Do payments for forest ecosystem services generate double dividends? An integrated impact assessment of Vietnam's PES program.

Thu-Ha Dang Phan,Long Phi Hoang,Roy Brouwer,Marc David Davidson,Runguo Zang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0200881

Abstract

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) often serve multiple objectives, such as carbon emission reduction and poverty alleviation. However, the effectiveness of PES as an instrument to achieve these multiple objectives, in particular in a conservation-development context, is often questioned. This study adds to the very limited empirical evidence base and investigates to what extent Vietnam’s move to PES has helped protect forest ecosystems and improve local livelihoods and income inequality. We zoom in on Lam Dong province, where PES was first introduced in Vietnam in 2009. Changes in forest cover are analysed using satellite images over a period of 15 years (2000–2014). Socio-economic impacts are assessed based on rural household interviews with PES participants and non-participants as a control group over a period of 7 years (2008–2014). Our results show that PES contributes significantly to forest cover, the improvement of local livelihoods, and the reduction of income inequality.

Highlights

Ecosystems provide multiple benefits to humanity, ranging from provisioning services such as food and water to supporting and regulating services such as nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration [1]
This study focuses on the implementation of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) in Lam Dong province as one of the oldest PES schemes in Vietnam
Features of the households participating in the PFES program and the control group Our sample forms a fair reflection of the ethnic composition of farmers at district level, with 61% of the respondents (n = 185) belonging to the Kinh majority and the rest belonging to ethnic minorities such as K’Ho and Chu Ru

Summary

Introduction

Ecosystems provide multiple benefits to humanity, ranging from provisioning services such as food and water to supporting and regulating services such as nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration [1]. Since the 1990s the Vietnamese government has implemented several national forest programs, including payments for participating farmers, such as Program 327 in 1992 and Program 661 in 1998. The country’s PES policy tends to prioritize the involvement of poor and often ethnic-minority farmers [35, 37] This is not uncommon in this field [3, 16], and more importantly, the PES scheme meets the important conditionality criterion. The focus in this study is not on whether Vietnam’s PES scheme fully reflects the original definition of PES [14], but rather whether the payment scheme has contributed to local poverty alleviation and forest conservation

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Conclusion