Payments For Ecosystem Services Approach Research Articles

Economic Valuation of Conservation of Inholdings in Protected Areas for the Institution of Payments for Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem services, as public goods, are often undersupplied because private markets do not fully take into account the social cost of production. To alleviate the concern about this imbalance situation, payments for ecosystem services (PES) have emerged as a preferable alternative. While temples in Korea have owned a considerable part of the national parks, a PES approach can be used as a viable option to alleviate the conflicts among visitors, non-visitors, and temples. The purpose of this paper is to assess the economic values of ecosystem services provided by temple forests as a compensation mechanism. Using a contingent valuation method, an online survey was conducted with 1000 respondents. Study results showed that the economic benefits of the conservation of temple forests were estimated to be substantial, ranging from ₩5980 (US $5.42) to ₩7709 ($7.08) per household per year. The results also confirmed the effects of social factors such as individuals’ trust in the government’s environmental policies and importance on the conservation of temples’ cultural and religious values on the willingness to pay. With a growing interest in securing ecosystem services through a PES approach, estimating economic benefits of the conservation of inholdings in public protected areas will be a valuable piece of information as an important policy decision-making tool.

Can Payments for Ecosystem Services Improve the Management of Natura 2000 Sites? A Contribution to Explore Their Role in Italy

Financing protected areas is crucial for guaranteeing the flow of ecosystem services (ES) provided by natural and semi-natural ecosystems, which are the basis of human well-being. In the last two decades, together with traditional conservation tools, innovative instruments, such as PES (Payment for Ecosystem Services), have been proposed and implemented all over the world in order to improve management effectiveness in biodiversity conservation. In this paper we identified and categorized 33 PES case studies in 19 Natura 2000 sites developing the hypothesis that a PES approach may contribute to improving the effectiveness of conservation actions at different spatial and administrative levels. We found that in these areas, farmers and foresters often allow the maintenance of natural and semi-natural ecosystems through their economic activity. Through PES schemes their important role can be formally acknowledged, both in environmental and economic terms. PES schemes are also a tool for involving more stakeholders, particularly local companies, residents and tourists in conservation actions. So PES can actually improve Natura 2000 sites’ management and increase the availability of financial resources in favor of conservation actions. However, careful attention must to be paid to the supporting role of public authorities, generally crucial for the success of a PES.

The landscape of olive groves as a driver of the rural economy

This study evaluates how landscape changes made in order to improve the visual quality of olive groves may trigger first and second-order effects (FOEs and SOEs) on the rural economy. The choice experiment method is combined with the probability of visiting to estimate the marginal increase in recreational demand derived from the combination of three landscape elements: green cover, stone walls and woodland islets. The results suggest that the improvement of the aesthetic value of landscape (mainly through green covers and stone walls) creates a real, positive asset (due to its FOEs and SOEs) for the local economies in rural areas. The promotion of the recreational value of these areas to attract more visitors and so bring in more income could be a profitable policy, which could be implemented by hybridizing the current Agri-environmental scheme with a Payment for Ecosystem Services approach.

Pay-for-Performance Conservation Using SWAT Highlights Need for Field-Level Agricultural Conservation

Abstract. Pay-for-performance (PFP) is a relatively new approach to agricultural conservation that attaches an incentive payment to quantified reductions in nutrient runoff from a participating farm. Similar to a payment for ecosystem services approach, PFP lends itself to providing incentives for the most beneficial practices at the field level. To date, PFP conservation in the U.S. has only been applied in small pilot programs. Because monitoring conservation performance for each field enrolled in a program would be cost-prohibitive, field-level modeling can provide cost-effective estimates of anticipated improvements in nutrient runoff. We developed a PFP system that uses a unique application of one of the leading agricultural models, the USDA’s Soil and Water Assessment Tool, to evaluate the nutrient load reductions of potential farm practice changes based on field-level agronomic and management data. The initial phase of the project focused on simulating individual fields in the River Raisin watershed in southeastern Michigan. Here we present development of the modeling approach and results from the pilot year, 2015-2016. These results stress that (1) there is variability in practice effectiveness both within and between farms, and thus there is not one “best practice” for all farms, (2) conservation decisions are made most effectively at the scale of the farm field rather than the sub-watershed or watershed level, and (3) detailed, field-level management information is needed to accurately model and manage on-farm nutrient loadings. Keywords: Agricultural conservation, Pay-for-performance, Phosphorus, River Raisin, SWAT, Western basin of Lake Erie.

Design rules for successful governmental payments for ecosystem services: Taking agri-environmental measures in Germany as an example

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to financial environmental policy instruments that have played important roles in solving agri-environmental problems throughout the world, particularly in the European Union and the United States. The ample and increasing literature on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and agri-environmental measures (AEMs), generally understood as governmental PES, shows that certain single design rules may have an impact on the success of a particular measure. Based on this research, we focused on the interplay of several design rules and conducted a comparative analysis of AEMs' institutional arrangements by examining 49 German cases. We analyzed the effects of the design rules and certain rule combinations on the success of AEMs. Compliance and noncompliance with the hypothesized design rules and the success of the AEMs were surveyed by questioning the responsible agricultural administration and the AEMs' mid-term evaluators. The different rules were evaluated in regard to their necessity and sufficiency for success using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Our results show that combinations of certain design rules such as environmental goal targeting and area targeting conditioned the success of the AEMs. Hence, we generalize design principles for AEMs and discuss implications for the general advancement of ecosystem services and the PES approach in agri-environmental policies. Moreover, we highlight the relevance of the results for governmental PES program research and design worldwide.

Payments for Ecosystem Services in Nicaragua: Do Market‐based Approaches Work?

ABSTRACTThe concept of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is gaining increasing attention among scholars as well as conservation and development practitioners. The premises of this innovative conservation approach are appealing: private land users, usually poorly motivated to protect nature on their land, will do so if they receive payments from environmental service buyers which cover part of the land users’ opportunity costs of developing the land. However, this article warns against an over‐enthusiastic adoption of a one‐sided market‐based PES approach. Based on a field study of the Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Approaches to Ecosystem Management Project (RISEMP), one of the main PES pilot projects in Nicaragua, it suggests that a mixture of economic and non‐economic factors motivated farmers to adopt the envisaged silvopastoral practices and that the actual role of PES is mistakenly understood as a simple matter of financial incentives. The authors argue that PES approaches should be understood as a part of a broader process of local institutional transformation rather than as a market‐based alternative for allegedly ineffective government and/or community governance.