Research, part of a Special Feature on Do we need new management paradigms to achieve sustainability in tropical forests? Are Direct Payments for Environmental Services Spelling Doom for Sustainable…

By Sven Wunder. 2006

198 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Over the past several decades, significant donor funding has been directed to sustainable forest management in the tropics, in the hope of combining forest conservation with economic gains through sustainable use. To date, this approach has produced only modest results in terms of changed silvicultural and land-use practices in this area. Direct payments for environmental services (PES) have been suggested as a promising alternative but still remain widely untested in the tropics. This paper first provides a conceptual assessment of PES, comparing the main features of this practice with those of other conservation instruments. Second, the paper discusses a series of critical questions that have been raised about both the environmental and livelihood impacts of PES. It is concluded that some ex ante judgments about the effects of PES may have been overly critical, and that, based on preliminary assessments, there is good reason to continue experimental PES implementation for purposes of consolidating our knowledge.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b7512a550d9b0ea9732f85db35e354ee79a6ee5b

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Citations in the corpus

Targeting and implementing payments for ecosystem services: Opportunities for bundling biodiversity conservation with carbon and water services in Madagascar (2010, background): “…(1) they are a voluntary transaction; (2) they involve a welldefined environmental service; (3) the service is “bought” by at least one buyer; (4) the service is “provided” by at least one provider; and (5) the transaction is conditional on provision of that service (Wunder, 2005, 2006, 2007).”
Evaluating the outcomes of payments for ecosystem services programmes using a capital asset framework (2014, background): “, 2012; Tacconi, 2012; Derissen and Latacz-Lohmann, 2013) as a policy tool intended to address a spectrum of land management challenges (Landen-Mills, 2002; Landell-Mills and Porras 2002; Wunder, 2006; Engel et al., 2008; Bond and Mayers, 2010).”
Payments for Environmental Services: Evolution Toward Efficient and Fair Incentives for Multifunctional Landscapes (2012, background): “Early claims on perverse incentives with PES applications in the context of tropical forests, suggesting that direct payments for ES spell doom for sustainable forest management in the tropics, can still be easily dismissed (155).”
A Revised Conceptual Framework for Payments for Environmental Services (2009, background): “However, a recent definition by Wunder (2005, 2006, 2007) has received widespread acceptance from the academic community (articles cited more than 150 times between January 2005 and December 2008, according to Google Scholar) as well as from practitioners of payment interventions, such as the…”
Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services for sustained on-farm utilization of plant and animal genetic resources (2011, background): “Related to the “conditionality” criterion, any PES design in general is associated with a number of generic institutional challenges (as e.g.Ferraro and Simpson, 2002; Wunder, 2006, 2007).”
Research, part of a Special Feature on Compensation and Reward for Environmental Services in the Tropics Principles for Fairness and Efficiency in Enhancing Environmental Services in Asia: Payments, Compensation, or Co-Investment? (2010, background): “Further analysis of the conceptual failure is needed (Wunder 2006).”
Direct payments for biodiversity conservation in developing countries: practical insights for design and implementation (2009, background): “These concerns have caused sceptics to reject direct payment policies without considering evidence from practice (Wunder, 2006).”
REDD in the red: palm oil could undermine carbon payment schemes (2009, background): “While there have been some notable pilot PES projects in both the public and private sectors, their success remains equivocal and uptake uncertain (Wunder 2006).”
An institutional analysis of payments for environmental services (2010, background): “…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); Claassen et al. (2008);Dobbs andPretty (2008)— or d) look at combinationsof all the above — e.g., Pagiola (2008).”
The potential ecological costs and cobenefits of REDD: a critical review and case study from the Amazon region (2009, background): “Funding for international conservation (an average of o$1 billion annually in the 1990s and declining even further in the early 2000s; Molnar et al., 2003; Wunder, 2006) represents only a small fraction of the value that the global carbon market has already achieved.”
What factors influence participation in payment for ecosystem services programs? An evaluation of Ecuador's SocioPáramo program (2014, background): “Rectifying this situation will be difficult since simply offering higher incentives could lead to situations where landowners abandon development and are “paid to do nothing” (Wunder, 2006) unless there are initiatives to facilitate the development of sustainable off-farm livelihoods.”
Water funds and payments for ecosystem services: practice learns from theory and theory can learn from practice (2012, background): “A definition of PES and associated best practices has been emerging (Wunder, 2005, 2006, 2007) that is heavily based on economic theory (specifically, efficiency considerations) and is becoming broadly accepted in the academic literature (e.g. Sommerville et al., 2009) and among practitioners (e.g.…”
Payments for environmental services and the poor: concepts and preliminary evidence (2008, background): “Not only does PES offer a new income source in often cash-poor areas with low diversification, the cash flow is potentially also more stable than common alternative sources, such as cash crops with heavily fluctuating output prices (Wunder, 2006).”