Abstract
Assessing global tendencies and impacts of conditional payments for environmental services (PES) programs is challenging because of their heterogeneity, and scarcity of comparative studies. This meta-study systematizes 55 PES schemes worldwide in a quantitative database. Using categorical principal component analysis to highlight clustering patterns, we reconfirm frequently hypothesized differences between public and private PES schemes, but also identify diverging patterns between commercial and non-commercial private PES vis-à-vis their service focus, area size, and market orientation. When do these PES schemes likely achieve significant environmental additionality? Using binary logistical regression, we find additionality to be positively influenced by three theoretically recommended PES ‘best design’ features: spatial targeting, payment differentiation, and strong conditionality, alongside some contextual controls (activity paid for and implementation time elapsed). Our results thus stress the preeminence of customized design over operational characteristics when assessing what determines the outcomes of PES implementation.
Highlights
Payments for environmental services (PES) have become an increasingly popular tool for environmental management, supplementing policy tools that were previously widely focused on command-and-control measures
Our first interest is whether, as hypothesized in the PES literature, substantial differences exist between the characteristics of public vs. privately funded PES schemes [2,17]
In Africa, privately funded schemes clearly predominate (85%). Half of these private schemes are run by the private commercial sector, especially for eco-tourism and wildlife. Do sectors alternate their lead of PES schemes over time? For one fourth of our cases, this is the case
Summary
Payments for environmental services (PES) have become an increasingly popular tool for environmental management, supplementing policy tools that were previously widely focused on command-and-control measures. PES feature direct, conditional contracts to achieve a negotiated environmental outcome between a provider and a user of environmental services [1]. The underlying rationale is that if the service user’s gain from pro-environmental action is sufficiently large, there may be a good case for compensating the service-providing landowners for choosing a profit-wise second-best, but environmentally more benign resource use. This type of “Coasean deal” implies using a positive economic incentive to enhance a positive
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