CASH TRANSFERS ENABLE HOUSEHOLDS TO COPE WITH AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND PRICE SHOCKS: EVIDENCE FROM ZAMBIA.

Climate change is projected to dramatically disrupt rainfall patterns and agricultural yields in Sub-Saharan Africa. These shocks to food production can mire farming households in poverty traps. This study investigates whether unconditional cash transfers can help households cope with agricultural production and price shocks. We find that cash empowers poor, rural households facing these negative shocks to employ coping strategies typically used by the non-poor and enables them to substantially increase their food consumption and overall food security. Extending relatively small cash payments unconditionally to the rural poor is a powerful policy option for fostering climate-resilient development.

Building the evidence base for REDD+: Study design and methods for evaluating the impacts of conservation interventions on local well-being.

Climate change mitigation in developing countries is increasingly expected to generate co-benefits that help meet sustainable development goals. This has been an expectation and a hotly contested issue in REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) since its inception. While the core purpose of REDD+ is to reduce carbon emissions, its legitimacy and success also depend on its impacts on local well-being. To effectively safeguard against negative impacts, we need to know whether and which well-being outcomes can be attributed to REDD+. Yet, distinguishing the effects of choosing particular areas for REDD+ from the effects of the interventions themselves remains a challenge. The Global Comparative Study (GCS) on REDD+ employed a quasi-experimental before-after-control-intervention (BACI) study design to address this challenge and evaluate the impacts of 16 REDD+ pilots across the tropics. We find that the GCS approach allows identification of control groups that represent the counterfactual, thereby permitting attribution of outcomes to REDD+. The GCS experience belies many of the common critiques of the BACI design, especially concerns about collecting baseline data on control groups. Our findings encourage and validate the early planning and up-front investments required to evaluate the local impacts of global climate change mitigation efforts with confidence. The stakes are high, both for the global environment and for local populations directly affected by those efforts. The standards for evidence should be concomitantly high.