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Publication year : 0
Thematic : Environmental Education
Language : English
Note
Payments for environmental services (PES) are an innovative approach to conservation that
has been applied increasingly often in both developed and developing countries. To date,
however, few efforts have been made to systematically compare PES experiences. Drawing
on the wealth of case studies in this Special Issue, we synthesize the information presented,
according to case characteristics with respect to design, costs, environmental effectiveness,
and other outcomes. PES programs often differ substantially one from the other. Some of the
differences reflect adaptation of the basic concept to very different ecological,
socioeconomic, or institutional conditions; others reflect poor design, due either to
mistakes or to the need to accommodate political pressures. We find significant
differences between user-financed PES programs, in which funding comes from the users
of the ES being provided, and government-financed programs, in which funding comes from
a third party. The user-financed programs in our sample were better targeted, more closely
tailored to local conditions and needs, had better monitoring and a greater willingness to
enforce conditionality, and had far fewer confounding side objectives than governmentfinanced
programs. We finish by outlining some perspectives on how both user- and
government-financed PES programs could be made more effective and cost-efficient.
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Keywords : Episoriculus caudatus
Encoded by : Pauline Carmel Joy Eje
