Payments For Ecosystem Services Research Articles

Considering Farmers’ Heterogeneity to Payment Ecosystem Services Participation: A Choice Experiment and Agent-Based Model Analysis in Xin’an River Basin, China

The concept of watershed ecological compensation is one payment for ecosystem services (PES) program that incentivizes stakeholders undertake environmental conservation activities that improve the provision of ecosystem services. Defining the heterogeneity of farmers’ willingness to participate in watershed ecological compensation is critically important for fully understanding stakeholders’ demands. Accordingly, we designed a choice experiment survey to analyze the heterogeneity of policy preferences and willingness to receive compensation between upstream and midstream farmers in Xin’an River basin, China. Moreover, we simulated the impact of farmers’ social capitals’ heterogeneity with an agent-based model. The results show that there are significant differences in the preferences of agricultural waste recycling rate and agricultural water quality between farmers in the upstream and midstream. The total willingness of farmers in the upstream and midstream to participate in ecological compensation are RMB 149.88 (USD 22.54)/month and RMB 57.40 yuan (USD 8.63)/month, respectively. Social network size has a negative effect on farmers’ willingness to participate the programs. Our findings suggest that the characteristics of farmers’ influence their willingness to participate in the PES program. The results of this research can be used to improve PES management policies in the future, as well as to support sustainable environmental development and rural revitalization.

Food, Energy and Water Nexus: An Urban Living Laboratory Development for Sustainable Systems Transition

From a climate change perspective, the governance of natural common-pool resources—the commons—is a key point in the challenge of transitioning to sustainability. This paper presents the main strategic advances of the São Paulo Urban Living Laboratory (ULL) regarding Food, Energy and Water (FEW Nexus) analysis and modelling at the border of a high biodiverse forest in a peri-urban region in southeast Brazil. It is a replicable and scalable method concerning FEW governance. The FEW Nexus is an analytical guide to actions that will enable a colossal set of innovative processes that the transition to sustainability presupposes. Sustainable governance of the FEW dimensions, seen as an innovation-based process, is approached by a decision making tool to understand the past and future dynamics of the system. The governance framework is based on a multi-criteria and multi-attribute set of sustainability-relevant factors used as indicators to model complex system dynamics (SD) and the stakeholders’ future expectations through a Delphi approach. Based on the three main dimensions of the Ecosystem Services Approach—Physical and Material Conditions, Attributes of Communities, and Rules-in-Use—the tool comprises thirteen specific sustainability indicators such as water and carbon footprints, land use social development, payment for ecosystem services, and land use gain indices. Its development was designed to generate a long-term network of socioenvironmental stakeholders’ decision making processes and collective learning about a higher level of sustainable systems. System Dynamics modelling demonstrates the associations between sustainability indicators and the impacts of payment for ecosystem services on the land use social development index, or on the trophic state index. The Delphi foresight approach, using the Promethee-Gaia method, allows us to understand the positions of multiple agents regarding the transition process. In this context, decision making tools can be very useful and effective in answering the “how to” questions of ULLs and paving the way for transition, providing collective planning and decision support frameworks for sustainability transition management.

Valuing trans-disciplinarity: Forum Theatre in Tabasco and Chiapas, Mexico

ABSTRACT This article intervenes in the persistent hierarchy of epistemological worth that produces scientific knowledge as meaningful, and knowledge from arts or humanities as marginal, or illustrative. The specific trans-disciplinary project we discuss brings together environmental social sciences with performance-based Forum Theatre methods to explore ‘value’ as understood in communities in Tabasco and Chiapas, Mexico in relation to Payment for Ecosystem Services. Trans-disciplinary collaborations that seek to incorporate ‘novel’ methods to engage participants differently might better reflect the dynamic, emergent, and often shifting nature of beliefs, attitudes and values.

