Streamlining Monitoring for Smallholder and Community PES (SMS-PES)

交易成本是小农和社区在进入国际碳市场和其他新生的生态系统服务市场时面临的主要挑战之一。其中很大一部分费用与制定可靠的监测方法有关，以便沿着价值链保证土地利用做法会带来生态系统服务的提供。对于拥有多处分散的小地产的小农户和社区项目来说尤其如此，对他们来说，达到环境门槛和规模经济仍然很困难，但在许多发展中国家，将它们排除在外的社会和环境代价并不是一个可行的选择。我们建议的核心是测试科学上可靠的方法，对小农户和社区生态系统项目进行具有成本效益的监测，这将通过1)改善进入这些新兴市场的机会，以及2)允许更高比例的资金流向农民而不是项目管理，从而有助于减轻贫困。对生态系统新兴市场的监测呈现出世界各地不同的图景，它与生态系统指标的初始定义密切相关。许多流域和/或生物多样性保护项目将活动类型(例如森林保护)与一定程度的针对性(例如河岸区、生物走廊)结合起来，作为提供服务的指标。然后，监测的重点是监测土地覆盖或土地利用，而不是监测结果(例如物种数量)。国际碳市场在碳储存和监测方面采取了更严格的方法，以确保抵消是真实和可核实的。国际标准提供信誉，可能导致价格溢价，但它们往往昂贵和麻烦(Corbera和Brown，2010a；Skutsch等人，2009年)，相关的交易成本成为积极的障碍，往往导致小农和社区项目被排除在外(de Pinto等人，2010年)。在预算低于500K的情况下，这项时尚的提案将尖端科学分析与选择性实验的新颖应用结合在一起，以解决碳林业项目中什么是最佳监测水平的问题。我们所说的“最佳”是指一种监测战略，它满足生态系统服务信用购买者的需求，并最大限度地减少所需的努力和资源，从而使这些资源能够惠及小农。我们直接专注于监测碳和其他生态系统服务(生物多样性和较小程度的流域服务)及其在整个价值链上对这些ES的影响：1)在抵消创造层面(符合条件的小农和基于社区的做法以及碳、BD和社会共同利益的可衡量指标)；2)在抵消价值验证阶段(第三方标准)；以及3)在阐明抵消需求阶段(针对特定特征的平台)。在文献回顾之后，我们将根据它们的科学稳健性和衡量和监测碳及相关生态系统服务的能力来审查四种不同的方法。然后，我们将在三个不同的地点进行地方一级的测试(在墨西哥、乌干达和斯里兰卡通过了《生活计划》认证的项目)，以说明实施该计划的可行性，不仅体现在批准的做法和建立抵销措施的协议方面，而且还体现在现有信息、成本和当地能力方面。在价值链的另一端，我们将测试买家在感知的服务交付项目可信度方面对这些方法的反应，以及他们为生态系统服务信用的不同组合支付相对于监控成本的潜在意愿。在整个项目中，我们将与活体计划基金会和当地项目实施者合作，以确保该方法符合验证和汇总补偿的实际情况。

Transaction costs are one of the main challenges for smallholders and communities in accessing international carbon and other, nascent, ecosystem services (ES) markets. A large proportion of these costs are associated with the development of credible methodologies for monitoring to offer reassurance along the value chain that land use practices result in the delivery of ecosystem services. This is especially true for smallholders and community projects with multiple, scattered small properties, for whom meeting environmental thresholds and economies of scale remains difficult, yet the social and environmental cost of leaving them out is not a viable option in many developing countries. At the core of our proposal is the testing of scientifically robust methodologies for cost-effective monitoring of small farmers and community ES projects, which will contribute to poverty alleviation by 1) improving access to these emerging markets, and 2) allowing a higher proportion of the money to go to farmers rather than project management.Monitoring of emerging markets for ES presents a varied picture across the world, and it is strongly linked to how indicators for ES are initially defined. Many watershed and/or biodiversity protection projects combine type of activity (e.g. forest protection) with some level of targeting (e.g. riparian areas, biological corridors) as indicators of provision. Monitoring is then focused on monitoring land cover or land use, rather than outcomes (e.g. number of species). International carbon markets have been stricter in approaches to carbon stocks and monitoring to ensure that offsets are real and verifiable. International standards provide credibility and can lead to price premiums, however they often are expensive and cumbersome (Corbera and Brown, 2010a; Skutsch et al., 2009) and the transaction costs associated become active barriers that often lead to the exclusion of smallholder and community projects (De Pinto et al., 2010) . With a budget under 500k, this sleek proposal integrates cutting-edge scientific analysis, with a novel application of choice experiments, to address the question of what is an optimal level of monitoring in carbon forestry projects. By 'optimal', we mean a monitoring strategy that satisfies the needs of buyers of ecosystem services credits and minimises effort and resources required such that these resources can reach smallholders. We focus directly on monitoring carbon and other ecosystem services (biodiversity and to a smaller degree watershed services) and their implications along the overall value chain for these ES: 1) at the Offset Creation level (eligible smallholder and community-based practices and measurable indicators for carbon, BD, and social co-benefits); 2) at the Verification of Value of offset stage (third party Standards); and 3) at the Articulation of Demand for Offsets stage (platforms for specific characteristics).Following a literature review, we will examine four different methodologies according to their scientific robustness and capacity to measure and monitor carbon and associated ecosystem services. We will then test at the local level in three different locations (Plan Vivo certified projects in Mexico, Uganda and Sri Lanka) to account for the practicalities of implementation it in terms of protocols for approved practices and offset creation, but also in terms of available information, costs and local capacity. At the other end of the value chain, we will test how buyers react to these methodologies in terms of perceived project credibility for service delivery, and their potential willingness to pay for different combinations of ecosystem service credit offsets against cost of monitoring them. Throughout the project we will work with the Plan Vivo Foundation and local project implementers, to ensure that the methodology responds to the practicalities of verification and aggregation of offsets.