The effect of the logging moratorium on tree resources in Kenya: the case of trees on farms and private forests in Ol’Jororok, Nyandarua County

Should we pay, and to whom, for biodiversity enhancement in private forests? An empirical study of attitudes towards payments for forest ecosystem services in Poland

Policies and Management Practices for Sustainable Oil Palm - Evidence from Indonesia

Payments for forest-based ecosystem services in the United States: Magnitudes and trends

We present the first detailed assessment of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program involving quilombola communities—the PES Juçara—designed to promote conservation and restoration of the Juçara palm. Using semi-structured interviews and content analysis, we examined participants’ perceptions of the program, focusing on governance structures, community involvement, and socio-environmental outcomes. Our results show that participants’ strong connection to the Juçara palm and traditional local knowledge are key to their engagement in conservation activities. Reported benefits include improved water security, habitat recovery, and opportunities for sustainable income from the legal sale of Juçara seeds and pulp. Personal and social benefits, including training, property improvements, and youth retention in rural areas, were also observed. Trust among communities, program managers, and environmental monitors—many of whom are locals—was identified as essential for the program’s success. Our study emphasizes the importance of tailoring PES initiatives to the socio-ecological contexts of traditional communities. By incorporating local knowledge and cultural values, PES programs can support biodiversity conservation, address socio-environmental issues, and promote long-term sustainability in culturally rich landscapes.

Exploring the policy and institutional context of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme for mangroves in southwestern Madagascar

Environmental sustainability relies on the adequate financing of biodiversity conservation—increasingly from the private sector. Meanwhile, corporate sustainability relies on the effective management of natural capital and ecosystem services used in production. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) offers an important practical mechanism for addressing these issues. However, the uptake of corporate-financed PES has been underwhelming, implying that companies may face institutional and motivational challenges to participate in PES. This article presents an assessment framework to determine the conduciveness of PES to real-world corporate environmental strategies and actions, be they (a) voluntary or compliance-based, (b) reactive or proactive, (c) requiring low or high amounts of data, (d) seeking a direct or indirect return on investment (ROI), (e) conducted proximal to or far from the operation site, (f) short-term or long-term, and (g) utilising internal or external resources. Interview data elicited from public, private, and civil sector actors in Thailand and the Philippines highlights key barriers to corporate-financed PES. Results imply companies may be: (1) hesitant to get involved with unknown or uncertain concepts such as ecosystem services; (2) reluctant to fund the technical studies and repeat payments that PES requires; (3) disinterested in direct ROI—instead content with philanthropic projects that can boost public relations; and (4) bound by protocols that restrict the spatial and temporal scales at which PES can operate. To overcome these challenges, policy makers could devise reputational and economic incentives, and incorporate ecosystem services into existing institutions such as environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and ISO 14001. Meanwhile, PES practitioners (government agencies and NGOs) should use quick and simple metrics to quantify ecosystem services, and tolerate buyer willingness-to-pay. Increasing corporate ecosystem service demand, and participation in PES, will likely require firm-level institutional change, and business strategies to improve supply chain management and mitigate the negative effects of environmental and climate change.

Although nature-based tourism is increasingly recognized in forest strategies, economic incentives for private landowners supporting the production of amenity values are largely lacking. This study focused on possibilities to enhance the scenic and recreational values of private forests for nature-based tourism in Finland. More specifically, we studied forest owners’ attitudes towards – and willingness to participate in – a Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) initiative called Landscape and Recreation Value Trade. We also investigated the acceptability of forest management alternatives sustaining landscape qualities, the relative importance of different features of Landscape and Recreation Value Trade for landowners, and the magnitude of overall compensation claims of alternative Landscape and Recreation Value Trade models. A choice experiment survey was conducted in Kuusamo, a popular nature-based tourism destination, located in northeastern Finland. The results show that several forest owners were interested in the suggested scheme if economic losses were to be compensated. The landowners’ preferences for Landscape and Recreation Value Trade were somewhat heterogeneous, suggesting that private forest owners in Kuusamo have rather diverse motivations and objectives for their ownership. Owners who stated to have scenic landscapes on their land, and those living outside Kuusamo area, were more willing to join in the suggested mechanism. In general, landowners’ willingness to participate was strongly dependent on the amount of compensation as well as on other terms of the contract, such as the duration and severity of harvesting restrictions. The largest marginal compensation claims were related to long contract durations and the stringent “no harvesting at all” restriction. Given the heterogeneity in landowners’ preferences, a Landscape and Recreation Value Trade model, offering flexibility to join the system, is needed to attract landowners of forests in hotspot locations for tourism that would help in designing a cost-efficient model for practical application.

