The Challenges of Implementing Payment for Environmental Services to Prevent The Agricultural Land Conversion

<p>Payments for environmental services mechanism is expected to strengthen decisions of agricultural landowners to maintain the existence of their agricultural land. This mechanism is expected to prevent the conversion of land that occurs due to its lower appreciation compared to other uses. This study is aimed to critically examine the challenges of implementing payments for environmental services in Indonesia and strategies to improve the implementation of payments for environmental services schemes to reduce agricultural land conversion. Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development framework is used to examine the implementation of Payments for environmental services. The implementation was able to run well through the establishment of institutions that regulate constitutional rules. The collaboration between the Government (as the user of environmental service) and farmers (as the service provider) should be declared and fully understood before the scheme is implemented. Therefore, full participation of all related parties was crucial in achieving the program’s goals. Collective understanding of the need to prevent land conversion and the coordination of stakeholders needs to be carried out sustainably.<br />Keywords: Land, conversion, environmental services, payment</p><p><strong><br /></strong></p><p><strong>Abstrak</strong></p><p><strong>TANTANGAN IMPLEMENTASI PEMBAYARAN JASA LINGKUNGAN UNTUK PENCEGAHAN KONVERSI LAHAN PERTANIAN</strong></p><p>Mekanisme pembayaran jasa lingkungan diharapkan dapat memperkuat keputusan pemilik lahan pertanian untuk mempertahankannya. Mekanisme tersebut diharapkan dapat mencegah konversi lahan yang terjadi akibat apresiasi terhadap lahan pertanian secara ekonomi lebih rendah dibandingkan dengan penggunaan lainnya. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk menelaah secara kritis tantangan implementasi pembayaran jasa lingkungan di Indonesia dan strategi meningkatkan implementasi skema pembayaran jasa lingkungan untuk mengurangi konversi lahan pertanian. Kerangka Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development digunakan untuk mengkaji implementasi pembayaran jasa lingkungan. Implementasi pembayaran jasa lingkungan dapat berjalan dengan baik melalui penetapan lembaga yang mengatur aturan konstitusional. Kontrak kerja sama antara pemerintah sebagai pengguna jasa lingkungan dengan petani sebagai penyedia jasa lingkungan harus disosialisasikan dan dipahami sebelum skema pembayaran jasa lingkungan dijalankan. Pelibatan partisipan secara penuh merupakan hal yang sangat penting dalam mencapai keberhasilan program. Pemahaman bersama tentang perlunya pencegahan konversi lahan dan koordinasi seluruh pemangku kepentingan terkait secara berkelanjutan sangat diperlukan.<br />Kata kunci: Lahan, konversi, jasa lingkungan, pembayaran</p>

Next Steps for Conservation Agriculture

The origins, history, and recent advances in Conservation Agriculture (CA) are reported. CA is now practiced worldwide on some 200 million hectares, important for mitigating climate change and ensuring food security. Its bedrock is Zero Tillage (ZT) with crop rotation and retention of crop residues. CA approaches Or-19 ganic Agriculture (OA) when coupled to biological control providing opportunity for OA to become truly sustainable. Ley Farming (LF) and agroforestry with ZT are important for carbon sequestration and land use intensification. Hidden cost: each ton of carbon immobilizes 83 kg of N, 29 kg of P, and 14 kg of S. Industry-backed Regenerative Agriculture (RA) variants have no scientific definition, but generally adopt CA. Sustainable, profitable, and compatible new technologies are emerging and CA needs to embrace them to present a holistic, sustainable package to the farmer. How? A single definition for agricultural sustainability via a multi-stakeholder world congress would standardize certification and de-confuse the market. RA describes exactly what CA does for soil health and all farmers need to unite around a new “Combined Regenerative Agriculture” (CRA) to lobby for adequate payments for environmental services. Expansion of CA is critical for world sustainability. Many gaps and constraints exist, especially for smallholders.

The valuation of environmental services in the price formation of native rubber in Acre

The disarticulation of traditional extractionism in the 1960s led to serious socio-economic and environmental problems in the Amazon. The Extractive Reserves (RESEX) arose as a sustainable development alternative for the region. However, the unique challenges in extractive activities – such as native rubber – continue to result in difficulties with economic viability since the market fails to capture the environmental attributes of the forests. These failures may impact the maintenance of eco-systemic services. The payments for environmental services, such as the environmental certification, arise as a way to compensate those who carry out environmental services. The general aim of this study is to evaluate the environmental valuation in the price formation of the rubber productive chain in the state of Acre. We work with the methodology of price formation through trade margin indicators (Markup) and Effective Appropriation according to the structure of the market circuits of the rubber productive chain in the region. Our results indicate that the extractivists of the Chico Mendes RESEX obtained, in the period of 2018/2019, a level of remuneration for their environmental services which may lead to economic viability in rubber production. However, from the standpoint of maintenance of environmental services – as well as the maintenance of the families of the extractivists – that remuneration is still not enough for an effective environmental valuation.

