Category: Payments for Ecosystem Services

  • Habitat banking at a standstill

    Habitat banking at a standstill

    In many countries worldwide, development projects are asked to comply with the “mitigation hierarchy” in environmental impact assessment. They must avoid environmental impacts as much as possible in the project design phase, minimize unavoidable impacts through specific measures during implementation, address impacts on-site through specific remediation and restoration environmental activities, and finally offset the residual […]

  • Troubled Encounters: Payments for Ecosystem Services in Chiapas, Mexico

    Troubled Encounters: Payments for Ecosystem Services in Chiapas, Mexico

    Before, nobody could tell me what to do with my trees, because each of us is the owner of his parcel. But now, with the PES programme, it is forbidden to cut trees. [The consultant] said it only concerns members of PES working groups, but the ‘comisariado’ says everyone is affected (farmer NOT involved in […]

  • Beyond market logics in PES

    Beyond market logics in PES

    As originally conceived, Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes provide conditional cash transfers directed to poor farmers and land users in exchange for greener land use practices that enhance carbon sequestration, water provision, or biodiversity protection. Two decades of experience with the PES approach has demonstrated that few, if any, initiatives conform to the assumptions […]