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Ecosystem Services and Payments for Environmental Services: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

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Governing the Provision of Ecosystem Services

Part of the book series: Studies in Ecological Economics ((SEEC,volume 4))

Abstract

The topic of ecosystem services, ecological services, environmental services (ES) and payments for environmental services (PES) has recently become the main reference for international environmental policies (broadly including forest policy, agro-environmental measures and conservation policies). Brought to media attention by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in 2005, these notions have spread rapidly in both political and scientific arenas. But there has been very little analysis retracing the social construction and political scope of these concepts in the scientific and policy fields. It is as if thinking in terms of ecosystem services and promoting payments for environmental services were taking for granted. This chapter seeks to fill this gap, offering a historical and institutional analysis that explores the relationship between the ES and PES concepts. We put forward the hypothesis that two relatively independent processes led to the emergence of the ES concept on one hand and the PES concept on the other. Whereas the concept of ES is closely linked to a desire to attract official attention to the threats to ecosystems posed by human pressure, the concept of PES seems rather to have stemmed from a concern to ensure funding for conservation in tropical countries over the long term. In the past few years, the two concepts have gradually converged, apparently due to a shared desire to translate them into operational form through public policy instruments. Taking a multidisciplinary approach combining political science, sociology, economics and law, we aim to substantiate this hypothesis using the notion of an epistemic configuration, derived from that of an epistemic community (Haas, Int Organ 46: 1–35, 1992), to highlight the composite nature of the networks involved in the emergence and promotion of PES schemes. In the first section below, we study the genesis of the concepts of ES and PES, showing how the two terms are connected with different epistemic configurations. In the second section, we show how the two concepts have converged at the international level, during the MA process but mainly afterwards. In the third section, we try to identify new trends and ongoing processes concerning ES and PES.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This article draws on a number of ongoing studies conducted by the Serena programme, which receives funding from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the SYSTERRA programme (ANR-08-STRA-13) http://www.serena-anr.org/

  2. 2.

    There are numerous publications on the PES subject. See for instance Engel et al. (2008), Muradian et al. (2010), and Farley and Costanza (2010).

  3. 3.

    Direct Payments as an Alternative Approach to Conservation Investment, meeting held in London in 2002 during the 16th Annual Meetings of the Society for Conservation Biology: http://www2.gsu.edu/∼wwwcec/special/special.htm

  4. 4.

    Fifth IUCN congress, Durban, 2003.

  5. 5.

    Bibliometric analysis (WOS) on the terms “ecosystem services” and “payments for environmental services.”

  6. 6.

    The CCT was founded in 1962 by several US and Costa Rican scientists to study biodiversity and natural resource management. It was the CCT that initiated the creation of Monteverde, the oldest private nature reserve in Costa Rica.

  7. 7.

    Interview with Jaime Echeverría, July 2009, Serena Programme.

  8. 8.

    These elements are from an in-depth biographical study of the experts and scientists involved in the Millennium Assessment (see below).http://oregonstate.edu/gradwater/sites/default/files/bio/aylward_0.pdf

  9. 9.

    http://woods.stanford.edu/docs/news/gdaily-strategy.pdf

  10. 10.

    The government representatives were also mobilised to revise the provisional versions of the reports and chapters of the MA. These facts are drawn from ongoing research (Serena programme: http://www.serena-anr.org/)

  11. 11.

    Diversitas is in a sense “the biodiversity branch” of ICSU.

  12. 12.

    The exact name of this declaration is the Non-legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of all Types of Forests.

  13. 13.

    Principle 6c of the forest declaration.

  14. 14.

    The CBD’s second (Jakarta, November 1995) adopted the idea of an ecosystem approach as the main framework for action under the convention but made no mention of ES.

  15. 15.

    UNEP/CBD/COP 5/23, Report of the Fifth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Nairobi. The descriptions and principles of the ecosystem approach, prepared by the SBSTTA, were adopted at the fifth COP meeting in Nairobi by decision V/6. They were then detailed from the standpoint of implementation by COP 7 in Kuala Lumpur in 2004 (decision VII/11).

  16. 16.

    The members of the MA Board’s Executive Committee are representatives of the CBD, CCD, Ramsar, UNEP and GEF and presidents or chairs of other MA functional bodies (UNEP. 2000. Cooperation with the Global Biodiversity information facility (GBIF) and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, UNEP/CBD/COP/5/INF/19, avril 2000, Nairobi). The more general organisation of the process and its relations with UN agencies are described in UNEP 2002. Status of Implementation of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, UNEP/GC.22/INF/27, Nairobi.

