{"title":"The Devil in the Detail: A Practical Guide on Designing Payments for Environmental Services","authors":"S. Engel","doi":"10.1561/101.00000076","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Payments for environmental services (PES) have become a popular approach to address environmental degradation. However, evidence on its effectiveness is scarce and rather mixed. PES is not a panacea, but there are many cases where PES can be a promising tool. Yet, poor PES design translates into poor performance of the instrument. PES design is a complex task; the devil is in the detail of a number of PES design features. The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance in dealing with this complexity through a comprehensive review of PES design that is accessible to both academics and practitioners. Practitioner guidelines on deciding whether PES is the best approach and for selecting among alternative design features are presented. PES design has to start from a careful understanding of the specific ecological and socio-economic context. We now know a lot about which design features are best suited to which context. It is time to put these insights into practice.","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":"9 1","pages":"131-177"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2016-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/101.00000076","citationCount":"170","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000076","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 170
Abstract
Payments for environmental services (PES) have become a popular approach to address environmental degradation. However, evidence on its effectiveness is scarce and rather mixed. PES is not a panacea, but there are many cases where PES can be a promising tool. Yet, poor PES design translates into poor performance of the instrument. PES design is a complex task; the devil is in the detail of a number of PES design features. The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance in dealing with this complexity through a comprehensive review of PES design that is accessible to both academics and practitioners. Practitioner guidelines on deciding whether PES is the best approach and for selecting among alternative design features are presented. PES design has to start from a careful understanding of the specific ecological and socio-economic context. We now know a lot about which design features are best suited to which context. It is time to put these insights into practice.
期刊介绍:
Environmental and resource economics has become a broad topic making connections with many other subdisciplines in economics as well as the natural and physical sciences. It has also experience a significant growth in research such that the literature is exploding in terms of the number of topics addressed, the number of methodological approaches being applied and the sheer number of articles being written. Coupled with the high degree of specialization that characterizes modern academic research, this proliferation of topics and methodologies makes it impossible for anyone, even those who specialize in the subject, to keep up with developments in the field.