Payments for environmental services and Development. Combining conservation incentives with investment

Résumé

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Paying communities or producers to maintain the quality of water or biodiversity; encouraging farmers to adopt environmentally friendly practices; paying developing countries to avoid deforestation and thereby reduce CO2 emissions: interest in payments for environmental services (PES) is growing throughout the world. However, past experience shows that PES are not without their problems: the criterion used to determine the amount; the methods used to evaluate effectiveness; and the uncertain use of payments, etc. Hence the proposal to combine direct incentives to protect ecosystems, especially forests, with the ecological intensification of agriculture and investment in land.