Mapping boundaries and values in Payment for Ecosystem Services

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Forests are critical spaces for climate change policy makingwith deforestation and forest degradation estimated ascontributing 20% of greenhouse gas emissions. However,efforts to implement strategies are subject to political,social and economic tensions. While political and economicactors favour market-based approaches such as thePayment for Environmental Services (PES) model, they arecriticised for ignoring local complexities. Although theimportance of addressing equity in PES has beenacknowledged, and participation is required in planning andimplantation, approaches have been criticised as treatingcommunities as homogenous and static. Forestcommunities are in fact dynamic and subject to movementrestructuring communities and reshaping the environment.My research will explore social complexities in forestcommunities at the frontier of PES projects in Mozambiqueby investigating how social worth and identity produce andreproduce unequal access to opportunities leading to lowparticipation in PES. This study is situated in politicalecology introducing Boundary Work and the Social theory ofValuation and Evaluation methodologies which build on thestudy of symbolic systems of classification and indirectforms of power such as those advanced by Foucault,Gramsci, Bourdieu, and others. I will examine howideologies are shaped by cultural-material contexts inwhich people live: The cultural tools available along withthe structural conditions.