Could Payments for Ecosystem Services Create an "Ecosystem Service Curse"?

Could Payments for Ecosystem Services Create an "Ecosystem Service Curse"?

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) have received much praise and are increasingly perceived as a promising tool to ensure the protection of global ecosystems as well as being able to help alleviate poverty in areas rich in ecosystem services. Given current trends, the scale of payments is likely to grow, creating new circumstances within which ecosystem services will be managed. In this dyna...

Revealing pathways from payments for ecosystem services to socioeconomic outcomes

Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA. College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province 310058, China. Key Laboratory of Southwest China Wildlife Resources Conservation,Ministry of Education, ChinaWest Normal University, Nanchong, Sichuan Prov...

Payments for ecosystem services: From local to global

Scaling participation in payments for ecosystem services programs

Payments for ecosystem services programs have become common tools but most have failed to achieve wide-ranging conservation outcomes. The capacity for scale and impact increases when PES programs are designed through the lens of the potential participants, yet this has received little attention in research or practice. Our work with small-scale marine fisheries integrates the social science of ...

Integrated assessments of payments for ecosystem services programs.

Ecosystems provide crucial services such as clean water to humans. Numerous payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs have been implemented around the world. However, their socioeconomic and environmental consequences are rarely quantified simultaneously. In PNAS, Zheng et al. (1) present an insightful empirical analysis of socioeconomic and environmental effects of a PES program that supp...