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Annual emissions from commercial aviation are forecast to reach 1820 MtCO2 by mid-century, where carbon-neutral growth would demand near full substitution of petroleum-based aviation fuels with alt...

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M The Convention on Biological Diversity is defining the goals that will frame future global biodiversity policy in a context of rapid biodiversity decline and under pressure to make transformative change. Drawing on the work of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, we argue that transformative change requires the foregrounding of Indigenous peoples' and local communities' rights and agency in biodiversity policy. We support this argument with four key points. First, Indigenous peoples and local communities hold knowledge essential for setting realistic and effective biodiversity targets that simultaneously improve local livelihoods. Second, Indigenous peoples' conceptualizations of nature sustain and manifest CBD's 2050 vision of "Living in harmony with nature." Third, Indigenous peoples' and local communities' participation in biodiversity policy contributes to the recognition of human and Indigenous peoples' rights. And fourth, engagement in biodiversity policy is essential for Indigenous peoples and local communities to be able to exercise their recognized rights to territories and resources.

Ecological economists have often argued that the very nature of modern money, created by banks through interest-bearing debt, forces our socio-economic system to seek perpetual growth if we are to avoid a systemic collapse. The foundations of this so-called ‘monetary growth imperative’ suffer from theoretical weaknesses, as shown by several scholars who have used post-Keynesian theory and models to support their claims. However, this critique relies on an incomplete assessment of money, missing its institutional dimensions. The way money is created, circulated and destroyed is the result of social constructs, and historical accounts indicate that the progressive generalization of interest-bearing debt money since the thirteenth century marks a distinct development in the institutionalization of capitalism and its multiple growth imperatives. As such, “monetary contestations†aimed at diminishing the importance of interest rates remain critical to achieving a post-growth socio-economic system.

Alternative jet fuels are one of the four mechanisms by the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to limit and reduce carbon emissions from international aviation. By using Carol Bacchi's what's the problem represented to be? method of discourse analysis, the objective of this paper was to identify and understand the premises and effects of the problem-solving paradigm underlying ICAO's alternative jet fuel strategy. As a result, three problem representations were identified, from which two out of four underlying assumptions have reinforced ICAO's weak sustainability approach to international aviation's growth and have led to a number of discursive, subjectification and lived effects. The selected method also allowed the authors to identify several options to disrupt those premises in favor of the implementation of more aggressive mitigation and adaptation strategies without constraining air travel demand, including: (i) raising awareness of the environmental impacts of aviation beyond the tailpipe emissions, (ii) improving the understanding of the effects of climate change on the air transport sector, and (iii) reassessing the sectoral approach to the Sustainable Development Goals so as to gain consistency with the aims of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In questioning the multiple positions of the stakeholders involved in the mining debate in Ecuador, this paper offers an analytical framework to uncover the ‘politics of scale’ of mining discourses. This is done by understanding how discourses are simultaneously structured, disassembled and restructured according to power relations among stakeholders involved in the mining debate. Q methodology is used as a tool to assess the subjective perceptions of key stakeholders regarding mining projects in the country. Results highlight four distinct discourses: (1) responsible extractivism; (2) local self-determination; (3) national economic development; and (4) local economic development. Discursive analyses suggest that mining positions are constructed to contest power in: decision-making, the enactment of values and rights, and the uneven distribution of economic benefits and socio-environmental burdens associated with mining. The analysis also offers insights for enhancing conflict-resolution and depicting the political complexity associated with structural power inequalities among actors implicated in mining conflicts in the country.

This paper argues that Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) serve as a neoliberal performative act, in which idealized conditions are re-constituted by well-resourced and networked epistemic communities with the objective of bringing a distinctly instrumental and utilitarian relationality between humans and nature into existence. We illustrate the performative agency of hegemonic epistemic communities advocating (P)ES imaginaries to differentiate between the cultural construction of an ideal reality, which can and always will fail, and an external reality of actually produced effects. In doing so, we explore human agency to disobey performative acts to craft embodied and life-affirming relationships with nature.

Payments for ecosystem service (PES) schemes have become increasingly popular in attempting to promote ecological stewardship and conservation behaviour through provisioning of economic incentives often as market-inspired transactions. The scholarship and empirical application of PES schemes has tended to focus on contract design and conditionality of payments rather than more fundamentally examining whether incentives do indeed influence behaviour in desired ways. In this paper, a set of incentive framed treatments are introduced to existing collective action institutions promoting common pool resource management in order to explore the effects of incentive provision on the propensity to participate in the maintenance of collectively owned irrigation canals. The experiments take place in the Kyrgyz Republic, characterized by the historic transition of nomadic collective traditions, subsequent Soviet rule, to advances towards democracy, market integration, and the first PES pilot in the country. In the incentive treatments provided, we reveal the close interplay between the framing of incentives, the influence of village leaders mobilizing collective activity and social norms of reciprocity, trust and enforcement in mobilizing collective work. Each framed case study exhibits a unique configuration of individual motivations, group norms and other regarding rationalities, providing critical insight into this new frontier of PES implementation.

