PAYMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES PROGRAMS IN LATIN AMERICA AS AN INNOVATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY INSTRUMENT

Abstract

for Environmental Services (PES) Programs in Latin America andMexico have dominated the market-based environmental policy realmin the past decade due to their new paradigm for solving the problemfor ecosystem degradation. There are at least three reasons why a carefulexamination of the design and implementation of these types of programsis important for the environmental policy discussion in developingworld contexts. First and foremost, PES schemes offer several advantages:they are cost-effective, they are institutionally simpler, and they arepotentially good for poverty reduction. Second, PES schemes embracethe user-based principle instead of the polluter-pays principle and, insome cases, they have elements of a conditional cash transfer program.Third, from a geographical perspective, PES programs are lexible andadaptive to local, regional, national and international scales. Despitethe advantages from a policy design perspective, PES programs presenta set of issues and barriers at the implementation stage, especially withindeveloping world contexts where a set of preconditions must be in placein order for PES programs to work well.