How payments for ecosystem services can undermine Indigenous institutions: The case of Peru's Ampiyacu-Apayacu watershed

Ashwin Ravikumar, Esperanza Chairez Uriarte, Daniela Lizano, Andrea Muñoz Ledo Farré and Mariel Montero

Ecological Economics, 2023, vol. 205, issue C

Abstract: Payments for ecosystem services have come to dominate international policies for addressing tropical deforestation. Political ecologists, degrowth scholars, and Indigenous activists have critiqued these approaches on the grounds that by centering economic growth, they can disrupt local conservation systems and compromise forest-dwelling communities' ability to protect forests and live well. Meanwhile, Indigenous groups have developed positive alternatives to ‘green growth’ strategies, including buen vivir (good living) in Latin America. In Peru, the National Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) serves as the state's flagship initiative to address tropical deforestation in Indigenous communities by paying communities for demonstrated reductions in deforestation, so long as they invest those funds according to an agreed up on management plan. We analyzed how the NFCP has interacted with quality-of-life plans, Indigenous planning tools rooted in buen vivir. Our findings suggest that the NFCP has eroded local systems for conservation, including the minga, an Amazonian tradition of mutual aid and shared labor for subsistence livelihoods, pushing communities to replace these systems with commodity production and employer-employee relationships. We argue that instead of imposing onerous conditions and steering communities towards evermore commodity production, conservation initiatives should support the implementation of quality-of-life plans. We suggest that climate justice organizers, political ecologists, and degrowth scholars explore and advocate for such initiatives.

Keywords: Payments for ecosystem services; Degrowth; Buen vivir; Political ecology; Indigenous rights; Tropical forest conservation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800922003846
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:205:y:2023:i:c:s0921800922003846

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107723

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().