Which little piggies go to market? Environmental policy incentives in Costa Rican pig production

In order to tackle climate change effectively, policymakers must ensure not only that mitigation policies and initiatives achieve their goals, but also that the goals themselves correspond to good environmental outcomes. Based on a case study on Costa Rican pig production, this study aims to contribute to a better understanding of what constitutes a good environmental outcome for climate change mitigation policy in Latin American livestock production. The findings show that the promotion of on-farm bio-digesters can act as a perverse incentive that leads producers to scale up production and transition to emissions-intensive systems, implying a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Small-scale producers can then no longer compete, and thus abandon production. Policies that counter incentives to scale up production, such as limits on the total number of animals or volume of emissions, must therefore be introduced in order to achieve overall reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from livestock.