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Synergies between livestock production and hydrological function in Arenal, Costa Rica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2001

Bruce Aylward  and
Jaime Echeverría
Jaime Echeverría
Affiliation:
Senior Associate, Economics Program, World Resource Institute, 109 Street NE Suite 8000, Washington DC 20002, USA Tel: 202 729 7691 Fax: 202 729 7686 Email: jaime@wri.org
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Abstract

Conventional wisdom amongst environmentalists holds that the cutting of tropical forest for livestock production is not only bad business but also bad for the environment. In particular, it is thought that conversion to pasture leads to a rise in the sedimentation of waterways and reservoirs, an increase in flooding and loss of dry season water supply. Using the case of the Rio Chiquito watershed (which drains into Lake Arenal, Costa Rica), the paper questions this conventional wisdom. The paper demonstrates that both livestock production and the associated downstream hydrological impacts represent important values to the local economy; values that significantly outweigh expected returns from options for reforestation or forest regeneration. Given that non-hydrological externalities associated with livestock production are expected to be of minimal importance in the watershed, there is little reason – as is often proposed – to foster large-scale reforestation of the watershed or to purchase land for protection. Instead efforts should focus on how to maximize the complementary returns from livestock and the support to hydroelectric power provided by water production.

Type
Policy Options
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 2001 , pp. 359 - 381
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The authors would like to thank the Government of the Netherlands for providing financial support to the project ‘Economic Incentives for Watershed Protection’, under the program in Collaborative Research on the Economics of Environment and Development (CREED). The authors would like to thank the International Institute for Environment and Development and the Tropical Science Center for their support throughout the project. The authors acknowledge the guidance provided by Edward B. Barbier and Joe Tosi in designing the project and Kenneth Chomitz, Sarah Scherr, Douglas Southgate, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. All errors and omissions remain the responsibility of the authors.