Fostering Ecosystem Services for Mitigating Climate Change and Sustaining Food Production Systems in Developing Economies

Among the greatest challenges of the 21st century is maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services (ESs) to sustainably feed the projected 9–10 billion people of the world by 2050. Presently, incentives to preserve ESs in developing economies are limited, implying that there are no direct market mechanisms to signal the scarcity or degradation of a service until it fails. ESs are public goods with no direct owners. Hence, payment for ecosystem services (PES) is a voluntary transaction that aims at filling this gap by creating a new market for services, including carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, watershed protection and landscape values. Emerging PES has challenged the culture of natural resource depletion without consideration of sustainability. Sustainability is core of climate change vortex, and developing economies are worst hit. Food insecurity and failing agricultural systems will further endanger the fragile balance of life in the region. Until the right approaches to de-risking ecosystem sustainability emerge, the perpetrators of climate change will keep getting away with the harmful effects to our corporate existence. This treatise critically examined how ESs can foster sustainable food production given their holistic inter-relatedness to the subject of climate change mitigation, in the light of global development goals.

Assessment of ecosystem services of the north-western part of the Black sea: state, problems and prospects

Formulation of the problem. Ecosystem services are resources and benefits that modern humanity can receive from the nature. It is the material benefit from abiogenic and biogenic components of various natural ecosystems. There were not large-scale studies according of evaluation ecosystem services in the Ukrainian water area of the Black Sea before, it is the actual environmental and socio-economic problem. Review of previous publications. The main approach to evaluating the state of ecosystems in the EU countries based on the choice of load indicators on the ecosystems and their mapping. Multi-level approach implies the next steps: detection and evaluation of services (indicators, borders, quantitative assessment); calculations and a demonstration of value (assessment in physical units and money equivalent); court fixation and solutions (tools - subsidies, taxes, payments for ecosystem services, etc.). Purpose. The man goal of the paper is analysis and estimation of modern state of ecosystem services, methods and perspectives of their using. Methods. The methodological basis of the study is the critical analysis of existing approaches to the assessment of ecosystem services of marine and coastal ecosystems. During the preparing of the paper published data had been used, as well as the materials of personal research on various aspects of the evaluation of ecosystem services of the Northwestern part of the Black Sea. Results. Marine and coastal ecosystems play a critical role in providing key services such as food supply, sequestration of anthropogenic carbon, waste management, biological regulation and the provision of habitat for hydrobionts. However, along with other ecosystems, today they are under serious anthropogenic pressure. Some types of anthropogenic activities have a very negative effect to the condition of natural ecosystems and to receive of their services. The ecosystems of the Northwestern part of the Black Sea are the living place of numerous organisms. These ecosystems consist on supporting services. Important regulatory services provide wetlands protected by the Ramsar Convention. The most intense cycle of nutrient substances occurs in the river’s mouth areas. The marine environment absorbs, disinfects and processes all sorts of waste production and consumption. Conclusions. Take into account of the limited information of the of ecosystem services under the Northwestern part of the Black Sea, the first task is to determine the needs of local populations for these services, collection and generalization of information about their condition, coordination of their assessment methods for the region and the evaluation itself.

Achieving Groundwater Governance: Ostrom's Design Principles and Payments for Ecosystem Services Approaches

AbstractGroundwater is a largely unseen common pool resource. Yet, driven by strong economic incentives, whether or not encouraged by existing policies, and the difficulty to exclude others, groundwater users are competing with each other to extract as much as possible, with devastating consequences for its sustainability. The challenges faced for sustainably managing such common pool resources, on which people have established de facto individual rights, are manifold. However, creating a market for trades of some kind in ecosystem services associated with groundwater could actually enhance the protection of this critical resource on the basis that protection can benefit individual groundwater users economically as well as provide a broader public good. This article uses Elinor Ostrom's design principles as an analytical tool to examine how market-based approaches such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) fit with some of the governance models that could be used to protect and enhance groundwater as a common pool resource. It argues that while there are specific design challenges to be overcome, PES as an institutional tool can align with Ostrom's ideas for the governance of groundwater.

