Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News

Abstract: This paper investigates the equity implications of marketing ecosystem services in protected areas and rural communities. We use a three-tiered equity framework to analyse four distinct efforts to commercialise watershed recharge and carbon dioxide fixation by forests in Meso-America. We show that project development and participation are strongly mediated by organisational networks, as well as existing rights of access over land and forest resources. We demonstrate that procedural fairness diverges strongly when initiatives are implemented in protected areas or in rural communities. While in the former reserve managers and intermediaries concentrate all decision-making power, initiatives working with rural communities are able to integrate more significantly service providers in management decisions. Marketing ecosystem services in protected areas contributes to reduce expenditure rates for protected area management, but also results in less equitable outcomes, as rural communities and forest resource users become excluded from receiving sustained development benefits. When ecosystem services are commercialised by rural farmers, payments do not cover opportunity costs but act as a significant incentive for participation in most cases. Ecosystem service providers also benefit from complementary project activities, such as forest management training and agricultural extension support. We argue that limited economic impact and existing inequities in decision-making and outcomes can be explained by problems of institutional design, in particular the inability of markets and payments for ecosystem services to account for context-related factors, such as property rights.

Keywords: Equity; Ecosystem services; Development; Poverty; Participation; Property rights; Meso-America

by Esteve Corbera 1 and 2, Nicolas Kosoy 3 and Miguel Martínez Tuna 4
1. Overseas Development Group, University of East Anglia, NR4 7TJ Norwich, UK; NR4 7TJ, Norwich, UK. Telephone: +44 1603 592808; fax: +44 1603 591170
2. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK
3. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
4. Freshwater Programme, World Wildlife Fund Central America, Costa Rica

Global Environmental Change via Elsevier Science Direct www.ScienceDirect.com
Volume 17, Issues 3-4; August-October, 2007; Pages 365-380
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2006.12.005