Taking stock: A comparative analysis of payments for environmental services programs in developed and developing countries

By Sven Wunder, S. Engel, S. Pagiola. 2008

1,266 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Payments for environmental services (PES) are an innovative approach to conservation that has been applied increasingly often in both developed and developing countries. To date, however, few efforts have been made to systematically compare PES experiences. Drawing on the wealth of case studies in this Special Issue, we synthesize the information presented, according to case characteristics with respect to design, costs, environmental effectiveness, and other outcomes. PES programs often differ substantially one from the other. Some of the differences reflect adaptation of the basic concept to very different ecological, socioeconomic, or institutional conditions; others reflect poor design, due either to mistakes or to the need to accommodate political pressures. We find significant differences between user-financed PES programs, in which funding comes from the users of the ES being provided, and government-financed programs, in which funding comes from a third party. The user-financed programs in our sample were better targeted, more closely tailored to local conditions and needs, had better monitoring and a greater willingness to enforce conditionality, and had far fewer confounding side objectives than government-financed programs. We finish by outlining some perspectives on how both user- and government-financed PES programs could be made more effective and cost-efficient.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eccb5ee0969e8df475a0519b4dfa7280b405b9c0

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Citations in the corpus

Redefining payments for environmental services (2012, background): “It is worth noting that the presence of often high transaction costs, and their limiting effect on the capacity of the end users of ES to initiate PES schemes, has also been recognized within the ENVEP (Engel et al., 2008; Wunder et al., 2008).”
Efficiency of Payments for Environmental Services: Equity and additionality in a case study from a Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico (2011, methodology): “On one hand PES have been frequently used as a poverty alleviation tool, mainly when governments stand as service buyers (Kemkes et al., 2010; Pagiola, 2005; Wunder et al., 2008).”
Payments for environmental services as neoliberal market-based forest conservation in Vietnam: Panacea or problem? (2012, background): “Although PES schemes have been expanding globally, many questions remain about how effective and efficient they can be in achieving dual goals of conservation and development, given that they were originally not proposed for poverty alleviation alone (Wunder et al., 2008).”
Reconnecting to the Biosphere (2011, background): “…and Biodiversity study (TEEB 2011), The Natural Capital project (Kareiva et al. 2011), diverse approaches of payments for ecosystem services (Wunder et al. 2008), green accounting and inclusive wealth (e.g. Mäler et al. 2008), corporate ecosystem services reviews (e.g. Hanson et al. 2008)…”
Only One Tree from Each Seed? Environmental Effectiveness and Poverty Alleviation in Mexico's Payments for Ecosystem Services Program (2015, methodology): “Satellite image analysis and/or ground visits are used to randomly verify forest cover on enrolled parcels (Muñoz-Piña et al. 2008, Wunder, Engel, and Pagiola 2008).2 If CONAFOR finds deforestation due to intentional changes such as logging or conversion to agriculture or pasture, these parcels are…”
Global Biodiversity Conservation and the Alleviation of Poverty (2012, background): “Other studies, using different criteria, have shown substantial differences in the correlation between ecosystem services and conservation priorities (Turner et al. 2007, Naidoo et al. 2008), in part because of trade-offs among different services.”
Economic valuation and the commodification of ecosystem services (2011, background): “The widespread expansion of PES as integrated development and conservation scheme, however, dates fundamentally from the last two decades (Wunder et al., 2008).”
An institutional analysis of payments for environmental services (2010, background): “In their review of various PES systems, Wunder et al. (2008) distinguishes between user- and government-financed programs.”
Protected areas, conservation and tourism – financing the sustainable dream (2014, background): “Third, non-compliance must be sanctioned (Wunder et al., 2008).”
Direct conservation payments in the Brazilian Amazon: Scope and equity implications (2010, background): “Which scenario is most likely to be adopted in practice? Many existing payment schemes, such as Costa Rica's, Ecuador's and Mexico's national PES programs use fixed or quasi-fixed per-hectare rates, for their administrative ease and seeming equity (Wunder et al., 2008).”
Payments for Environmental Services: Evolution Toward Efficient and Fair Incentives for Multifunctional Landscapes (2012, background): “Much of the literature on PES focuses on identifying the payment level needed to change land use (46), targeting land users, structuring payments and contracts (25), creating effective public-sector and private-sector arrangements (47), and designing public policy (48).”
Payments for Ecosystem Services: Rife With Problems and Potential—For Transformation Towards Sustainability (2017, background): “A fourth kind of solution are environmental incentive programs, including payments for ecosystem services (PES), which involve users of ecosystem services (ES) paying for actions that protect those services (Wunder et al., 2008).”