Responses of grazing households to different levels of payments for ecosystem services

ABSTRACT Introduction Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs have been implemented globally to protect ecosystems while securing the well-being of affected people. Reasonable payment standards are key to successful PES programs. Although some approaches are available for determining payment standards, few studies have applied them for grassland conservation with location indicators and socioeconomic contexts properly considered. Methods Using China’s first pilot Grassland Ecological Compensation Policy (GECP) as an example, we analyzed the effects of payment levels, other natural and socioeconomic factors on herders’ willingness to participate in the GECP in Damao County in Inner Mongolia where grassland degradation is happening at an alarming rate due to overgrazing and cropland expansion. Outcomes Our results show that households with lower herding income, older age, higher education, larger grassland areas, and worse social relationships are more inclined to participate in the GECP. Conservation payment level, as well as natural and socioeconomic contextual factors, significantly affect the response of herdsmen, and a reasonable grassland payment standard with a 95% policy compliance rate should be 8.8 yuan mu−1. Discussion and Conclusion Our findings can inform governments to develop effective PES programs to balance the need of human well-being improvement and grassland conservation in China and beyond.

Integrating blue: How do we make nationally determined contributions work for both blue carbon and local coastal communities?

Blue Carbon Ecosystems (BCEs) help mitigate and adapt to climate change but their integration into policy, such as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), remains underdeveloped. Most BCE conservation requires community engagement, hence community-scale projects must be nested within the implementation of NDCs without compromising livelihoods or social justice. Thirty-three experts, drawn from academia, project development and policy, each developed ten key questions for consideration on how to achieve this. These questions were distilled into ten themes, ranked in order of importance, giving three broad categories of people, policy & finance, and science & technology. Critical considerations for success include the need for genuine participation by communities, inclusive project governance, integration of local work into national policies and practices, sustaining livelihoods and income (for example through the voluntary carbon market and/or national Payment for Ecosystem Services and other types of financial compensation schemes) and simplification of carbon accounting and verification methodologies to lower barriers to entry.

The Influence of Long-Term Wildlife Monitoring on Policy Development to Conserve Biodiversity in Uganda

The influence of Long-term Wildlife Monitoring on policy to conserve biodiversity in Uganda was explored. The study particularly sought to evaluate the indicators monitored, policies formulated, new conservation initiatives developed, and also suggest innovative conservation policy areas with guidance of the long-term wildlife monitoring program. The study was conducted through a survey from May to October 2019 using document review, Key Informant Interviews, semi-structured questionnaires, and Geographical Information System/remote sensing. The study established that Long-term Wildlife Monitoring contributes to development of conservation policies. The policies developed include the merger of Uganda National Parks and the Game Department, integration of interests of local communities in the wildlife legislation, shift from protectionism to conservation, and elevation of conservation status of protected areas. The program guides adoption of conservation initiatives mainly adaptive management, park boundary demarcation and management, restocking of wildlife protected areas, and landscape approach to management of wildlife resources. The study identified innovative conservation policy areas namely ecosystem health, community involvement in wildlife monitoring, management of wildlife outside protected areas, management of wildlife corridors, and Payment for Ecosystem Services that should be integrated into the wildlife policy and legal framework. The study concludes that wildlife monitoring program guides development of conservation policies, conservation initiatives, and innovative conservation policy areas to conserve biodiversity. Further research should investigate ecosystem health to assess the condition of the wildlife protected areas. Keywords: Conservation, indicators, policies, protected areas, wildlife monitoring DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/13-10-04 Publication date: May 31 st 2022

Enforcement and inequality in collective PES to reduce tropical deforestation: Effectiveness, efficiency and equity implications

Collective Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), where forest users receive compensation conditional on group rather than individual performance, are an increasingly used policy instrument to reduce tropical deforestation. However, implementing effective, (cost) efficient and equitable (3E) collective PES is challenging because individuals have an incentive to free ride on others’ conservation actions. Few comparative studies exist on how different enforcement strategies can improve collective PES performance. We conducted a framed field experiment in Brazil, Indonesia and Peru to evaluate how three different strategies to contain the local free-rider problem perform in terms of the 3Es: (i) Public monitoring of individual deforestation, (ii) internal, peer-to-peer sanctions (Community enforcement) and (iii) external sanctions (Government enforcement). We also examined how inequality in wealth, framed as differences in deforestation capacity, affects policy performance. We find that introducing individual level sanctions can improve the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of collective PES, but there is no silver bullet that consistently improves all 3Es across country sites. Public monitoring reduced deforestation and improved the equity of the program in sites with stronger history of collective action. External sanctions provided the strongest and most robust improvement in the 3Es. While internal, peer enforcement can significantly reduce free riding, it does not improve the program’s efficiency, and thus participants’ earnings. The sanctioning mechanisms failed to systematically improve the equitable distribution of benefits due to the ineffectiveness of punishments to target the largest free-riders. Inequality in wealth increased group deforestation and reduced the efficiency of Community enforcement in Indonesia but had no effect in the other two country sites. Factors explaining differences across country sites include the history of collective action and land tenure systems.

