Local responses to design changes in payments for ecosystem services in Chiapas, Mexico

Santiago Izquierdo-Tort, Esteve Corbera, Alicia Barceinas Cruz, Julia Naime, Paola Angélica Vázquez-Cisneros, Julia Carabias Lillo, Elisa Castro-Tovar, Fiorella Ortiz Rosas, Nuria Rubio, Leonora Torres Knoop and Jérôme Dupras

Ecosystem Services, 2021, vol. 50, issue C

Abstract: Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are a popular conservation instrument in the Global South. However, little is known about how evolving PES design features affect local institutions and collective participation dynamics. Drawing on long-term field research spanning over a decade, we address this gap by investigating the evolution of PES design features and local responses by community participants in 10 communities of Selva Lacandona, state of Chiapas, Mexico. We show that Mexican PES programmes have shifted their goals over time, progressively adding productive, organisational, and social inclusion concerns to their main goal of forest conservation. We document a set of local responses to such PES design changes, namely: i) efforts to secure sustained programme access; ii) adaptations to local benefit-sharing and participation agreements; and iii) discontinuities in enrolment triggered by specific changes in design features. We also show that participants’ interests and practices align with PES forest protection goals but reflect a partial involvement of the community (or constrained collective action) in conservation affairs. Overall, our findings illustrate the dynamic interplay and resulting (mis)alignments between PES goals, outcomes, and participants’ practices and interests.

Keywords: Payments for environmental services; Collective action; Policy design; Adaptive governance; PES; Selva Lacandona (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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/S2212041621000632
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:ecoser:v:50:y:2021:i:c:s2212041621000632

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2021.101305

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

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