Decoding Payment for Ecosystem Services

The project we are going to work involves understanding implementation of a Payment for Ecosystem/Environmental Services (PES) model in the Thua-Thien province and Community Forestry Management. To be honest, PES is not a topic on which I had much, or rather any, knowledge when we started out.

I have spent the last few months trying to understand PES in general and PES in Vietnam. To be fair this is a topic which has a ton of resources out there. There is no dearth of articles and books to read, videos to watch and more. As a team, we also managed to focus on PES for several projects for different classes and this has been helpful because it allowed us to engage with an area where we will be working and make it count for a grade :). We focused on PES in Minnesota for an Agriculture class - the idea is to be able to adopt a compare and contrast model when we return. This also gave us a chance to interview several people including researchers at the U of M, policymakers, sellers, staff from environmentally-focused non-profits and more. We developed an outline for an e-study module for another class and that was an interesting exercise as well. While  I fully expect and am prepared for our project to change once we hit the ground, I think this work will not go waste, if only because my awareness of environmental topics is very limited.

So for anyone who is curious, PES is a model which values the services provided by different ecosystems to human beings. These can include watershed management, biodiversity, aesthetic beauty, carbon sequestration and many more. In this model, buyers/users and sellers of services are identified and a framework is set up to channel money from the buyers to the sellers. While a lot of the definitions I have come across in literature defines these as ‘voluntary transactions’, there are several mandatory models as well - for example in Vietnam it is the government that has enforced the PES model. Another thing I find interesting as a former Economics student is that this is within a market-based framework - the idea that one can value the services provided by the environment.  Valuing carbon sequestration is something that a United Nations program - Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) also focuses on and based on what I have read so far, it seems that at least in Vietnam, the long-term goal is for PES and REDD+ to converge. 

I plan to use this blog to share both what I learn from the literature and get to observe in the field in the hopes that a. it will serve as a record for me to go back to in the future and b. that it may be of interest to some of you out there!