Contradictory distributive principles and land tenure govern benefit-sharing of payments for ecosystem services (PES) in Chiapas, Mexico

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are incentive-based instruments that provide conditional economic incentives for natural resources management. Research has shown that when economic incentives are parachuted into rural communities, participation and benefits are collectively negotiated and shared. However, we know little about how benefit-sharing evolves over time in community-based PES. To address this gap, we examine distributional justice in four communities of the state of Chiapas, Mexico, which participate in a PES programme, and we assess how local justice principles compare with the programme’s goals. Our analysis reveals patterns of both continuity and change in how communities share PES benefits, which reflect a suite of contradictory justice principles, including entitlement, merit, need, and equality. The studied communities distribute PES benefits by providing differentiated compensation to diverse groups of landholders via private cash payments, whilst also attending non-landed community members through public infrastructure investments. We show that benefit-sharing is strongly influenced by pre-existing land tenure features and associated norms, which in the study area include three different types of individual and common-property. Yet, we also show that communities continuously adjust benefit-sharing arrangements to navigate distributional challenges emerging from programme engagement. Overall, we provide novel insights on the evolution, diversity, and complexity of distributive justice in community-based PES and we advocate for a context-sensitive, nuanced, and dynamic account of justice in incentive-based conservation.

Getting Blended Finance to Where It’s Needed: The Case of CBNRM Enterprises in Southern Africa

Blended finance aims to unlock additional private finance for the sustainable development goals (SDGs), however, it has not yet reached the anticipated scale to deliver on SDG 15: Life on Land. So far, blended finance approaches have not been fully adapted to the context where conservation activities take place, for example on communal lands—a common tenure arrangement for conservation in southern Africa. This study identifies opportunities, barriers, and risks to up-scaling private finance for nature in the context of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in southern Africa. It considers the feasibility and desirability of relevant revenue streams towards achieving long-term financial sustainability in conservation landscapes, including sustainable wildlife economies and payment for ecosystem services (PES), and involving indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) particularly within CBNRM tenure arrangements. It concludes that a ‘CBNRM investment guarantee’ or similar would be transformational for hundreds of thousands of conservation enterprises and their beneficiaries regionally, but currently no such tailored de-risking mechanism exists.

The Policy Implications of the Dasgupta Review: Land Use Change and Biodiversity: Invited Paper for the Special Issue on "The Economics of Biodiversity: Building on the Dasgupta Review" in Environmental and Resource Economics.

The “Dasgupta Review” of the economics of biodiversity (Dasgupta 2021) identifies many factors that threaten the ecological sustainability of our economies. This article examines how two policy failures - the underpricing and underfunding of nature – influence global land use change and terrestrial biodiversity loss. If natural areas are priced too cheaply, then converting them to agriculture, forestry and other land uses is less costly than protecting or preserving habitats. Underfunding nature further reduces the incentives for conservation and restoration. The current global funding gap for biodiversity is just under $900 billion annually, and especially impacts developing countries. Ending the underpricing of natural landscape requires removing environmentally harmful subsidies and adopting policies that place an additional cost on the use of land and natural resources or on pollution. Overcoming the funding gap means expanding public and private sources of financing nature, particularly for poorer countries, such as biodiversity offsets, payments for ecosystem services, debt-for-nature swaps, green bonds, sustainable supply chains and international environmental agreements. Using the example of peatlands, the article shows how such a comprehensive global strategy can be built.