Abstract. Forest harvesting is one of the anthropogenic activities that most significantly affect the carbon budget of forests. However, the absence of explicit spatial information on harvested carbon poses a huge challenge in assessing forest-harvesting impacts, as well as the forest carbon budget. This study utilized provincial-level statistical data on wood harvest, the tree cover loss (TCL) dataset, and a satellite-based vegetation index to develop a Long-term harvEst and Allocation of Forest Biomass (LEAF) dataset. The aim was to provide the spatial location of forest harvesting with a spatial resolution of 30 m and to quantify the post-harvest carbon dynamics. The validations against the surveyed forest harvesting in 133 cities and counties indicated a good performance of the LEAF dataset in capturing the spatial variation of harvested carbon, with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.83 between the identified and surveyed harvested carbon. The linear regression slope was up to 0.99. Averaged from 2003 to 2018, forest harvesting removed 68.3 ± 9.3 Mt C yr−1, of which more than 80 % was from selective logging. Of the harvested carbon, 19.6 ± 4.0 %, 2.1 ± 1.1 %, 35.5 ± 12.6 % 6.2 ± 0.3 %, 17.5 ± 0.9 %, and 19.1 ± 9.8 % entered the fuelwood, paper and paperboard, wood-based panels, solid wooden furniture, structural constructions, and residue pools, respectively. Direct combustion of fuelwood was the primary source of carbon emissions after wood harvest. However, carbon can be stored in wood products for a long time, and by 2100, almost 40 % of the carbon harvested during the study period will still be retained. This dataset is expected to provide a foundation and reference for estimating the forestry and national carbon budgets. The 30 m × 30 m harvested-carbon dataset from forests in China can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23641164.v2 (Wang et al., 2023).

In this study, we illustrate some of the most common challenges and pitfalls in payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme design, through Finland's METSO program, a major forest-based PES policy in the European Union. We use four fundamental PES design concepts: conditionality, permanence, administrative targeting, and impact on social motivations. We find that METSO has primarily managed to avoid common design pitfalls. However, we identify some of the drawbacks of using timber volume as an ecosystem proxy for the conditions of payment. We then broaden our analysis with two issues that are novel in the literature: implications of achieving conservations targets such as the European Union Biodiversity Strategy 2030 through a private land conservation scheme such as METSO and implications of warming climate on the design of forest-based PES schemes. These issues call attention to the design of future policy instruments. Finally, we propose recommendations to policymakers on PES design.

Private forests have the potential to mitigate biodiversity loss and improve community livelihoods. However, information on the socio-ecological factors that drive their establishment and long-term management are limited. This study aimed to narrow this gap by assessing the potential of privately-owned forests in conserving biodiversity and supporting the livelihoods of communities in northern Burkina Faso. Floristic data were collected within 26 plots (900 m2 each) equally distributed between private Gourga forest, established in 1980) and its adjacent communal areas. Sixty-three (63) private landowners were interviewed in order to underpin their motivations and associated traditional knowledge and a stakeholder’s workshop was conducted to develop conservation models for private forests and participatory implementation roadmap. Findings revealed that species richness was 132 in the Gourga forest and 85 in the communal areas, highlighting the importance of private forest in species conservation. Local communities recognized the provisioning (36.46%), regulating (28.46%) and supporting (22.48%) of ecosystem services provided by the Gourga forest as motivating factors. The main barriers to their establishment and management include lack of financial resources (35%), scarce lands (26%) and human pressures (8%). The implementation of private forests will need to be supported by the enactment of a secure land tenure policy, as well as payment for ecosystem services (PES) policies, incentivizing locals. We suggest decision makers mainstream privately-owned lands into national conservation strategies and design incentives policies to motivate local communities’ engagement.

