Payments for Environmental Services: Evolution Toward Efficient and Fair Incentives for Multifunctional Landscapes (original) (raw)
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Co-investment in ecosystem services: global lessons from payment and incentive schemes
2018
Nature cannot be valued, but the services that people derive from it can and land use decisions to protect or enhance such services can be supported by economic incentives. • Effects of land use on human being, on-site and off-site, are normally a mixture of positive and negative impacts on the various layers of a human well-being pyramid. • Provisioning services, for which markets usually exist, tend to get prioritized over regulating and cultural ecosystem services, unless these other services are actively supported. • Economic incentives ("payments for ecosystem services", PES) are part of a policy bundle of regulation ("sticks"), incentives ("carrot") and internalized motivation ("sermons"). • We present a framework for analysing the way PES instruments have so far been used, with testable propositions on ecological, economic, social and policy aspects.
2014
Incentives to manage ecosystem services have been heralded as important mechanisms to increase efficiency in biodiversity conservation and to facilitate greater equity in the distribution of natural resources. These interventions aim to control the use of natural resources by altering resource users’ land-use decisions and environmental behaviours. There is relatively little evidence, however, about the perceived benefits and societal values of incentives, and the institutional effectiveness of incentives to alter land-use behaviours to increase compliance. It is also unclear how incentive-based management institutions align with the local biophysical, social, economic, and political dimensions of the social-ecological systems (SES) in which they are implemented. The thesis examines the ways in which incentives are used to manage ecosystem services and their institutional effectiveness to alter landowner environmental behaviours in the complex reality of the world It is important to...
Payments for Ecosystem Services—the Case of Forests
Current Forestry Reports, 2016
Payments for ecosystem services (PES) is a trending topic in environmental resource management. The literature on PES has been growing almost exponentially, and practical applications of PES schemes are mushrooming all around the world. In this review article, I present the existing definitions of PES, the factors to consider during the design and implementation stages of PES programs, as well as discuss the recent theoretical debates related to PES in the literature-specifically those related to commodification and legitimacy of PES, its behavioral implications as well as the issues of power and equity. Despite a wealth of accumulated knowledge in the theoretical and experimental fields related to PES, there is still a considerable lack of empirical studies assessing the practical implementation of PES in the field. Only a few schemes are actually systematically assessed, and there is still a lack of a unified comprehensive framework for the thorough evaluation of existing practical experiences. I outline some of the future research challenges that need to be tackled in order to gain a better understanding of the opportunities that the PES mechanism offers to environmental policy makers and other interested stakeholders. Keywords Payments for environmental services. Environmental governance. Economic incentives 1 The acronym PES is used in the literature to refer both to payments for "ecosystem services"-that is, emphasizing the enhancement of "nature" services, and for "environmental services"-that is, including amenities provided by the "built" or "actively managed" environment [136]. While there are compelling arguments to prefer one term over the other [25••, 41••], in this paper, I use these two terms interchangeably.
The concept of Payments for Ecosystem or Environmental Services (PES) has attracted growing attention in both academic and policy circles. The main premise of this approach is appealing: land users, who tend to be poorly, if at all, motivated to protect nature on their land, may be encouraged to do so through direct payments from ecosystem service buyers. The theoretical underpinnings of PES emanate from a Coasean externality framework, which holds that - under certain circumstances - private negotiations through the market can lead to socially optimal situations. The presumed superiority of PES over other conservation mechanisms is, however, not unequivocal. From an institutional ecological economics and political economy perspective and through a variety of theoretical and empirical chapters this Ph.D. discusses the potential and limitations of the so-called Coasean or market-based PES approach. The central argument throughout this Ph.D. is that one of the reasons for the poor performance of the dominant market-based PES approach is that it tends to overlook a broad range of important social, cultural, and economic dynamics that relate to effective environmental governance.
This paper offers a review and analysis of the key issues and different perspectives in the Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) debate. We discuss how the current debate has to a certain degree moved beyond ‘neoliberal’ vs. ‘non-neoliberal’ discussions, instead recognizing the variegated ways in which this policy tool plays out in the field. We argue, however, that despite this progress PES research remains weakly theorized in social and political terms, resulting in only superficial understanding of the role of culture, agency, social diversity and power relations in the shaping of PES institutions and their outcomes. Building on insights from other fields and disciplines in the social sciences –in particular critical institutionalism, social anthropology and political ecology-, we subject some of the common assumptions underlying mainstream and alternative conceptualizations of PES and identify the main issues that, we believe, deserve more attention in future research. More specifically, we explore three key challenges in current PES research related to the tendency (1) to assume that institutions can be designed in order to make them ‘fit’ specific human-nature problems; (2) to oversimplify culture and social diversity through the apolitical concept of ‘social capital’; and (3) to conceptualize human agency, collective action, and institutional change through either overly-rational or overly-structuralist models. We argue that an expanded actor-oriented, socially-informed and power-sensitive conceptualization of PES can help generate novel insights in the power geographies underlying institutional logics, and thus the complex ways in which PES policies are shaped and experienced in the field.
Equity Considerations and Payments for Ecosystem Services
2008
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes are now increasingly being adopted as a solution to environmental conservation problems in many countries throughout the world. Examples of these market based instruments are tradable pollution permits or certificates for ecosystem services. However, equity outcomes have rarely been considered in the implementation of such instruments. Neo-classical economic analysis does not explicitly take such equity considerations into account with efficiency concerns being the overriding goal. Increasingly this is being seen as inadequate to meet sustainability objectives and there is evidence to suggest that the adherence to an equitable framework for such schemes may determine whether or not stakeholders will participate in these markets. In this paper we develop a framework for consideration of equity in PES schemes. First the background and historical beginnings of these instruments are provided. A review of some existing schemes, particularly t...
Studies in Ecological Economics, 2012
The concept of payments for ecosystem services (PES) has attracted growing attention in both academic and policy circles. One of its applications lies in improving land-use patterns. In this context, the premise of the approach is appealing; farmers, who have little, if any, incentives to consider the environment in their land-use decisions, may be encouraged to do so through direct payments from buyers of ecosystem services (ES). It is often argued that the conditional market-based PES approach may be more effective than alternative environmental policy approaches . The presumption of PES's superiority over other approaches to conservation is, however, not unequivocal (Redford and Adams 2009 ) . This chapter highlights some of the weaknesses of a market-based, 'Coasean', conceptualisation of PES and questions its effectiveness and viability as a stand-alone governance alternative. An analysis of two case studies dealing respectively with the demand and the supply-side perspectives of PES in the region of Matiguás-Río Blanco in Nicaragua shows that the Coasean approach largely fails to take account of the complex and inevitable interactions between PES mechanisms and the broader institutional environment.
Oryx, 2012
We explore the potential for payments for ecosystem services (PES) to reconcile conservation and development goals, using a case study of an experimental PES intervention around the Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda. The scheme involves the purchase of biodiversity conservation services from local communities in four selected locations. Although a portion of the payment is awarded at the household level, it is the collective action of the community that determines the level of the payment. Contracts are negotiated annually and include performance indicators within each participating community. We examine the ability of PES to achieve conservation and development objectives, through three sub-questions: Is the PES scheme effective? Is it legitimate and fair? Is it equitable? Our findings indicate that the relationship between these evaluation criteria is complex, with both trade-offs and synergies. In this case study the effectiveness of PES is dependent on the equitable distribution of the payment, participants' belief and acceptance of the service being paid for, institutional histories that aid in the establishment of legitimacy and fairness, and the complementary nature of PES to more conventional enforcement methods.