Institutions for environmental service payment programmes - evidence of community resource management arrangements in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia

Summary

Payments for Environmental Service (PES) schemes are increasingly discussed as a possibility to promote the conservation of natural resources. However, these pilot schemes are frequently small in size and face high transaction costs, leading to the exclusion of smallholders. Solutions could be to use collectively bundled contracts or existing community resource management arrangement structures. Using the example of the institution of the community conservation agreements (CCA) in Central Sulawesi we assess whether a community arrangement can provide the framework conditions to implement a PES project. Four points are necessary: an organisational structure representing the village households; participation of the resource users in the institutional implementation; monitoring and enforcement by the institution of the forest usage regulations; and, finally, the institutions’ ability to administer funds. Our findings show that the CCAs are backed up by an organisational structure, the village conservation council. However, in most villages the community members were not involved and did not know of the agreement negotiation. A monitoring entity has been constituted. The awareness for nature conservation has increased only in the recent past, but resource extraction has left its marks, and the participants perceived environmental problems to be growing. Finally, compensation payments are regarded on the one hand as a good reimbursement for desisting from using the forest resources. On the other hand, due to the negative experiences with corruption, a clear organisational structure for the administration of such a project is necessary, which does not seem to be given with the current institutional arrangements. Therefore, we recommend using existing community arrangements because established structures can be used. However, these need to be enriched to fulfil the requirements of a PES project. It is of major importance to involve the community members in the management of natural resource projects to increase compliance with regulations.