Beyond Market Logics: Payments for Ecosystem Services as Alternative Development Practices in the Global South

Abstract

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) initiatives, which provide financial incentives for management practices thought to increase the production of environmental benefits, have expanded across the global South since the late 1990s. These initiatives have thus far been conceptualized rather narrowly; by their early proponents as a novel economic instrument for more 'rational', effective and efficient environmental policy or by their critics as an exogenously imposed conduit of hegemonic neoliberalism. This Introductory article to the special issue that follows advocates for and demonstrates a more grounded and historically-situated approach for understanding the conformation and outcomes of PES in actual practice. It proposes a framework for examining individual PES initiatives as shaped by dynamic interactions between imposed structure and the development pathways and situated agency of actors in the territories in which they are implemented. It finds that certain ubiquitous components of this approach-the valuation of nature, the creation of institutions and the negotiations that inevitably surround the distribution of benefits-provide potential openings for articulation and engagement that can allow these initiatives to be contested, adapted, hybridized or more fully co-opted and captured. This framework opens a pathway for more inclusive, nuanced and grounded research on PES and on market-based environment and development policies more broadly.

Unearthing the myths of global sustainable forest governance

“…REDD+, for example, has largely transformed from what was meant to be a market in forest carbon credits into a more institutional, nation-scale approach (Angelsen et al , 2017), and PES has evolved into more hybrid forms that are not ‘purely’ neoliberal in nature (Van Hecken et al , 2018). These shifts are in essence made by local actors (state, community, civil society), demonstrating variegated ways and degrees to which the PES model has been adapted from its original neoliberal model to fit different contexts, ontologies and purposes (Shapiro-Garza et al , 2019). Despite the development of increasingly complex forms of forest governance mechanisms, as well as their shortcomings, the commitment to ecosystem markets remains alive, as illustrated in the ongoing development of the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) mechanism for airline industry emissions and the establishment of a follow-up mechanism to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in the Paris Agreement.…”

“…Similar to countering the first myth, embracing the political character of forest governance would question the logic behind financializing nature and the reducibility of forest protection to a market transaction when natural resource-dependent and alternative livelihoods of many of the world's poor are at stake. Opening up discussions of valuation can potentially create spaces for engagement, negotiation, conflict and debate over how (and if) it takes place (Shapiro-Garza et al , 2019; Sikor & Newell, 2014). Questions of who leads such processes, who is engaged and what is being valued are, therefore, of critical importance for avoiding the flattening of non-human nature for commodity capture, as is seen in predominantly outsider and expert-led valuations (Büscher et al , 2012).…”

Neoliberal policy refugia: The death and life of biodiversity offsetting in the European Union and its member states

“…We do not want to overdraw conclusions about the power of neoliberal environmental governance: offsetting is not reducible to the movement of capitalist logic, and is evidently less so the further one moves toward the working face of policy. It has long been a staple of critical geography to say that elements of neoliberal strategy can serve non‐capital, statist, or popular projects (Gibson‐Graham, 1996; Shapiro‐Garza et al, 2020). We suggest that biodiversity offsetting has survived in sub‐national spaces not because it is a creature of capitalism (although it is), but because it can also serve interests and projects that are non‐capitalist, orthogonal to capitalism, or idiosyncratically regional or local.…”

Paiement pour services environnementaux (PSE) et motivations des usagers des terres d’un bassin versant. Cas de l’hydroélectricité à Tolongoina, Madagascar

“…S'appuyant sur ce schéma théorique, une des définitions de référence considère un dispositif de PSE comme « une transaction volontaire où un service environnemental bien défini, ou un usage pouvant assurer la fourniture de ce service environnemental, est « acheté » par (au moins) un client de service environnemental à (au moins) un fournisseur, si et seulement si le fournisseur de service environnemental assure la fourniture ininterrompue de ce service (conditionnalité) » (Wunder, 2005). Toutefois, l'évolution des PSE dans le monde depuis vingt ans montre une multitude de dispositifs s'écartant plus ou moins de la considération théorique initiale (Shapiro-Garza et al, 2020), ainsi qu'une diversification des définitions, notamment celles basées sur la prise en compte de la diversité des contextes et des arrangements institutionnels (Froger et al, 2016).…”