Payments for environmental services in watersheds: Insights from a comparative study of three cases in Central America

By Nicolás Kosoy, Miguel Martinez-Tuna, R. Muradian, J. Martínez-Alier. 2007

472 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have compared three cases of payments for water-related environmental services (PES) in Central America, in terms of socioeconomic background, opportunity costs of forest conservation and stakeholders' perceptions of the conditions of water resources and other issues. We found that, in general, the opportunity costs are larger than the amounts paid, which apparently contradicts the economic foundation of PES schemes and suggests that the role of “intangibles” is important in inducing participation. The results also show that trade-offs between different environmental and social goals are likely to emerge in PES schemes, posing some doubts as to their ability to be multipurpose instruments for environmental improvement and rural development. We also found that PES schemes may work as a conflict-resolution instrument, facilitating downstream–upstream problem solving, though at the same time they might introduce changes in social perceptions of property rights.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Ocean Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2c7a8402c2870fcf1d284fcbf65114c6ca6ed79a

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Citations in the corpus

Payments for Ecosystem Services: Rife With Problems and Potential—For Transformation Towards Sustainability (2017, background): “First, several PES in Central America are paying less than opportunity costs (Kosoy et al., 2007).”
The Devil in the Detail: A Practical Guide on Designing Payments for Environmental Services (2016, background): “For example, Kosoy et al. (2007) found payments below opportunity costs to be effective, which is likely due to intrinsic motivations.”
The history of ecosystem services in economic theory and practice: From early notions to markets and payment schemes (2010, background): “In the early 2000s a growing number of PES like mechanisms have spread throughout other Meso-American and South American countries (Corbera et al., 2007; Kosoy et al., 2007; Asquith et al., 2008; Pagiola, 2008; Wunder and Albán, 2008; reviewed in Wunder et al., 2008).”
Classifying Ecosystem Services for Economic Valuation: The case of forest water services (2010, methodology): “Take for example the case of Jesus de Otoro watershed in Hondura reported by Kosoy et al. (2005). The actual PES fee was determined by a series of technical studies, which were supposed to include an economic valuation and was only 3.”
Arrested Development? The Promises and Paradoxes of “Selling Nature to Save It” (2016, background): “…have explored myriad instances of something akin to for-profit conservation, drawing out many of its on-the-ground consequences, including inequities (e.g., Corbera, Kosoy, and Tuna 2007; Kosoy et al. 2007; Corbera and Brown 2010) and new insecurities for local people (Igoe and Brockington 2007).”
Payments for ecosystem services: From local to global (2010, background): “However, property rights need not be private: in Mexico, payments are made to ejidos, which share certain property rights to forests (Kosoy et al., 2007), and Brazil's ecological value added tax makes payments to municipal governments (Loureiro, 2002; May et al., 2002; Ring, 2008).”
Redefining payments for environmental services (2012, background): “PES schemes for watershed management are an example of the latter point because downstream water users may not be aware that they have to pay more for water due to the PES scheme because the government deals with the service providers (Kosoy et al., 2007).”
Fairly efficient, efficiently fair: Lessons from designing and testing payment schemes for ecosystem services in Asia (2015, background): “Case studies in Latin America showed that social values beyond financial payments induced participation in PES (Kosoy et al., 2007) and the monetisation of ecosystem services were mostly rejected by the PES recipients (Asquith et al., 2008).”
Why do farmers join Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes? An Assessment of PES water scheme participation in Brazil (2014, background): “Few studies, however, have proposed a combination of quantitative and qualitative empirical techniques (Arriagada et al., 2009; Kosoy et al., 2007).”
Exploring the links between equity and efficiency in payments for environmental services: A conceptual approach (2010, methodology): “Yet in the watershed-protection PES scheme implemented in Jesus de Otoro, Honduras, the expected provision criterion was used insofar payments were differentiated according to the type of forest and the type and number of water-quality improvement practices adopted by farmers (Kosoy et al., 2007).”
Payments for ecosystem services as commodity fetishism (2010, background): “…and runoffs (Ayward, 2005), these may also be influenced by other factors such as topography, the upstream forest type or land-use and preventive infrastructure, which may fall beyond the control of those who manage the watershed (Muñoz-Piña et al., 2008; Kosoy et al., 2007; Grip et al., 2005).”
Payments for ecosystem services: justified or not? A political view (2010, methodology): “The distribution of the costs could then be proportional to the quantity of water consumed by respectively urban dweller A and B (in fact, this methodology is often used in hydrological PES schemes; see for example Corbera et al., 2007 or Kosoy et al., 2007).”
Revisiting the concept of payments for environmental services (2015, background): “occupy the environmentally sensitive upper watershed (Kosoy et al., 2007). 16 For instance, CES1, CES2, RES1 and RES2 are being listed in Swallow et al. (2009). 17 Keeping these concepts apart does certainly not preclude an acknowledgement of”
Efficiency of Payments for Environmental Services: Equity and additionality in a case study from a Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico (2011, background): “, 2010) and because the conditions for the ES provision are more based on socially constructed ideas than in scientific knowledge (Kaimowitz, 2004; Kosoy et al., 2007).”
An institutional analysis of payments for environmental services (2010, background): “…pay upstream dwellers to undertake certain acts/stop certain activities to increasewater quality— e.g., Grieg-Gran et al. (2005); Corbera et al. (2007a); Kosoy et al. (2007) Wunder and Alban (2008); Muradian et al. (2008) — c) consider payments for biodiversity preservation— e.g.,Wunder (2006);…”