Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs are an emergent form of environmental governance that aim to provide motivation for environmental protection and, often, funds for local development. Many of these programs, which incentivize conservation activities through payments to those who own or manage land, focus on forested areas. Despite the rapid growth of hundreds of PES programs across the globe, there is little consensus on their development or conservation successes. This study explores how the financial valuation of nature through PES programs affects local livelihoods and ecological benefits of forests, using Guatemala’s national forestry incentive programs as a case study. These programs, known locally as PINFOR, PINPEP, and PROBOSQUE, pay rural Guatemalan land managers annually for reforestation or existing forest conservation. Specifically, this research investigates (1) changes in existing forest governance and management practices, as well as tensions that emerge through shifts in land use; (2) changes in access to land resources, including benefits and opportunity costs; and (3) changes in carbon storage potential. These questions are particularly pertinent in the Western Highlands of Guatemala where this study took place because many indigenous Maya groups maintain communal forests despite a history of state-sanctioned exploitation and expropriation (Elías et al., 2009). 

Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the co-PI completed extensive participant observation at forest-related activities, over 120 semi-structured interviews with government officials, non-government organization employees, program participants, and neighboring non-participants, and 30 forestry plots assessing carbon capture on private and communal lands both receiving and not receiving incentive payments. Results indicate that the incentive programs have transitioned from a form of PES that acted as a timber subsidy to interventions more concerned with conservation and development needs among historically marginalized populations. These changes are significant in that indigenous groups and communal forest users have used the incentives as a platform to argue for state recognition of their conservation activities that provide benefits for others at multiple scales (local, national, and international).  However, the benefits of the incentives are severely tempered by restrictions in enrollment due to the programs’ ties to land tenure (and thus linked to histories of dispossession) and the continued prioritization of incentives for large-scale landowners who hold legal titles in the national cadaster.

Carbon capture plots also revealed that communally-managed forests contain a significantly higher amount of carbon than private lands, and the presence or absence of an incentive payment is much less influential on carbon content than land tenure. This indicates the importance of utilizing the incentives to enhance, rather than harm, existing communal forest management techniques. Many indigenous communal forest user groups have fought to gain access to incentives, despite the programs’ requirements to comply with a state-sanctioned conception of property and forest management guidelines.

This project contributes to debates surrounding PES program design and outcomes through its innovative interdisciplinary approach that mixes both social and natural science methods. In particular, this research fills a gap by returning ecology to political ecological studies by connecting social systems to ecological shifts in carbon capture caused by these PES programs (Walker, 2005). The study additionally contributes the rarely heard voices of neighboring non-participants in PES programs and breaks down assumptions between an increase in protected forest cover and ecosystem system service provision. Results have been published and presented in both English and Spanish in the U.S. and Guatemala, with the intent of influencing Guatemalan program design and informing PES best practices globally. The results of the research become particularly pertinent as the United Nations’ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) expands across the globe, including in Guatemala.

Elías, S., Larson, A., Mendoza, J., 2009. Tenencia de la Tierra, Bosques y Medios de Vida en el Altiplano Occidental de Guatemala.

Walker, P.A., 2005. Political ecology: where is the ecology? Prog. Hum. Geogr. 29, 73–82. doi:10.1191/0309132505ph530pr

Last Modified: 03/14/2018
Modified by: Nicolena R Vonhedemann