Usambara Mountains, Tanzania, are recognized internationally as one of the world’s most bio diverse ecosystems and conservation efforts, they face an ongoing threat from clearing for smallholder agriculture.

As many remaining fragments of forest lie on farmers’ properties, often in the form of modified agroforestry systems, a potential means to slow or halt forest loss is a ‘payments for ecosystem services’ (PES) program, where farmers are paid to protect trees on their farms.

A new working paper by David Kaczan, Brent M. Swallow, W. L. (Vic) Adamowicz and Heini Vihemäki, uses a choice experiment to quantify these preferences, and in addition, determines the approximate payment amount required to attract farmer support

The working paper titled, ‘Designing an incentive programme to reduce on-farm deforestation in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania,’ is based on PRESA’s research at Usambara Mountains, in Tanzania.

Notable results are that payment for manure fertilizer (representing an investment in farm productivity) was highly effective at motivating farmer support, a group payment was highly ineffective, and that minimal programme conditionality was not always preferred. Required payment amounts were found to be highly variable between farmers.

The working paper concludes with a discussion of PES programme design practicalities as informed by the study findings.

Click here to download the working paper [PDF, 2.82 MB]