2018.1430339

One of the consequences of climate change is the increase in the frequency and entity of extreme weather events, including floods. Any strategy dealing with the various impacts of climate change must focus not only on mitigation aspects, but also on improving on the level of adaptive capacity. Over the past decades there has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of floods in Europe, a fact which has prompted the European Union (EU) to put forward the Directive 60/2007 (the ‘Floods Directive’), requiring Member States to produce a comprehensive Flood Risk Management Plan (FRMP) by 2015. The purpose of this paper is to assess how the implementation of the ‘Floods Directive’ has contributed to the level of adaptive capacity in Austria, a EU member State hosting an important river basin. By relying on the existing literature, the paper first describes the governance system associated with flood risk management in Austria prior to the elaboration of the FRMP. Subsequently, based on collected primary data, the paper studies the governance structure associated with the elaboration of the FRMP in Austria by using descriptive social network analysis (SNA) and discusses the implications in terms of adaptive capacity of flood governance. The elaboration of the FRMP has had the merit of coordinating the pre-existing regional legislation into a coherent national framework, under the leadership of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Environment. A limited number of other public administration stakeholders act as brokers, but the overall governance structure appears centralized and exhibits low modularity. Such a structure, moreover, is exclusively composed of public administration actors with no de facto participation of other stakeholders (e.g., NGOs and private companies). The incorporation of a wider set of organizations in the earlier phases of the policy cycle is welcomed, in order to make the whole process less technocratic and effectively improve the overall level of adaptive capacity.

Author(s): Graziano M. Ceddia, Dimitris Christopoulos, Yeray Hernández-González, Elena Zepharovich

Publication date: 11. 2017

Volume: 77

Pages: 140 - 146

Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2017.08.014

Using annual data for the period 1995–2012 for seven Central American and Caribbean countries, six different open-economy growth models that allow for international (eco-) tourism are estimated using panel-data techniques. Two main results of the investigation are that international tourist arrivals per capita have a highly significant impact on real GDP per capita, and also that five different sustainability indicators interacted with international tourism have a positive impact on economic development. Furthermore, quantile regression shows that lower and medium income deciles of the population in particular benefit from international (eco-) tourism. The results are complemented by very similar findings for a set of 12 Central American and Caribbean countries using only two sustainability indicators, thus corroborating the validity of the specification. In addition, control variables are also generally significant and they feature the algebraic signs expected from economic theory.

Author(s): Ulrich Gunter, Graziano Ceddia, Bernhard Tröster

Publication date: 2017

Volume: 25

Issue number: 1

Pages: 43-60

Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1173043