Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programmes increasingly reflect multiple stakeholder demands and rarely operate in market form. In Guatemala, the earliest forestry incentives-a form of PES-benefited larger landowners and functioned as subsidies for both extractive forest production and ecosystem services. Smallholders and indigenous communal land managers in Guatemala campaigned for PES programmes to meet their needs, leading to the creation of a second programme that focuses on improving rural development, coupled with ecosystem services. This article examines how these historically marginalized groups have used PES as an opportunity to engage with the state and demand embedded development that more strongly reflects their values of forests and their desired relationship with the Guatemalan state. As a result of this activism, these Guatemalan forestry incentives reach smallholders more successfully than PES programmes in many other countries. However, more far-reaching changes in land use are tempered by power imbalances and structural inequalities that are unaddressed and, in fact, reinforced by PES programmes, such as underfunding, narrow conceptions of land ownership, and unequal representation. This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as

Muchos programas de pagos por servicios ambientales (PSA) en América Latina persiguen motivar la protección del medio ambiente por medio de la valuación de los servicios que generan para la sociedad, y a través de ello proporcionar fondos para el desarrollo local. Este artículo se enfoca en los programas de incentivos forestales de Guatemala los cuales han experimentado una rápida expansión. Nuestro análisis pretende mostrar la complejidad de una modalidad de PSA que compensa a los participantes por buenas prácticas de gestión forestal. Desde el enfoque de la política ecológica, investigamos el impacto de estos incentivos con respecto a los beneficios para los participantes locales y el acceso a los recursos en dos municipios del altiplano. Los participantes en el área rural a través del buen manejo de los bosques, han aprovechado la oportunidad de recibir pagos por esfuerzos de conservación preexistentes, motivando también a organizaciones comunitarias a inscribirse a estos programas. La inscripción en los programas no obstaculiza la continuidad en los beneficios que resultan de sus tierras, pero la participación en el PSA también implica la apertura de los bosques manejados tradicionalmente por indígenas al control estatal tecnócrata. Los programas pueden incrementar los ingresos económicos de los hogares rurales en pobreza por un tiempo limitado pero con frecuencia estos programas privilegian a los hombres jefes de familia que poseen tierras suficientes para la inscripción. Nuestro argumento es que para estos participantes estos incentivos forestales no mercantilizados pueden tener la flexibilidad para satisfacer las necesidades de los pequeños poseedores de tierra, un resultado que no se encuentran en los programas de PSA basados en el mercado y enfocados en la producción de servicios ecosistémicos específicos. Esta investigación puede ofrecer indicios importantes para el programa de REDD+ (United Nations initiative for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), ya que destaca los beneficios sociales y ecológicos de la administración comunitaria e indígena de bosques y la importancia de priorizar la distribución amplia de los fondos REDD+ a los poseedores que mantienen actividades forestales sostenibles.

Forests increasingly will be used for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) as a natural climate solution, and the implementation of forest-based CDR presents a complex public policy challenge. In this paper, our goal is to review a range of policy tools in place to support use of forests for CDR and demonstrate how concepts from the policy design literature can inform our understanding of this domain. We explore how the utilization of different policy tools shapes our ability to use forests to mitigate and adapt to climate change and consider the challenges of policy mixes and integration, taking a close look at three areas of international forest policy, including the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and voluntary carbon offset markets. As it is our expertise, we then examine in detail the case of the USA as a country that lacks aggressive implementation of national climate policies but has potential to increase CDR through reforestation and existing forest management on both public and private land. For forest-based CDR to succeed, a wide array of policy tools will have to be implemented in a variety of contexts with an eye towards overcoming the challenges of policy design with regard to uncertainty in policy outcomes, policy coherence around managing forests for carbon simultaneously with other goals and integration across governance contexts and levels.

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