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

Abstract

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.

Integrating ecosystem markets to co-ordinate landscape-scale public benefits from nature

“…What constitutes a PES and how to define it is subject to much debate 52 , but generally there is agreement on PES involving individuals or organisations ('buyers') paying other individuals or organisations who manage natural resources ('sellers') to deliver clearly defined benefits or "ecosystem services" from nature 14 . While this definition of PES relaxes Wunder et al's 9,10 original stipulation that transactions must be voluntary (they rarely are in publicly funded PES schemes), the conditionality of payments on the delivery of well-defined, agreed outcomes remains central to PES, and is widely assumed to be necessary to engender the necessary buyer confidence to underpin a functional ecosystem market 52 . Therefore, the limited provisions for validation, verification and additionality in the regional ecosystem markets reviewed in this research may either be used to question whether these are indeed PES schemes, or to question how important conditionality is to the success of a PES scheme.…”

Payments for ecosystem services: a review of definitions, the role of spatial scales, and critique

“…The former focuses on generally environmentally friendly land-use actions that are assumed to secure some ES, while the latter refers to individually measured ES. In practice, input conditionality is much more common (Martin-Ortega and Waylen 2018). This is due to the easier and cheaper monitoring of compliance, while the measurement of direct ES flows is often challenging (Lima et al 2017).…”

Nature commodification: ‘a necessary evil’? An analysis of the views of environmental professionals on ecosystem services-based approaches

“…This critically affects if and how these approaches are consolidated in the long-rung and the consequences that this might have for environmental management practice. The present study also goes beyond previous research on the views of environmental professionals in this area by expanding the focus beyond market-based instruments only (Martin-Ortega and Waylen, 2018;Sandbrook et al, 2013) and covering ecosystem servicesbased approaches more broadly.…”

“…Another example is the worldwide popularisation of payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes (Porras et al, 2008;Schomers and Matzdorf, 2013;Waylen and Martin-Ortega, 2018). PES, which have been defined and conceptualized in various ways (Martin-Ortega and Waylen, 2018;Wunder, 2015), provide economic incentives for land management practices that are supposed to enhance or secure the provision of ecosystem services. They are based on the Coasean postulate by which the social optimum may be attained via bargaining between those producing the service and those benefiting from it (Engel et al, 2008;Wunder, 2005).…”