External publications

Revisiting: Payment for environmental services is a win-win

in: Molle, François / Sylvain Barone (Hrsg.), Best practices in Global water policy revisiting water mantras, London: Routledge (forthcoming)

ISBN: 978-1-04-125190-3

Payments for Environmental Services (PES) have gained widespread popularity as a conservation strategy, promoted as a ‘win-win’ solution benefitting nature, local communities and economic development simultaneously. This chapter challenges the ideal vision of PES by examining common issues in watershed programmes, particularly in Latin America. Despite their theoretical appeal, PES schemes face fundamental challenges that undermine their promised benefits. Complex ecological systems resist the simplified economic models underlying PES, making accurate measurement and valuation of ecosystem services problematic. Power asymmetries enable wealthy downstream users to impose restrictions on marginalised upstream communities, perpetuating historical inequality rather than alleviating poverty. PES can also produce unintended environmental consequences through leakage, counterproductive incentives and erosion of intrinsic conservation motivations. Rather than offering a panacea, PES usually functions as a politically charged mechanism, consolidating resource control among powerful actors while deflecting environmental responsibility onto vulnerable communities, thus raises serious questions about its fairness and effectiveness.