International Payments For Ecosystem Services Research Articles

Book review: Joshua Bishop and Chloe Hill (eds), Global Biodiversity Finance: The Case for International Payments for Ecosystem Services (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham 2014) 208 pp

"Book review: Joshua Bishop and Chloe Hill (eds), Global Biodiversity Finance: The Case for International Payments for Ecosystem Services (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham 2014) 208pp." published on Sep 2016 by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

A ranking of net national contributions to climate change mitigation through tropical forest conservation

Deforestation in tropical regions causes 15% of global anthropogenic carbon emissions and reduces the mitigation potential of carbon sequestration services. A global market failure occurs as the value of many ecosystem services provided by forests is not recognised by the markets. Identifying the contribution of individual countries to tropical carbon stocks and sequestration might help identify responsibilities and facilitate debate towards the correction of the market failure through international payments for ecosystem services. We compare and rank tropical countries' contributions by estimating carbon sequestration services vs. emissions disservices. The annual value of tropical carbon sequestration services in 2010 from 88 tropical countries was estimated to range from $2.8 to $30.7 billion, using market and social prices of carbon respectively. Democratic Republic of Congo, India and Sudan contribute the highest net carbon sequestration, whereas Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia are the highest net emitters.

Intellectual mercantilism and franchise equity: A critical study of the ecological political economy of international payments for ecosystem services

This text addresses the ecological political economy of international payment for ecosystem services (IPES). Taking the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) as a case in point, it asks: in what ways may IPES schemes impinge upon the political and economic autonomy of local and indigenous peoples in tropical countries? It is argued that PES schemes like REDD should be assessed not only with respect to questions of distributional equity (does everyone have enough pie?) but also with respect to franchise equity (does everyone want pie?) and that failure to take questions of franchise equity into account in IPES schemes reflects a form or intellectual mercantilism, where wealth transfers from new economies to old ones are achieved by redefining existing locally available resources as internationally tradable speculative commodities. This proposition is considered through exploration of two illustrative cases – the REDD+ Social and Environmental Standards (REDD+ SES) and the Yasuní-ITT initiative – and through normative political theory recommendations building on Dryzek and Stevenson's discussion of deliberative systems, regarding how it might be possible to ensure franchise equity within REDD+ in particular and within global environmental governance, more generally.

Seeing REDD: Reducing Emissions and Conserving Biodiversity by Avoiding Deforestation

Protection of existing forests through Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)—a system of providing incentives for reduced deforestation—has the potential to deliver both climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation benefits. This article explores how these complementary environmental goals can be supported by international payments for ecosystem services (IPES) via the emerging global carbon market. REDD, through an IPES framework, offers an opportunity to “bundle” payments for reduced emissions with payments for biodiversity conservation in order to allow for cost-sharing between the multiple beneficiaries of REDD. The article outlines two potential cost-sharing arrangements between carbon investors financing reduced emissions and the beneficiaries of biodiversity conservation provided by REDD. One scheme combines finances from general biodiversity beneficiaries as a whole with carbon investments in REDD through a global “fund”; a second scheme matches payments from specific biodiversity beneficiaries with investments in REDD through a payment “partnership” between both groups. Each scheme falls on either end of a spectrum of opportunities for bundling payments for different environmental benefits into one investment in REDD. The discussion is intended to incite further dialogue on potential systems for implementing the emerging concept of bundling payments for ecosystem services.

The policy challenges for green economy and sustainable economic development

AbstractGreen growth, the promotion of energy efficiency and clean energy technologies and sustainable development are frequently viewed as complementary goals by international policymakers. This paper argues that green growth will not ensure sustainable economic development as long as global ecosystem degradation and loss means that the world continues to face worsening problems of ecological scarcity — the loss of myriad benefits, or “services”, as these systems are exploited for human use and activity. Overcoming this problem requires addressing further sustainability and funding challenges. The sustainability challenge is to overcome a vast array of market, policy and institutional failures that prevents recognition of the economic significance of this scarcity. The funding challenge is to bridge the shortfall between the global benefits that humankind receives from ecosystems and what we are willing to pay to maintain and conserve them. Improving economic and scientific analysis of ecological scarcity, valuing the loss in benefits, and translating the implications into policy are the key steps for addressing the sustainability challenge. Exploring and implementing a range of innovative financing mechanisms, from international payments for ecosystem services to financial and currency transactions taxes to international financing facilities are possibilities for alleviating the funding challenge.

World Heritage Sites and the Integration of Biodiversity into an International PES Framework

With various payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs and pilot projects underway around the world, the need for institutional support for scaling-up PES to international and global levels is becoming increasingly significant. However, in such a new and fast-growing field, there remain important challenges on both the supply and demand sides that need to be overcome. An overview of the ongoing discussion on International Payments for Ecosystem Services (IPES) provides the background necessary for highlighting the conceptual, economic, geographic, and social hurdles that are impeding the development of large-scale PES mechanisms. With particular emphasis on biodiversity conservation, the existing willingness to pay for the preservation of critical ecosystem services will be at the heart of future work on developing IPES. By identifying the fundamental challenges impeding the development of IPES, the opportunity presented by using the World Heritage Convention (WHC) as a model upon which to base future efforts will be explored. The capacity that the WHC model has for tapping into a greater demand and for clearing up the difficulties in adequately “packaging” a biodiversity-based supply of ecosystem services will be offered as the basis for the argumentation.

Payments for Ecosystem Services: A New Way of Conserving Biodiversity in Forests

The concept of payments for ecosystem services (PES) is probably the most promising innovation in conservation since Rio 1992, slowly but certainly to expand in the tropics. In a global context of stagnating or even decreasing public funding for biodiversity conservation, PES have the potential both to raise some new funds, and to absorb more efficiently money previously spent otherwise. The most novel and persuasive feature of PES lies in its “business-like” conditional payment form, which differs from traditional conservation projects. The most promising entry point for international PES transfers for biodiversity interests seems to be to piggyback on the currently revived debate on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). The novel idea here would be to make agreements at the nation-state level, either bilaterally or multilaterally, and either within or outside the Kyoto framework. However, to take advantage of this opportunity, biodiversity conservation and forest stakeholders would need to be more proactive in the REDD debate than we have seen so far.