ABSTRACT
Previous chapters have discussed many of the factors affecting investments in soil and water conservation. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze how potential policy instruments spur these investments and address downstream externalities from soil loss and agricultural runoff, with a particular focus on information, regulation, strengthening property rights, and market based instruments. Identifying appropriate instruments is particularly important for small-scale agriculture, which is often characterized by erosive soils, dispersed non-point pollution, and asymmetric information between polluters and downstream victims; these settings are especially common in mountainous tropical developing countries (Kerr 2002; Landell-Mills and Porras 2002; Pagiola et al. 2005; Wunder 2005).
