Payment for ecosystem services
[6] In 2014, the author of this 1997 research (Robert Costanza) and a qualified group of co-authors re-took this assessment – using only a slightly modified methodology but with more detailed 2011 data – and increased the aggregate global ecosystem services provisioning estimate to $125–145 trillion a year.
[9][10] However, it is important to note PES programs are usually not designed to be primarily poverty alleviation schemes, although they may incorporate development mechanisms.
A relatively indirect program would remove the buyers and sellers from each other, placing intermediaries between them, commonly in the form of NGOs and governments.
[19] Commodification of natural capital results in undervaluing ecological systems by not accounting for the innumerable wide-range services provided.
"[20] These farmers agree to plant "long-term, resource-conserving covers to improve water quality, control soil erosion and enhance habitats for waterfowl and wildlife.
"[20] This program has existed in some form or another since the wake of the American Dust Bowl, when the federal government began paying farmers to avoid farming on poor quality, erodible land.
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States has managed the majority of its watershed since the 1850s through multi-jurisdictional regulatory mechanisms such as specifying allowable uses (and restricting them), and purchasing land or conservation easements.
This long-standing, legally-defensible, yet often-overlooked strategy preserves ecosystem services, while still allowing widely utilized recreation including skiing, snowboarding, hiking, mountain biking, and fishing.
[23] During the early years of the PSA program from 2001 to 2006, it was funded by a World Bank loan and a grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) under the project name "Ecomarkets.
"[23] From 2007 to 2014, the World Bank renewed its support for the program through a new project called "Mainstreaming Market-Based Instruments for Environmental Management.
This removes the potential for revenues to be distributed as needed and has been criticized for concentrating funding in select areas, despite their relatively low ecological importance.
This has resulted in large swaths of ecologically high value areas being left unenrolled in the program due to associated higher opportunity costs for land-use change not being adequately compensated for by the flat rate payment scheme.
Natura is addressing this issue by maintaining a constant presence in the community and leveraging social networks to convince farmers of the program's benefits.
Coffee producers were dumping their waste into the river upstream, polluting the source and directly affecting the consumers downstream.
[31] To solve this problem, the local Council for Administration of Water and Sewage Disposal (JAPOE) created a payment program to benefit coffee producers upstream and the town's inhabitants who lived downstream.
The credits are then sold though the World Bank's BioCarbon Fund to countries aiming to meet their carbon emissions reduction targets.
Community members earn income and share profits from implementing the sustainable forestry practices that capture carbon.
[32] The Scolel Té program in Chiapas, Mexico, aims to create a market for positive externalities of shade-grown coffee plantations.
Funding for the Fondo BioClimatico comes from the sale of Voluntary Emissions Reduction (VERs) to private groups at a price of $13 per ton of carbon sequestered.
The organization was active in the early 200s and contested many of the neoliberal policies taking hold in Mexico, including the implementation of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
They also advocated for and won the expansion of national PES programs in Mexico as they believed it was an excellent way of engaging with and forming relationships within the state.
MECNAM members were involved with the creation and design of PES programs which allowed them to add provisions for rural communities.
The addition of community input and agency as the result of local actors and activists works to commodify the environment in a bottom-up approach.
The PES system works not only to monetize natural resources, but gives locals a platform to consider social and community concerns.
The increased agency of locals who rely on the forests for survival and livelihood allows for compromise and negotiation between the needs of the community and the environmental concerns.
It also was a method to address the income loss and social discontent caused by the repeal of communal logging permits due to the 2000 rezoning and expansion of the MBBR.
Ethnographic evidence demonstrates that penalizing the communities for external logging results in residents patrolling the forest commons.
[38] As a result, aquifer nitrate concentrations began to increase, posing an existential threat to the lucrative Vittel mineral water brand.
[38] Although widely regarded as case study in PES based on Coasean bargaining, aspects of the arrangement remain controversial, such as the creation of community grievances and the potential overexploitation of water resources.
It was established following publication of the Stern Review (2006) to play an advisory role looking at "how the UK could make the most of the potential economic benefits of [a] transition to a low carbon, sustainable economy".