A major concern of mining activities is their influence on hydrological systems. This article highlights impacts on water flows and distribution in the Mashcon catchment in Cajamarca, Peru, one of those most affected by the Yanacocha mining project. Some important concerns are identified regarding changes in water flows, lowering of water tables, and decrease of base flows. These considerations indicate deficiencies in distributing actual water uses in relation to the allocation of water rights. Finally, the article discusses challenges for regulation of mining, including democratic processes for water management that require clear accountability in the context of local social needs.

While the mining industry is steadfastly committed to the goal of increasing extraction of minerals, the failure to recognize the existence of biophysical constraints to extraction results in massive degradation to socio-ecological systems. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach for analyzing mineral extraction which links the use and management of natural resources by means of the Stock-Flow/Fund-Service model developed by Georgescu-Roegen. Mining is a productive process that not only depletes minerals ores but also affects other natural resources that are needed to maintain life-supporting processes over time. The central claim is the need of recognizing the existence of biophysical limits to extraction in order to manage natural resources as irreplaceable providers of ecosystem services. By providing a new conceptualization for operationalizing the ecosystem services approach based on the Stock-Flow/Fund-Service model, we intend to challenge the current extractivist narrative that assumes unregulated practices, monetary indicators, technological advancements and substitutable resources. We argue that limits to mining activities should depend on a biophysical evaluation of the effects of these activities on the environment. Furthermore, social deliberation is required to determine whether extraction should occur and to what extent it is socially acceptable while still maintaining the integrity of socio-ecological systems.

‘Payments for ecosystem services’ (PES) is rapidly becoming a popular governance intervention within natural resource management to align land-use stewardship to conserve critical ecosystem services while simultaneously improving human well-being through the provision of incentives. This paper introduces two novel components for refining the legitimacy of PES in water resource management. Firstly, we broaden consideration of human well-being in PES beyond income effects by considering justice as the freedom or capability to ‘do and be’ whatever is desired. Secondly, this paper applies social multi-criteria evaluation as a decision-support framework to determine the acceptability and payment vehicle of PES within a set of alternative policy considerations for a complex ecosystem management decision. Through both technical and social evaluations of different management options against a set of criteria, we highlight the legitimacy that different PES designs may have for improving water quality and capabilities for well-being.

This paper examines crop raids by birds in semi-arid Kenya, highlighting the importance of bird scaring as a barrier to the greater adoption of drought-resilient, High Value Traditional Crops (HVTCs) in the region. Using survey data from Tharaka-Nithi County, we find 100% of millet and sorghum farmers in the study area scare birds from their plot, devoting 43–66% of all labour time to this activity when these crops are grown in monocrop plots and 24–47% of labour time in plots where millet and sorghum are grown in combination with other crops. This labour allocation is in stark contrast to farmers of all other crops who dedicate almost no time to bird scaring. Individually scaring birds from their plot, farmers achieve a ‘momentary Pareto optimal’, perpetuating a ‘ripple effect’ whereby the negative cost of birds are continuously shifted from one farmer to the next. We systematically examine this cost-shifting behaviour as an externality, theoretically applying environmental and resource economics (ERE) policy prescriptions for externality internalisation. ERE, however, with its focus on self-interest, rational actors and technological interventions, falls short to present effective solutions to this so-called externality. Farmers in the region can address crop raids by birds through collective, coordinated action. At this scale, the negative cost of pests is deliberately distributed across all receptors, leading to long-term, community-wide social wellbeing improvements.

Scholars have argued that the success of conservation instruments depends on improved scientific knowledge in linking ecosystem functioning with value-reflecting prices to optimize the production and delivery of ecosystem services (ES). However, these scholars assume that greater sophistication of scientific inquiry rests on ES thinking, without recognizing that the ES framework represents one social rationality in articulating humannature relationships. Here, we discuss why a singular focus on getting the science right for environmental policy oversimplifies the many socio-political consequences underlying the use of ES as an objective science. We argue that the process of doing science through reflection on social diversity and power dimensions better reveals the extent to which PES interventions are perceived, debated, negotiated and strategically adapted.