Additionality and Leakage Resulting from PES Implementation? Evidence from the Ecuadorian Amazonia

Payments for Environmental Services (PES) are instruments which seem well suited for forest conservation. However, their impact on reducing deforestation might be weakened by negligible additionality and leakage effects; the first refers to the low variation in net deforestation rates even in the absence of PES, and the second refers to the displaced deforestation behavior to other areas not covered by PES. For the case of Ecuador, we examine both issues by assessing the historical deforestation trend of selected PES-enrolled areas and that of their adjacent areas to identify deforestation patterns before and after PES implementation. We analyze the additional effect of PES on reducing deforestation by comparison to a baseline as well as to comparable reference sites at two different spatial scales. We also analyze potential leakage effects of PES by comparing deforestation development in adjacent areas. We show that PES has achieved marginally low conservation impacts in enrolled areas with an average difference in net deforestation rates of 0.02 percent points over a period of 28 years. Overall, PES-enrolled areas depict lower annual net deforestation rates than unenrolled areas, albeit at a negligible rate, and there is also some evidence that deforestation decreased in adjacent areas after PES implementation. Additionally, there exists a statistically significant linear increasing deforestation trend in adjacent areas as distance increases from the PES-enrolled area. Our empirical results, however, raise the suspicion that the choice of PES-enrolled areas might have been influenced by self-selection.

Estimate the Impact of Payments for Environmental Services on Local Livelihoods and Environment: An Application of Propensity Scores

Payments for environmental services (PES) are usually considered as a useful tool to both protect the environment and generate multiple income streams for mountainous households who receive the payments, and thus, it has been widely implementing in many developing countries so far; however, the impact of it on local livelihoods and environment has been questioned. Therefore, the article aimed to evaluate the Vietnamese PES scheme’s effect on both environment and local livelihoods by surveying 282 households living in Quang Nam, Vietnam, and utilized the propensity score matching (PSM) technique to investigate the intervention policy’s influence. Furthermore, to evaluate PES’s effect on the environment, the article used Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as a measure of the photosynthetic level of forest trees. The calculation of NDVI relied on satellite images downloaded from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. The results indicated that (a) the natural forest status has been improved during PES implementation compared with that of pre-PES period regarding total forest areas, percentage of forest coverage, and vegetation cover; and (b) PES-participants have got a significantly lower income than nonparticipants regarding total annual income, agricultural income, and hired labor income. The limitation is that the impact of interventions on livelihoods and the environment is determined by the mutual combination of implemented programs rather than only the PES regime. So, we highly recommend that the future study separate the PES scheme’s actual impact to precisely evaluate the PES project’s effect on financial and environmental outcomes.

Gender and payments for environmental services: impacts of participation, benefit-sharing and conservation activities in Viet Nam

There has been a rapid expansion in the use of payments for environmental services (PES) as a key conservation finance policy. However, there is insufficient understanding of how gender can affect PES implementation and outcomes. We present results from a case study in Viet Nam, where a national PES programme has been in place for a decade. Through panel household survey data, focus groups and interviews, we examined how women have been involved in PES policies, what the impacts have been on decision-making by men and women, participation rates and use of PES income over time, and the potential conservation outcomes. Our research confirms that resource use varies between men and women, and changes in access rights can fall disproportionately on women. Participation in PES has been lower for female-headed households and for women within male-headed households, although gradually more equitable participation has evolved within households. Female-headed households reported expending more yearly effort on PES activities despite protecting less land, and also increased their conservation activities over time as they presumably became more familiar with PES. Use of income from PES also showed differences between male and female-led households, with men more likely to spend funds on non-essential goods. Within households, although men initially decided how to spend PES money, decision-making has become more equitable over time. We conclude with some recommendations on how to increase attention to gender in PES projects and future research to improve outcomes.

The use of payments for environmental services in the development of sustainable tourism in the Arganeraie Biosphere Reserve in Morocco

The Arganeraie (forests of argan trees) is one of the most important natural resources of Morocco but it faces a serious risk of degradation or even extinction. It is therefore essential to develop a model of sustainable tourism that can help to preserve this natural heritage, especially given the ever growing number of tourists. The purpose of this article is to analyze the concept of “payments for environmental services” (PES) as a method of collecting revenue to create a sustainable and structured touristic offering and to preserve the natural heritage in the region of Souss-Massa. This exploratory study is based on qualitative data collected during interviews with 80 tourists visiting Souss-Massa. It was found that the respondents were interested in the natural attributes of sites they visited and expressed their willingness to protect this natural heritage by paying for environmental services.