Institutional performance of Payments for Environmental Services: An analysis of the Costa Rican Program

Abstract

This article assesses, from an institutional point of view, the performance of the Costa Rican Payment for Environmental Services Program (PESP) as a conservation tool focusing on its main modality: the forest protection. The PESP has had a low direct impact on the forest cover of the country but may have had an important indirect impact as it served as compensation for the prohibition of forested land uses change. This program appeared also quite competitive from the point of view of its costs before the institutional transformation that occurred in 2008. The PESP has also proved to be a very effective fundraising tool, but it has failed in the development of strong synergies with other institutions for forest protection and it has not supported the development of sustainable forest management. From a cosean perspective, a significant potential for improvement of the PESP cost-effectiveness exists on the short term through changes in the program's rules. However, these changes often deny the program's institutional nature and could jeopardize the program effects on the long term. A safer way to improve the PESP performance is to focus on strengthening its management and governance

How may REDD+ affect the practical, legal and institutional framework for ‘Payment for ecosystem services’ in Costa Rica?

“…Most of our interviewees, from both the conservationist and the forestry development groups, agree on the necessity of combining sticks and carrots through PES, as it has helped to make the deforestation ban acceptable. This is also a prevailing assessment in literature (Pagiola, 2008;IIED, 2012;Porras et al, 2013;Legrand et al, 2013).…”

Environmental Services Associated With the Reclamation of Areas Degraded by Mining: Potential for Payments for Environmental Services

“…Even the nomenclature is not homogeneous across the scientific literature, with some authors, such as Engel, Pagiola and Wunder (2008), Legrand, Froger andLe Coq (2013), andDémurger andPelletier (2015), referring to "payments for environmental services", whereas others, for example Farley and Costanza (2010), Schomers and Matzdorf (2013), and Matthies et al (2015), have opted for "payments for ecosystem services. "…”

Market-Based Instruments for Ecosystem Services between Discourse and Reality: An Economic and Narrative Analysis

“…However, the analysis of real-life PES mechanisms leaves some doubt about their effectiveness, i.e., their ability to meet contractual environmental objectives. Their efficiency, their fairness, their legitimacy, and their sustainability are also questionable, as illustrated by Muradian et al [11,36] and Legrand et al [57]. Indeed, the contexts in which PES are developed are often characterized by imperfect and asymmetric information (scientific uncertainty, inadequate ecological knowledge, inappropriate methodology for controlling the status of environmental services, etc.)…”