Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 118, October 2015, Pages 81-89
Ecological Economics

Analysis
An institutional analysis of Payment for Environmental Services on collectively managed lands in Ecuador

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.07.017Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examine a Payment for Environmental Services (PES) program on communal lands.

  • We find that PES participation is associated with collectively crafted conservation rules.

  • Rule creation was not directly associated with level of PES payment.

  • Wealthier communities were more likely to receive payment for existent conservation.

  • Poorer and organized communities were more likely to craft rules after participation.

Abstract

The application of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) programs on communal lands raises questions about how PES interacts with collective resource management institutions. We explore how an Ecuadorian payment program is associated with the development of rules to manage shared grazing lands. In addition, we assess the communal characteristics that make it more likely that a participant community will change their land-use rules. Our analysis draws from an almost complete census of participant communities in the Ecuadorian highlands (n = 44), a survey of non-participant communities (n = 23) and a household questionnaire (n = 420). We find that the majority of participant communities have strengthened their land-use rules since program participation. Communities that craft new rules and apply their rules are more likely to be organized and have internal monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. Poorer communities are also more likely to have made a rule change in response to participation; wealthier communities are more likely to maintain existent land-use institutions. We find no association between rule change and level of payment. Our results highlight the need to disaggregate the role of payments and contract commitment and to further analyze how community characteristics may influence the effectiveness and equity of PES in communal contexts.

Introduction

The recent growth of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) programs prompts PES scholars and practitioners to contend with how PES fits as a conservation tool in impoverished communities, many of whom collectively manage their resource systems (Clements et al., 2010, Engel et al., 2008, Fisher and Christopher, 2007, Muradian et al., 2013, Sommerville et al., 2010a). The traditional PES model is often defined as a market-based tool for conservation in which a buyer pays an individual landowner to provide a specified environmental service or activity (Wunder, 2005). When implemented in developing countries, however, PES programs frequently deviate in two important ways.

First, PES is increasingly applied on communal lands where communities share rights (de facto or de jure) to use and manage their common-pool resource systems (Kerr et al., 2014, Sommerville et al., 2010a). Unlike the traditional PES model in which a buyer pays an individual landowner, payments are made to a communal governing body that must transmit the desired behavioral changes to the rest of the community. Second, many PES programs are funded by donors or governments that often stray from using PES as a market-based tool to efficiently conserve key environmental services, and rather, seek to use PES as a ‘win–win’ policy tool to support poverty alleviation and conservation (Engel et al., 2008, Grieg-Gran et al., 2005, Muradian et al., 2013, Muradian et al., 2010, Wunder, 2013).

The application of PES to communal management systems, particularly in the context of conservation and poverty alleviation, raises a number of concerns (Kerr et al., 2014, Pascual et al., 2014, Wunder, 2013). First, the success of PES on communal lands depends on the ability of communities to translate PES conservation goals into collective resource management rules that, in turn, produce additional environmental benefits (Kerr et al., 2014, Kosoy et al., 2008, Muradian et al., 2010, Sommerville et al., 2010b). A substantial body of research has demonstrated that communities can devise rules to sustainably manage their resources (Andersson et al., 2014, Berkes and Turner, 2006, Dietz et al., 2003, Gibson et al., 2000, Ostrom, 1990, Persha et al., 2011), however, the capacity of PES programs to support collective action for rule creation is poorly understood (Clements et al., 2010, Dougill et al., 2012, Kerr et al., 2014, Kosoy et al., 2008, Muradian, 2013). Critical concerns include the degree to which communities crafted rules prior to participation (Bremer et al., 2014a, Kosoy et al., 2008), whether payments thwart intrinsic motivations to collectively manage a resource (Kerr et al., 2014, Rodríguez de Francisco et al., 2013, Vatn, 2010, Vollan, 2008), and the potential of PES to strengthen local management systems, thereby providing additional environmental benefits via institutions for sustained resource management (Bremer et al., 2014b, Kerr et al., 2014, Muradian, 2013, Narloch et al., 2012, Rodríguez de Francisco et al., 2013, Vatn, 2010, Vollan, 2008, Wunder, 2013).

Second, the inclusion of poverty alleviation as a goal for PES programs raises concerns about whether payments will be used to produce additional conservation benefits. Some scholars worry that if PES is a means to alleviate poverty, payments may be used to distribute financial resources to the poor and reward impoverished communities for existing conservation efforts rather than incentivize behavioral changes to produce conservation outcomes that would not otherwise be achieved (Engel et al., 2008, Muradian and Rival, 2012, Pattanayak et al., 2010, Wunder, 2013, Wunder et al., 2008). In the context of communal resource management, this suggests that poorer communities that have already crafted resource restrictions may receive payment as a means of distributing economic benefits irrespective of whether they make rule and behavioral changes to provide additional environmental services.

