Conservation vs. equity: Can payments for environmental services achieve both?

Miriam Vorlaufer, Marcela Ibanez, Bambang Juanda and Meike Wollni

No 18, EFForTS Discussion Paper Series from University of Goettingen, Collaborative Research Centre 990 "EFForTS, Ecological and Socioeconomic Functions of Tropical Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems (Sumatra, Indonesia)"

Abstract: This paper investigates the trade-off between conservation and equity considerations in the use of payments for environmental services (PES) that implicitly incorporate different distributive justice principles. Using a public good experiment with heterogeneous participants, we compare the effects on additional area conserved and distribution of earnings of two PES schemes: an equal payment and a payment based on Rawls distributional principle, which we refer to as maxi-min payment scheme. The main findings of the framed field experiment conducted in Jambi province (Indonesia) indicate that the introduction of a maxi-min PES scheme can function as a multi-purpose instrument. It realigns the income distribution in favor of low-endowed participants and does not necessarily need to be compromised by lower environmental additionality at the group level.

Keywords: Payments for Environmental Services; efficiency equity trade-off; public good experiment; endowment heterogeneity; productivity heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env, nep-exp and nep-sea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:crc990:18

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