Co-Production of Environmental Conservation and Social Equity: Is Conditionality in Payments for Ecosystem Services a Necessity or an Impediment?

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Modern conservation approaches have proved largely ineffective to redress ecosystem degradation, and there is growing interest in market-based conservation methods, such as payment-for-ecosystem-services (PES), as a promising alternative. At the core of PES is the assumption that payments made to natural resource managers to produce environmental benefits must be conditional on observable actions or measurable outcomes, which implies that natural resource managers need to be coerced to conserve the environment. However, previous research has suggested that strictly enforced conditionality in PES is not necessary for producing desired outcomes, and it often increases inequities within communities. This project will investigate whether conditionality is necessary to achieve conservation objectives and the extent to which enforcement of conditionality leads to undesirable environmental, social, and economic effects. The project will contribute to theoretical understandings of how market-based approaches affect conservation outcomes and transform human-environment relations. This knowledge will provide a framework for understanding the paths by which market-based approaches produce intended and unintended outcomes. Knowledge generated from this project may contribute to broadening PES program participation. Results are likely to assist conservation organizations, policy makers, and society improve the design of conservation programs. Finally, the project will advance graduate student research and training and undergraduate teaching. De-identified data from the project will be made available to other researchers.This project will determine the role of conditionality in PES in shaping human-environment relations, and the extent to which conditionality can be relaxed or removed to produce environmental benefits without increasing inequities. The investigators will use a political ecological framework that recognizes the social, cultural, political economic, and institutional contexts of conservation to analyze PES programs and their defining feature: conditionality. Specifically, the investigators ask three questions: (1) What are the effects of conditionality in PES on conservation? (2) What are the effects of conditionality in PES on inequalities within households and communities? (3) What are the mechanisms through which conditional and unconditional payments produce intended and unintended outcomes? The investigators will answer these questions using a mixed-methods approach that integrates a randomized controlled trial with qualitative enquiries to assess conditional versus unconditional PES in rural Bolivian communities. Results from this project will be disseminated through a PES forum, and made available to public and private entities that fund or manage PES programs worldwide.