Eco-compensation in China: achievement, experience, and improvement.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) provide innovative solutions for global environmental governance. China, the largest developing country, always faces severe ecological and environmental problems. China created an eco-compensation mechanism that combines the PES mechanism with the government's standardized management, which has achieved remarkable results. Government-led, social participation, and market-oriented operation are its main characteristics. More importantly, the mechanism helps China achieve its anti-poverty goals. Part of its experiences has been transformed into formal institutions, i.e., farmland fallow and rotation policies. However, some problems have also plagued further development, such as the lack of environmental property rights, the single source of funds, and the shortage of standardized ecological value assessment technology. We suggest that it is necessary to improve the stability of China's eco-compensation mechanism. The achievement of China's eco-compensation mechanism provides helpful guidance for other developing countries. For example, it is enhancing the role of government administrative power and the flexibility of the system through the policy "sandbox," i.e., the policy pilot, encouraging the participation of multi-stakeholder groups, and so on. Last but most important, the policy and institutions must be closely integrated with the nation's state for it to be sustainable.

Green Energy and Water Resource Management: A Case Study of Fishery and Solar Power Symbiosis in Taiwan

Renewable energy development is a key pathway for mitigating climate change. The Taiwan government has been actively developing low carbon green energy with solar photovoltaic technology and wind power as their primary development projects. Cigu Taiwan provides an ideal research site to examine tradeoffs between ecological conservation, marine fisheries, and green power development, and the factors affect commitments to ecological conservation in the face of these tradeoffs. This research investigates the fishery and electricity symbiosis project in Cigu through a novel combination of the theory of planned behavior and the contingent valuation method to analyze the factors influencing the local residents’ behavioral intentions to safeguard ecological achievements in ecologically fragile areas through conservation trust funds. Analysis of survey responses from a convenience sample of 715 residents and resource users in the Cigu area reports that attitudes (ATT), subjective norms (SN), perceived behavioral control (PBC), environmental concern (EC), and environmental risk (ER) significantly influence the behavioral intention to pay eco-compensation fees; the local residents’ willingness to pay for the conservation trust funds was NTD 621.4/year (USD 21.9/year), and decreased to NTD 545.9/year (USD 19.2/year) after the implementation of fishery and electricity symbiosis. The discussion section argues that the drivers of ATT, SN, PBC, EC, and ER can be used by policy makers to direct local residents’ intentions and behavior toward conserving ecological achievements in fragile eco-environmental areas through payments for ecosystem services. Thus, this strategy can improve the sustainability of ecological and environmental restoration programs.

Soil carbon sequestration through regenerative agriculture in the U.S. state of Vermont

This study investigates the extent to which land use and management transitions on Vermont’s farmland could sequester atmospheric carbon in the soil. We weigh the sequestration potential of several types of regenerative agricultural practices against both business as usual and afforestation scenarios using the Rothamsted Carbon Model. We split the study area into 13 Ecoregions for a finer spatial scale of analysis, with key climate, soil, and land use data specified for each. Empirical soil laboratory data are used to initialize the model to mirror current conditions under each of three agricultural land uses (crops, hay, and pasture) in each Ecoregion. We consult experts as well as the literature to parameterize the anticipated effects of alternative agricultural management practices on soil carbon inputs. In the simulation runs, we find that all non-business-as-usual scenarios sequester carbon over time, with a higher rate of sequestration in the decades immediately after a land use or management change. Among the regenerative agriculture scenarios, conversion to rotational grazing offers the highest soil carbon sequestration potential, at 1,269 kt, or 5.3% above current stocks after ten years. Of all scenarios, afforestation of farmland to non-harvested forest stores the most soil carbon, increasing stocks by 6.5% after ten years, and continuing to sequester at a high rate many decades into the future. We discuss tradeoffs and policy implications, especially in the context of the 2020 Vermont Global Warming Solutions Act, and suggest that payments for ecosystem services for farmers sequestering carbon may have strategic value.

