As of 2014 only 15.4% of terrestrial and inland water areas were under some form of protected area status . Conservation experts know that this is insufficient to protect critical biodiversity, which underpins ecosystem services, and that the best projections will never reach a level that would come close to protecting and maintaining the ecosystem services that we as humans need to continue to exist and for development on this planet. The result has been to target the provision of ecosystem services on private lands as a means of conservation. The most popular way to do that has been to establish a market-like mechanism between ecosystem service providers and ecosystem service buyers, otherwise known as payments for ecosystem services (PES).
PES schemes have flourished in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Region much more so than in any other region. You may be wondering why; I know I am. LAC has been promoted as the biodiversity superpower as a result of a UNDP document published in 2010. So, is it because the region has so much biodiversity that needs to be protected that PES schemes continue to multiply? This question cannot currently be answered because we do not understand how much ecosystem services support our existence through their provision of food, clean water, and storm protection, among other things.
It is widely known that the first national PES program was established in Costa Rica. The country is globally recognized as an ecotourism destination and has done an impeccable job of marketing PES as a means of reforesting the country. But does the success of PES in Costa Rica mean that it will work throughout the rest of the region? Throughout the rest of the world?
Over the past few years there have been a handful of rigorous impact evaluations focused on the national PES program in Costa Rica. They demonstrate that the program has had little effect on reforestation, as a result of the institutional policies that were implemented at the same time, including the zero deforestation law. These evaluations have called into question whether PES is truly effective. Effectiveness of PES signifies that the change in land use directly leads to a change in the provision of the ecosystem service targeted.
Policymakers like easy solutions and easy answers. PES has gotten swept up into the current wave of conservation. We as conservationists have not been able to show the link between a change in land use and an improvement of the provision of an ecosystem service and most PES schemes do not even try. They are not monitoring the change – this could be change in the reduction of sedimentation, the quantity of water in times of droughts and floods, or the true amount of carbon sequestration.
PES is complicated to design, implement, and sustain, and the environmental community after over fifteen years of implementing PES schemes has only begun to evaluate their effectiveness, with little results to show. The environmental community has had many silver bullets over the years and as with those (protected areas, ICDPs, etc.) we have done an extremely poor job of proving that the practices are effective and just as importantly, sustainable.
We want PES to work so badly. And it can, in certain locations under certain biophysical and institutional circumstances. But we would be fooling ourselves if we think we can just take an idea and replicate it across the region. While Costa Rica and Mexico are displayed as the success stories of our region, many failed PES schemes remain under the radar. And it is more than likely that those failed PES schemes should never have existed in the first place.
I do believe that a critical piece of PES effectiveness is the adequate monitoring of the provision of an ecosystem service or multiple services. But that takes thought and insight from the outset when creating a PES scheme. What often happens is that a set of stakeholders, whether that is a government, a group of farmers, or a multilateral bank decides that a PES scheme is a good idea before they have invested the relatively small amount of time and money to understand whether a land use change in a particular area can lead to the provision of an ecosystem service. See the 2013 article in PNAS as a great example of how reforestation in the Panama Canal watershed cannot lead to increased water quantity in dry periods.
There is a need to think and act prospectively. We cannot say that PES will be the solution to the provision of ecosystem services on private lands if we cannot support this statement with rigorous analysis. After having participated in PES schemes throughout the region in Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Paraguay I can safely say that we as conservationists still have a long way to go before we can truly demonstrate what we want to believe.
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Photos:
Title: Man and nature, huge looking-glass tree and mangroves in dense tropical rainforest jungle, by ©Sam Spicer, Shutterstock
Text: Black River 2, by Joel Deluxe ©CC BY 2.0
Ashley Camhi is an Environmental Economist currently working on her doctorate at Arizona State University on payments for ecosystem services and ecosystem service valuation. She worked as part of the IDB’s BIO Program on the integration of biodiversity and ecosystem services into infrastructure before beginning her doctorate and continues to contribute to the IDB’s work on payments for ecosystem services. Prior to working at the IDB, Ashley worked at the World Bank assisting in the design of payments for ecosystem service schemes, protected areas, and conservation trust funds throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Ashley received her masters in International Environmental Policy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and her undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from Vassar College.
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