ABSTRACT
The welfare impacts of soil conservation projects are rather complex. Soil erosion may affect road maintenance costs, irrigation investment costs, or the costs of hydroelectric power equipment. There are three principal problems in the formulation and appraisal of soil conservation projects, the proper identification of benefits and costs, the assignment of monetary values to benefits and costs and the issue of how to make use of discounted cash flow procedures. In developing measures of welfare, the analyst concerned with environmental projects in general -- and soil erosion control projects in particular -- is faced with some special problems. Soil conservation projects have several types of indirect or secondary effects. These are economic effects on other agents in the economy which are located outside the geographical boundaries of the project. Soil conservation projects, like environmental projects in general, are difficult to evaluate because of the existence of unpriced attributes not directly traded in markets.