Participation, income growth and poverty alleviation in payments for ecosystem services: The case of China's Wolong Nature Reserve

Through the case of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) in China's Wolong Nature Reserve, this study investigates the effect of PES participation on income growth and the role of non-agricultural employment and education investment. In addition, this study also examines the differences in this effect caused by income inequality and land property inequality. By drawing on a large amount of literature that conceptualises poverty alleviation as one of the multiple goals of PES, this study opens up our view on the complex relationship between PES participation and income growth. The findings demonstrate that increased PES participation can promote income growth. In addition, PES participation in promoting income growth is more beneficial to small and medium farmers than large farmers. However, this promotion effect can also exacerbate economic inequality. Finally, PES participation in promoting income growth mainly depends on improving non-agricultural employment rather than increasing education investment.

Participatory assessment to define indicators for monitoring water-based payment of ecosystem services programs in Brazil

The cascade model is a commonly applied framework to evaluate ecosystem services provision, highlighting their benefits to society and assigning non-monetary and monetary values to these services. Adapting this model, we present a methodology to establish the most suitable indicators for monitoring Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs related to water resources in Brazil. Through a participatory process, a set of ecosystem functions indicators were assigned for each ecosystem service (ES) considered in the study. The indicators were then classified following these criteria: clarity, viability, sensitivity, and relevance. The indicators were organized by their final score according to each evaluated criterion. The results demonstrated that “clarity” and “relevance” criteria were those most important for the experts to choose an indicator. In general, we could also observe a preference for analytical and well-established indicators in the literature for all ES evaluated. The indicators list presented can support the PES program monitoring in Brazil. Additionally, the methodology developed can be easily applied in other areas and provide the definition of the most suitable indicators to monitor water-based PES in different Brazilian contexts.
 Keywords:cascade model, ecosystem functions, ecosystem service indicators, tropical areas.

“How can you put a price on the environment?” Farmer perspectives on stewardship and payment for ecosystem services

As agricultural conservation priorities evolve to address new complex social-ecological problems and emerging social priorities, new conservation incentive program participation and success can be enhanced by incorporating local stakeholder preferences into program design. Our research explores how farmers incorporate ecosystem services into management decisions, their willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem services programs, and factors beyond compensation level that would influence participation. We conducted three focus groups with 24 participants between January of 2019 and May of 2019 in Vermont. Our study revealed that a strong, intrinsic stewardship ethic motivates farmers to enhance ecosystem service provisioning from their farms, though financial pressures often limit decision-making. These results suggest that programs with sufficient levels of payment may attract participation, at least among some types of farmers, to enhance ecosystem services from farms in Vermont. However, farmers may be deterred from participating by perceived unfairness and distrust of the government based on previous experiences with regulations and conservation incentive structures. Farmers also expressed distrust of information about ecosystem services supply that conflicts with their perceptions of agroecosystem functioning, unless delivered by trusted individuals from the extension system. The delivery of context-specific information on how management changes impact ecosystem service performance from trusted sources could enhance farmers’ decisions, and would aptly complement payments. Additionally, farmers expressed a desire to see a program that both achieves additionality and rewards farms who have been stewards, goals that are potentially at odds. Our findings offer important insights for policy makers and program administrators who need to understand factors that will influence farmers’ willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem service programs and other conservation practice adoption initiatives, in Vermont and elsewhere.

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES): Its Potentials for the Management of Cabuaan Watershed in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines

The research was undertaken to assess the willingness of water users to engage in the PES scheme for the management of the Cabuaan watershed in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines. Data were gathered through personal interviews and field observations. The findings of the study revealed that the quality of water for drinking is already at the maximum limit of the standard requirement and that some of the respondents had experienced water-related diseases, especially during rainy seasons. Likewise, the volume of the water supply had decreased and decreases even more during summers resulting in inadequate supply. The respondents were aware and appreciated the role of the watershed in sustaining water services for the present and future generations to come. With these, they are willing to pay for the water service they were using to be used for the betterment of the watershed, despite their low income. Most of them were also willing to contribute through labor in any endeavor in the watershed. Their willingness to engage in the PES scheme was driven by their strong desire to have a continuous supply of water and for the improvement, and protection of the watershed where their water is coming from. On the strength of the foregoing findings, actions and interventions from concerned agencies are recommended to guide and assist the water users and the community as a whole for the conservation and proper management of the watershed.