Hardin in his seminal paper described the management of the commons as a tragedy. Three decades later, Ostrom and colleagues argued that the management of the commons was more of a drama than a tragedy. They identified that the management of common pool resources is dependent on the institutions at play at the specific scale and across scales and the various stakeholders involved in the access and use of these resources. In this paper we go one step further by arguing that the plurality of values within and across individuals coupled with the spatial scales at which different institutions are organized and at which ecosystem services are produced create mismatches in the management of the New Commons. We define the New Commons as the mosaic of land, water, and climate, and their underlying processes that regulate ecosystem structure and functions to maintain a sustainable supply of common pool resources for human well-being. A conceptual framework capturing these mis-matches and the multiple spatial scales at which ecosystems provide services is presented in this paper. This framework sheds new light on the key inter-linkages among nature and human well-being which the newly established Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is expected to address.

In this commentary we critically discuss the suitability of payments for ecosystem services and the most important challenges they face. While such instruments can play a role in improving environmental governance, we argue that over-reliance on payments as win-win solutions might lead to ineffective outcomes, similar to earlier experience with integrated conservation and development projects. Our objective is to raise awareness, particularly among policy makers and practitioners, about the limitations of such instruments and to encourage a dialogue about the policy contexts in which they might be appropriate.

Despite varying degrees of regulation, policies and standards across different nations, wetlands are consistently being destroyed, devastated and converted to other land uses at a rate more rapid than any other ecosystem. We attempt to understand this disconnection between policy and wetland protection by comparing how wetlands are portrayed in eighteen national wetland policies. It was found that nations with strong-market economies tended to subjectively and objectively characterize wetlands in a vague and indirect fashion; whereas nations with weaker-market economies tended to portray wetlands in a direct and distinct fashion. The results suggest that higher degrees of wetland protection are offered in national policies when wetlands are portrayed as public resources; conversely when wetlands are portrayed as private goods, policies are less apt to provide clear platforms for economic incentives leading to ecosystem-wide protection. Given the state of global wetland health and the alarming trend of global wetland decline, we argue that wetland policy frameworks should portray wetlands as public resources in a direct and prescriptive fashion.

In the hue and cry about the ‘green economy’ leading up to Rio + 20 a number of simple points have been neglected. First, the purposes of the economy have been too narrowly conceived. Second, the role of demand management is vastly underplayed. Third, the assumptions about the nature of reality are inconsistent with contemporary science. Fourth, it is mired in a complex discourse about measurement, which fails to even recognize that all economies are dependent on living within Earth's biogeochemical constraints. Fifth, it uses a conceptual framework laid down in the 18th century and tries to apply it to the Anthropocene. The simple, but to many unthinkable, fact is that you cannot get to a flourishing or even sustainable Earth if you start with the assumptions of neo-classical economics. This is not to say that some of the neo-classical tools are not useful, but that they must be deployed in a framework that it does not and cannot supply.

International audience; This study examines the multiple dimensions of the agdal system, a traditional Berber form of environmental management that regulates access to communal natural resources so as to allow the regeneration of natural resources. In fact, this ingenious system of agro-pastoral land rotation is ultimately beneficial for the conservation of the bio-physical environment, the performance of the present-day local economy and the maintenance of prevailing social cohesion and cultural coherence. Hence, agdals constitute a key element for the reinforcement of the sustainability of existing agro-pastoral societies and ecosystems, but need to be better understood in order to explore necessary adaptations in the changing world of today.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) economically reward resource managers for the provision of ecosystem services and are thus characterised by (i) an ecological function subject to trade; (ii) the establishment of a standard unit of exchange; (iii) and supply, demand and intermediation flows between those who sell and buy ecosystem services. This paper departs from the term commodity fetishism, broadly understood as the masking of the social relationships underlying the process of production, to illuminate three invisibilities in the commodification of ecosystem services. Firstly, we argue that narrowing down the complexity of ecosystems to a single service has serious technical difficulties and ethical implications on the way we relate to and perceive nature. Secondly, the commodification of ecosystem services denies the multiplicity of values which can be attributed to these services, since it requires that a single exchange-value is adopted for trading. Finally, we suggest that the process of production, exchange and consumption of ecosystem services is characterised by power asymmetries which may contribute to reproducing rather than addressing existing inequalities in the access to natural resources and services.

