Only One Tree from Each Seed? Environmental Effectiveness and Poverty Alleviation in Mexico’s Payments for Ecosystem Services Program
评估墨西哥一个联邦支付计划对森林保护和减贫的影响，发现该计划减少了40-51%的预期土地覆盖损失，并带来小幅减贫效果，但环境与减贫目标难以同时实现。
Environmental conditional cash transfers are popular but their impacts are not well understood. We evaluate land cover and wealth impacts of a federal program that pays landowners for protecting forest. Panel data for program beneficiaries and rejected applicants allow us to control for fixed differences and time trends affecting both groups. We find the program reduces the expected land cover loss by 40–51 percent and generates small but positive poverty alleviation. Environmental gains are higher where poverty is low while household gains are higher where deforestation risk is low, illustrating the difficulty of meeting multiple policy goals with one tool.