As a lock to a key? Why science is more than just an instrument to pay for nature’s services

Kolinjivadi, Vijay; Hecken, Gert Van; Francisco, Jean Carlo Rodríguez de; Pelenc, Jérôme; Kosoy, Nicolás

doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2016.12.004

Cited by 32 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 67 publications

(80 reference statements)

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“…Meanwhile, PES locks up upstream food production (and its related livelihoods) in order to secure the provision of water for hydropower production. Similar to other studies, e.g., [30,[78][79][80][81] the results show that government and private actors financing upstream conservation via PES do so not to enhance distributive, political, and cultural justice, but to guarantee their access to water sources, secure permanent water flows, and control water decision-making for capital accumulation. As a deus ex machina solving a seemingly hopeless situation, this PES provides them with a conservation-friendly and poverty-alleviation aura that, simultaneously, enables to shift the focus from the hydropower plant's many negative externalities inflicted upon marginal communities further downstream (see Figure 2).…”

Section: The Pes-hydropower Miracle: Strengthening (Upstream) Its Watsupporting

confidence: 85%

Payment for Ecosystem Services and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Securing Resource Flows for the Affluent?

Francisco

Duarte-Abadía

Boelens

2019

Water

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Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) is not only a prominent, globally promoted policy to foster nature conservation, but also increasingly propagated as an innovative and self-sustaining governance instrument to support poverty alleviation and to guarantee water, food, and energy securities. In this paper, we evaluate a PES scheme from a multi-scalar and political-ecology perspective in order to reveal different power dynamics across the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus perspective. For this purpose, we analyze the PES scheme implemented in the Hidrosogamoso hydropower project in Colombia. The paper shows that actors’ strongly divergent economic and political power is determinant in defining how and for whom the Nexus-related water, food, and energy securities are materialized. In this case, the PES scheme and its scalar politics, as fostered by the private/public hydropower alliance, are instrumental to guaranteeing water security for the hydropower scheme, which is a crucial building-block of Colombia’s energy security discourse. For this, the water and food securities of the adjacent, less powerful communities are sacrificed. Examining the on-the-ground politics of WEF Nexus is key to understanding their impact on equitable and sustainable governance of water, energy, and food in the everyday lives of millions of resource users. We conclude that politicizing the Nexus can help to trace both the flows of resources and the flows of power.

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Section: The Pes-hydropower Miracle: Strengthening (Upstream) Its Watsupporting

confidence: 85%

Payment for Ecosystem Services and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Securing Resource Flows for the Affluent?

Francisco

Duarte-Abadía

Boelens

2019

Water

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“…As future model projections explore narratives for 1.5 C futures, it is vital to remain cognizant of pre-analytical assumptions: each narrative formalizes inherently subjective projections of policy choices [52,53]. Indeed, modeling on a single narrative is almost certainly inappropriate [54,55].…”

Section: Modeling Transformed Futuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative matters for sustainability: the transformative role of storytelling in realizing 1.5°C futures

Veland

Scoville-Simonds

Gram-Hanssen

et al. 2018

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability

156

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Narratives structure human comprehension, and shape our ability to imagine and achieve transformed futures within the 1.5 degree threshold. Examining tensions between narrative as a communication technique and as a spatial-temporal cognitive structure, this paper brings these different understandings together in a conversation for transformative global change. We suggest that filling the 'information deficit' with improved communication of a single, unifying and global narrative about Earth systems is necessary but insufficient: filling the 'narrative deficit' requires engagement with the protagonists, timelines, and places that provide situated agency in identifying and navigating uncertainty and risk. Transformations to sustainability will require recognizing and engaging multiple, diverse experiences of agency, a process that attention to narrative can help facilitate.

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“…This relates to wider critical institutionalism debates on how institutions are shaped and ought to be designed. Some authors question the extent to which institutions "can be designed to "fit" specific human nature problems" with "overly structuralist models" (Van Hecken et al, 2015, p. 117) or that it is just a matter of getting the science 'right' (Kolinjivadi et al, 2017).…”

Section: Additionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

PES What a Mess? An Analysis of the Position of Environmental Professionals in the Conceptual Debate on Payments for Ecosystem Services

Martín-Ortega

Waylen

2018

Ecological Economics

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Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are becoming increasingly widespread as they are being promoted by government and non-governmental organization across the globe. Alongside this, an academic debate has unfolded regarding how PES ought to be conceptualized and defined. Using the first survey of environmental professionals on this topic, we explore their position in this conceptual debate in the UK. Our study shows that all aspects of the key academic debates are reflected in the views of environmental professionals, whose range of understandings suggests no viewpoint is either dominant or uncontested. Expecting all to share a single perfect definition of PES may be neither necessary nor feasible. However, at present this term invokes a very wide range of ideas that may generate frictions as PES is further implemented. This risks PES becoming a 'mess' from which few insights can be derived as to whether, when and why it is a useful instrument. It essential that those debating and proposing PES concepts more closely consider the complex processes by which professionals engage with and shape their application.

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As a lock to a key? Why science is more than just an instrument to pay for nature’s services

Cited by 32 publications

References 67 publications

Payment for Ecosystem Services and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Securing Resource Flows for the Affluent?

Payment for Ecosystem Services and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Securing Resource Flows for the Affluent?

Narrative matters for sustainability: the transformative role of storytelling in realizing 1.5°C futures

PES What a Mess? An Analysis of the Position of Environmental Professionals in the Conceptual Debate on Payments for Ecosystem Services

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