Understanding people’s willingness to participate in projects and programmes of payments for ecosystem services (PES) has not been a key analytical concern of the scholarly literature around this new field of environmental policy and practice. This paper analyses participation in four communities benefiting from payments for biodiversity and carbon fixation in Mexico, and contrasts the results for each case with neighbouring communities that do not receive payments. We take a holistic approach that accounts for procedural rules, actors’ interactions, institutions and values, and individuals’ characteristics. We show that the nature of PES rules and the effectiveness of communication with government officers and NGOs influence resource managers’ ability and willingness to participate. We highlight community size, resource managers’ ability to diversify livelihood activities and local perspectives on the conservation of common forests, particularly sacred values and intergenerational concerns on forest conservation, as critical participation drivers. This analysis provides insights on why and how these new institutions may be attractive for some resource managers and permits to draw some recommendations for the future design of PES projects and programmes.

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.

Proponents of payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes advocate targeting payments to geographical areas that can: (a) maintain or enhance ecosystem services, (b) permit economically efficient arrangements and (c) address poverty objectives. The location of these efficient, effective and equitable (or triple-win) solutions is viewed as the ‘holy grail’ of PES and is often sought in isolation to broader socio-economic pressures, political relationships, or local cultural conditions. While the plethora of PES design perspectives often follow the concepts of efficiency and effectiveness, they seldom relate to pluralistic value systems and may disparage local self-determination for influencing the form and terms of negotiation. This paper critically analyses the assumptions underpinning the design of PES schemes which seek to optimise or target efficient, effective and poverty objectives. Using a case study for a proposed PES initiative in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, we employ spatial analysis to geographically visualise the discrepancy between the location for a typology of targeted objectives and actual preferences which support local perceptions of natural resource use and conservation. The case study highlights the inequity inherent in targeting payments under a neoliberal framing. Instead, spatially differentiating incentives according to socially determined priorities and collective management is suggested.

Understanding linkages between human well-being and ecological stewardship at the land-water nexus is needed in order to develop effective, equitable, and resilient institutions to govern watershed resources. In this paper, we argue that payments for ecosystem services (PES) plays a useful role for achieving integrated and adaptive water resource management, but only if attention is drawn to: (a) nested governance arrangements which reflect horizontal coordination across space according to the economic characteristics of watershed goods and services as well as hierarchical legitimacy between higher and lower levels of governance; (b) ‘payments’ that are socially negotiated rather than designed according to oversimplified efficiency claims for watershed services and (c) ‘payments’ that are well placed to overcome the individual, social and physical constraints associated with watershed goods and services so that capabilities or the freedom to do and be can be enhanced. This paper illustrates the impossibility of effectuating sheer market-based trades for regulating, cultural and supporting ecosystem services due to their inherent non-rival characteristics. Furthermore, a heuristic approach to characterising watershed goods and services clearly demarcates the extent to which PES can serve as an implementation tool for integrated and adaptive water resources management.

Existing institutions are often designed to address issues related to specific ecosystem services, not taking into account interactions and trade-offs among different ecosystem services. This chapter illustrates the effectiveness of a nested institutional approach for managing a bundle of ecosystem services, taking into account complex interactions among multiple uses, user groups and values of services, as well as the existence of multiple property regimes. It starts by providing an overview of the concept and features of common goods and services, followed by the discussions on a concept of the new “commons” introduced by the Japan Satoyama-Satoumi Assessment in 2010, a system of co-management of ecosystem services and biodiversity within private and public land.

We have compared three cases of payments for water-related environmental services (PES) in Central America, in terms of socioeconomic background, opportunity costs of forest conservation and stakeholders’ perceptions on the conditions of water resources and other issues. We found that, in general, the foregone benefits from land uses alternative to forest cover are larger than the amount paid, which apparently contradicts the economic foundation of PES schemes. A number of possible explanations are explored. The results also suggest that trade-offs between different environmental and social goals are likely to emerge in PES schemes, posing some doubts on their ability to be multipurpose instruments for environmental improvement and rural development. We also found that PES schemes may work as a conflictresolution instrument, facilitating downstream -upstream problem solving, though at the same time they might introduce changes in social perceptions of property rights.

Contains fulltext : 90003.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) This article provides an alternative and novel theoretical approach to the conceptualization and analysis of payments for environmental services (PES). We devote special emphasis to institutional and political economy issues, which have been somewhat neglected in the literature on PES. We argue that the Coasean and pure market approach dominating the conceptualization of PES in the literature cannot be easily generalized and implemented in practice. By contrast, taking into account complexities related to uncertainty, distributional issues, social embeddedness, and power relations permits acknowledging the variety of contexts and institutional settings in which PES operate. The alternative approach presented in this introductory article to the special section may be more appealing to PES practitioners, since while avoiding restrictive and prescriptive standpoints, it allows some key sources of complexities they usually deal with on the ground to be more easily understood.