Using cost-effective targeting to enhance the efficiency of conservation investments in payments for ecosystem services.

On-line Supporting Information for: Using Cost-Effective Targeting to Enhance the Efficiency of Conservation Investments in Payments for Ecosystem Services

Measuring effectiveness, efficiency and equity in an experimental Payments for Ecosystem Services trial

There is currently a considerable effort to evaluate the performance of Payments for Ecosystem Services as an environmental management tool. The research presented here contributes to this work by using an experimental design to evaluate Payments for Ecosystem Services as a tool for supporting biodiversity conservation in the context of an African protected area. The trial employed a 'before an...

Linking social norms to efficient conservation investment in payments for ecosystem services.

An increasing amount of investment has been devoted to protecting and restoring ecosystem services worldwide. The efficiency of conservation investments, including payments for ecosystem services (PES), has been found to be affected by biological, political, economic, demographic, and social factors, but little is known about the effects of social norms at the neighborhood level. As a first att...

Integrating Biophysical and Economic Information to Guide Land Conservation Investments

Concerns over the effects of private land use on the supply of environmental amenities have led to an increasing global reliance on conservation contracting initiatives (Ferraro and Kiss 2002). The term “conservation contracting” describes the contractual transfer of payments from one party (e.g., government) to another (e.g., landowner) in exchange for land use practices that contribute to the...

The Cost-Effectiveness of Conservation Payments

International donors invest billions of dollars to conserve ecosystems in low-income nations. The most common investments aim to encourage commercial activities, such as ecotourism, that indirectly generate ecosystem protection as a joint product. We demonstrate that paying for ecosystem protection directly can be far more cost-effective. Although direct-payment initiatives have imposing instit...