In the face of continuing biodiversity loss, the perceived partial failure of traditional environmental approaches, and the decrease in public funding, governments, NGOs and donor agencies have increasingly called for implementing new and innovative mechanisms to finance conservation. One of these instruments are Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), which aim at connecting « suppliers » of ecosystem services, e.g. farmers who would restrain from
deforesting or poaching, with ?buyers? who would pay for such
services, for instance private companies interested in the
maintenance of water quality and quantity flowing to their plants
(e.g. hydropower companies). Seen as more direct instruments,
PES allegedly raise necessary financial flows for conservation and
provide strong economic incentives to modify practices harmful to
biodiversity.
But are those instruments really efficient to tackle issues of
deforestation and biodiversity loss? And are they fair, and not
disruptive in rural contexts in the global South? After more than
10 years of scientific research, pilot projects, national
programmes and strong donor support, what is the evidence out there?
These are important policy-relevant questions to be discussed during
this session with all actors interested in designing, implementing
and evaluating such policy instruments. After providing a synthesis
of the diversity and goals of existing PES initiatives, as well as of
their associated conflicting narratives, the talk will review
evidence related to environmental effectiveness and social fairness
of PES initiatives in different contexts of the global South. The
discussion will outline possible avenues of future research that can
enhance the evidence base on PES, which should in turn help better
inform those interested in promoting or challenging incentive-based
conservation.
This session will extensively draw on existing field evidence and
experience of the presenter, and particularly on the findings
generated by the EU-Biodiversa Project
INVALUABLE,
coordinated by IDDRI, in which Esteve Corbera was a co-leader.
©Terre Tv / IDDRI
Réalisateurs : : Laurent Marin,
Journalistes : Carmina Marcarian,
Intervenants : Esteve Corbera (Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)), Yann Laurans (Directeur du programme Biodiversité – IDDRI),