Market-based approaches to environmental management, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES), have attracted unprecedented attention during the past decade. In this article, we review 26 case studies on PES from 11 countries in Asia and Latin America to help improve the understanding of the factors affecting PES schemes at the local level. We assess outcomes of the PES interventions in relation to four outcomes: equity, participation, livelihood, and environmental sustainability. Although we consider economic efficiency of these schemes to be crucial for informing policy debates, assessing it was not under the scope of this review. Our analysis shows the importance of property rights and tenure security, transaction costs, household and community characteristics, effective communication about the intervention, and the availability of PES-related information with regard to the sustainability of ecosystem service markets. The review suggests that PES schemes could target improvements in more than one outcome dimension. Focusing on the above five areas can lead to the continued provision of ecosystem services and improvements of the well-being of local inhabitants.

Everything Stays the Same while Everything Changes

Changes in tree cover and impervious surfaces have been observed across many cities in the United States over the past 70 years. Many municipalities are implementing tree planting programs in efforts to increase tree cover. A detailed understanding of historical changes in land cover can inform urban forest management. I applied a convolutional neural network image segmentation approach to historical aerial imagery to delineate changes in land cover in 1957, 1974, and 2017 in Utica, New York, a small, postindustrial city. The model predicted tree, pavement, and building land cover in each year with overall accuracies ranging from 82-87%. From 1957 to 2017, tree cover declined in many areas and impervious surface cover (buildings and pavement) increased. Tree cover gains largely occurred in uninhabited, natural areas; whereas, the greatest declines in tree coverage occurred in many residential areas following the start of the urban renewal efforts in 1957. Current tree planting efforts targeted at homeowners could drive disparities in future tree cover since several areas of Utica with low tree have a high proportion of renter occupied homes and a low median household income. Convolutional Neural Network approaches for image segmentation of aerial imagery are a helpful tool in understanding patterns in changes in tree and impervious surfaces. A better understanding of the legacies of historical policies and neighborhood-scale changes in land cover can assist in highlighting priorities for urban forest management and justice-oriented urban forestry approaches to urban tree planting.

O pagamento por serviços ambientais (PSA) é uma ferramenta que vem sendo adotada com vistas a estimular a adoção, por parte dos produtores rurais, de ações que possam contribuir para a recuperação e a preservação ambientais por meio da adesão voluntária em programas de conservação. Uma das experiências de PSA já implantadas no Brasil é o Programa Produtor de Água e Floresta (PAF) da cidade de Rio Claro/RJ, área estratégica para o fornecimento de água para a cidade do Rio de Janeiro e região metropolitana. Por meio do PAF, produtores rurais são remunerados financeiramente pela “oferta” de serviços ambientais. Sendo um programa de adesão voluntária, faz-se necessário o estudo de variáveis que possam contribuir para um maior número de adesões e a efetividade de seus resultados. Com vistas a contribuir para a avaliação e validação do mesmo, este estudo tem como objetivo discutir de que maneira o perfil socioeconômico, a percepção quanto à sustentabilidade ambiental e serviços ecossistêmicos e a consciência ambiental dos produtores que integram o PAF determinaram sua adesão. Pretende-se ainda avaliar, por meio da percepção dos mesmos, a implantação do programa e seus resultados. Para tanto, foram aplicadas entrevistas semiestruturadas a 29 dos 59 produtores integrantes. Os resultados indicam que a maioria dos produtores que aderiu ao projeto já adotava práticas de conservação e optou em participar pela consciência ambiental que já tinham. Isso mostra a necessidade de se estimular proprietários que ainda não sejam adeptos de tais práticas a integrar o projeto, elevando seu ganho marginal. Segundo os produtores, os valores pagos são baixos e acabam por não estimular a adesão de novos integrantes. Observa-se ainda que o grupo considerado percebe o meio ambiente como determinante para o seu bem-estar, de sua família e de outras espécies, dando importância, portanto, aos serviços ecossistêmicos que os afetam direta ou indiretamente.

Can short-term payments for ecosystem services deliver long-term tree cover change?