  17. 17.

    Angela Cropper and A. H. Zakri were to play a front-line role in the MA process and its follow-up.

  18. 18.

    S. Pagiola also participated upstream in designing the MA’s analytical framework. Another link between Costa Rica’s ESPP experience and the MA was in the person of José Maria Figueres, MA board member and former President of Costa Rica (1994–1998).

  19. 19.

    UNEP/DEPI (Department of Environmental Policy Implementation).

  20. 20.

    The detailed MA follow-up activities programme was presented in 2008 at the 9th CDB Conference of the Parties (UNEP 2008a. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Follow-up: A Global Strategy for Turning Knowledge into Action UNEP/CBD/COP/9/INF/26, Nairobi).

  21. 21.

    This agreement, signed in Geneva in 2006, follows on from the agreements on trade in tropical timber. The timber industry had been promoting regulation of the tropical timber trade since 1983. One of the effects of this agreement was the creation of a permanent organisation, the International Tropical Timber Organisation.

  22. 22.

    Revision and Updating of the Strategic Plan: Possible Outline and Elements of the New Strategic Plan, UNEP/CBD/SP/PREP/2, November 2009.

  23. 23.

    Resolution X.24 of the 10th COP held in 2008 in Changwon, South Korea.

  24. 24.

    Decision 4 of COP.8 held in Madrid in 2007.

  25. 25.

    See also the growing concern on indicators and measuring biodiversity (for instance UK parliament, http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn312.pdf, the private sector and NGOs: http://www.businessandbiodiversity.org/what_is_measuring.html; see also the third chapter of the TEEB on the use of indicators).

Abbreviations

BBOP:

The Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme

CBD:

Convention on Biological Diversity

CCT:

Centro Cientifico Tropical

CGIAR:

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

FAO:

Food and Agriculture Organization

GBA:

Global Biodiversity Assessment

GCTE:

Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems

GEF:

Global Environment Facility

ICSU:

International Council for Science

IGBP:

International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme

IIED:

International Institute for Environment and Development

IMoSEB:

International Mechanism for Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity

IPBES:

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

IPCC:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

ISEE:

International Society for Ecological Economics

MA:

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

MBI:

Market-Based Instruments

PESP:

Payments for Environmental Services Programme

SBSTTA:

Subsidiary Body on Scientific Technical and Technological Advice

TEEB:

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity

UNCCD:

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification

UNDP:

United Nations Development Programme

UNEP:

United Nations Environment Programme

UNEP-FI:

United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative

UNFCCC:

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

WBCSD:

World Business Council for Sustainable Development

WRI:

World Resources Institute

WWF:

World Wildlife Fund

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unité Mixte de Recherche ART-Dev n° 5281 (CIRAD-CNRS-Univ. Montpellier 3), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), TA C-113/15, 73 rue Jean-François Breton, 34398, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Denis Pesche

  2. Unité Mixte de Recherche GRED (IRD-Univ. Montpellier 3), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, 64501, 34394, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Philippe Méral

  3. Unité Mixte de Recherche ART-Dev n° 5281 (CIRAD-CNRS-Univ. Montpellier 3 and 1), Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD), TA C-113/15, Avenue Agropolis, 34398, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Marie Hrabanski

  4. IRD, UMR LEMAR, Unité Mixte de Recherche LEMAR (IRD – IUEM), Faculté de sciences juridiques économiques et sociales, Université Ibn Zohr, Agadir, Morocco

    Marie Bonnin

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  1. Denis Pesche
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Correspondence to Denis Pesche .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Cultural Anthropology and Development St, Radboud University Nijmegen, Thomas van Aquinostraat 4, Nijmegen, 6525 GD, Netherlands

    Roldan Muradian

  2. , Institute of Social and Cultural Anthrop, University of Oxford, Banbury Road 51/53, Oxford, 0X2 6PE, United Kingdom

    Laura Rival

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Pesche, D., Méral, P., Hrabanski, M., Bonnin, M. (2013). Ecosystem Services and Payments for Environmental Services: Two Sides of the Same Coin?. In: Muradian, R., Rival, L. (eds) Governing the Provision of Ecosystem Services. Studies in Ecological Economics, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5176-7_4

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