Money (Not) to Burn: Payments for Ecosystem Services to Reduce Crop Residue Burning

Cash for carbon: A randomized trial of payments for ecosystem services to reduce deforestation.

We evaluated a program of payments for ecosystem services in Uganda that offered forest-owning households annual payments of 70,000 Ugandan shillings per hectare if they conserved their forest. The program was implemented as a randomized controlled trial in 121 villages, 60 of which received the program for 2 years. The primary outcome was the change in land area covered by trees, measured by c...

Cash for Carbon: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Payments for Ecosystem Services to Reduce Deforestation∗

This paper evaluates a Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program in western Uganda that offered forest-owning households cash payments if they conserved their forest. The program was implemented as a randomized trial in 121 villages, 60 of which received the program for two years. The PES program reduced deforestation and forest degradation: Tree cover, measured using high-resolution satell...

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

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...