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Incentives and Behavior in Natural Resource Management:
Explorations with the CGIAR System

Co-investigators:

William C. Clark, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
B. Kelsey Jack, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Cooperating institutions:

Sustainability Science Program, Center for International Development, Harvard University
The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
        Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services (RUPES)
        Sustaining inclusive Collective Action that Links across Economic and Ecological Scales in the upper watershed (SCALES)
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

This research investigates institutional interventions that alter incentives and ultimately behavior around natural resources in developing countries. Increasingly, direct incentive-based approaches to natural resource management are used to align public and private benefits from conservation investments. However, the adaptations needed to tailor these approaches to developing country contexts are still largely unexplored. Building on ongoing projects within the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system, the research supported by this grant will bring analytical methods from the social sciences to bear on problems of individual and community decision-making around natural resource management in developing countries. Each of the four components of the research will apply questions focused on incentives and behavioral change to existing projects of the cooperating institutions, extending their research objectives and creating a cogent set of findings that can also serve as a platform for the development of future collaboration. Each of the four components will lend itself to one or more discrete outputs, coauthored with a variety of collaborators from the study sites. In the fall of 2007, an advisory committee of Harvard faculty will convene to discuss progress to date on the workplan and offer advice, based on the experiences, on potential opportunities and liabilities for future collaboration with institutions in the CGIAR system. This research is supported by the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
 

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