There
is growing interest in payment for environmental services (PES) as a
means to secure improved natural resource management in cases where the
land manager cannot capture the resulting benefits.
Among the reasons for this interest are its potential
for improving upon past mechanisms that have had uneven success, and
the possibility that it will offer impoverished rural landowners a
market through which they can raise their incomes while also preserving
the natural resource base.
Many researchers, donor organizations and advocates
for the poor have become enthusiastic about the prospects for PES to
play the triple role of conserving the natural resource base, raising
land productivity, and alleviating poverty, but there are legitimate
fears that PES risks becoming just another development fad because of
enthusiasm about its potential outpacing analysis of what it can
actually achieve.
Perhaps the most critical element in making PES work
and provide benefits to poor land managers is to identify and mobilize
users of environmental services who are willing and able to pay land
managers to provide services, with assurance that the service is
actually provided.
While this aspect of PES sometimes is overlooked or
is assumed to be feasible, historically it is has been the main
impediment to development of environmental service markets.
If current programs focus too much on the potential
benefits to the natural resource base and the welfare of environmental
service providers but overlook environmental service buyers, there is a
great risk that donor-backed PES programs will not have a solid
foundation in demand for the service and will not have lasting results.
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