Finally, the application of PES on communal lands in the context of poverty alleviation raises questions about the relationship between equity and additionality (Pascual et al., 2010). Although PES payments have the potential to reward impoverished individuals for existent conservation practices, previous studies suggest that in fact, poorer communities and individuals often make the greatest behavioral changes, although they do not necessarily receive any greater compensation (Pascual et al., 2014, Rico Garcia-Amado et al., 2011, Sommerville et al., 2010a). Questions regarding distributional equity are particularly important in communal land systems where differences in costs and benefits derived from participation may emerge not only between communities, but also within communities as individuals will differ in the livelihood losses incurred from new resource-use restrictions (Corbera et al., 2007a, Rico Garcia-Amado et al., 2011, Sommerville et al., 2010a).

Few empirical studies have specifically examined the relationship between participation in PES and the development of communal resource management institutions (Dougill et al., 2012, Kerr et al., 2014, Kosoy et al., 2008, Muradian et al., 2013). Here, we tackle a piece of the abovementioned questions in an exploratory study that examines how participation in an Ecuadorian payment for conservation program, Programa Socio Bosque (PSB), is associated with communal resource management. Specifically, we examine (i) the presence of communal land-use rules and assess the degree to which PES participation, particularly PES payment, corresponds with the development of these rules; (ii) the characteristics of the communities that are making rule changes to produce additional conservation benefits as compared to those that are paid to maintain the status quo; and (iii) the application of the rule systems.

Our analysis is based on a survey of all highland communities that were participating in the Ecuadorian payment program as of May 2013 (n = 44). In this survey we asked community representatives to discuss the ways in which the community had changed its resource management institutions in response to participation. A survey of non-participating communities from the same region (n = 23) illustrates the factors associated with the presence of restrictive land-use rules irrespective of participation in PSB. Finally, we interviewed households (n = 420) in twelve communities to further examine the degree to which participants perceive that the rules are applied in practice. We want to caution the reader not to interpret the results as causal, as we do not have an experimental setting where participant and non-participant communities were randomly selected and our results are limited to one period in time. The observational findings, nonetheless, highlight the potential of PES to strengthen rule development, and the need to further support rule application and assess critical equity considerations.

Section snippets

Study Region

The study communities are located in the Ecuadorian Andes, a South American mountain range that runs north–south through the center of Ecuador (see Fig. 1). It is a densely populated region, where some of the poorest communities in Ecuador live alongside ecologically valuable high-montane forests and páramo systems (Bremer et al., 2014b, Buytaert et al., 2006). Páramo, a high-elevation ecosystem of grasslands and shrubs (at about 3500 m), provide critical ecosystem services, namely water

Conceptual Framework to Assess Institutional Change

Our analysis focuses on institutional arrangements to manage grazing, specifically examining rule creation, monitoring, and enforcement (Andersson et al., 2014, Crawford and Ostrom, 1995, Ostrom, 1990, Ostrom, 2005). Grazing is a principal threat to páramo in the region (Podwojewski et al., 2002), and an area where PSB communities have the greatest leeway to develop their own restrictions.

Fig. 2 illustrates the three institutional components in our analysis, and highlights the areas where

Presence of Rules to Restrict Use of the Páramo

Table 1 compares the basic characteristics of our sample of PSB participants and non-participants, and highlights key differences between the communities. Non-participant communities are significantly more likely to be indigenous (χ2 = 4.296, p = 0.038, n = 67) and are less likely to be organized than participant communities (t =  0.179, p = 0.078, n = 63). Although not statistically significant, non-participant communities also tend to have larger páramos as indicated by the median páramo value.2

PES and the Development of Communal Resource Management Rules

The objectives of this study were to begin to build our understanding of how PES interacts with the development of collective resource management systems in the context of conservation and poverty alleviation. The findings contribute to debates about whether PES can support collective action for rule development, the degree to which pro-poor PES programs reward existent conservation practices versus the creation of new conservation activities, and the degree to which communal rules are

Conclusion

The findings from Ecuador, though exploratory in nature, suggest that PES can support rule development on communal systems. PES may, however, be more of a nudge than a driver for change. Further research is needed to assess how the different components of a PES program interact with community characteristics to influence communal resource management systems and the equity implications. Finally, panel studies, preferably in a randomized-control experimental setting, are needed to determine the

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant # SES 1156271) and the Seattle University Center for Environmental Justice and Sustainability. Many thanks to the Ecuadorian Environmental Ministry (MAE) who was crucial in facilitating fieldwork and our in-country partner Consorcio para el Desarrollo Sostenible de la Ecoregion Andina — CONDESAN. We would like to give special recognition to Macarena Bustamante, Cristina Felix, Mariela Garcia, Luisa Trujillo, Taylor McDowell and

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