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Home > Highlights > Forests and Environmental Services
Paying People to Protect their Forests
Payments for Environmental Services is gaining increasing attention among conservationists and development experts. Paying people in developing countries to sustainably manage their natural resources is seen by some as a means to protect the environment while reducing poverty.
But what exactly are Payments for Environmental Services (PES)? Is it a feasible concept? And how successful are they so far?
A PES scheme is an arrangement where a well-defined environmental service, or a resource-use likely to provide the service, is “bought” by one or more external service buyers from one or more local service providers.
For example, a city council representing people living downstream of a river that provides drinking water may pay people upstream not to cut down trees near the river to help preserve the water’s quality. In effect, the payment reimburses the environmental service providers for not using the land and the forest in ways that jeopardize the environmental service.
A study recently published by CIFOR provides an overview of the current status of PES schemes, looking at a range of issues, including the different types of schemes in operation, how environmental services are evaluated, whether they help the poor and in what types of scenarios they are most likely to succeed.
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