Beyond the Money: The need to Diversify Payment for Environmental Services and REDD Mechanism.

Salt Lake City, Utah, October 01, 2014.

By Marco A. Gonzalez C and Ana M. Plata F

Salt Lake City was the host of the largest international congress related with forest science. One of the topics discussed on different sessions was about Payment for Ecosystem Services, and its social economic and environmental implications.   

In a recent paper published in the journal BioScience, "Social Equity Matters in Payment for Ecosystem Services" the authors argue that focusing too much on efficiency of budgets may actually involve a high cost for conservation.

Therefore, there is a need to reevaluate the politics on  REDD mechanism that generally requires large forest properties, high transaction cost and in some cases, the exclusion of small properties and local communities. and REDD mechanism. For more information: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1505/ifor.10.3.538

On this sense the designs of a variety gamma of compensations and the participation of multi-stakeholders on this programs still represents a big challenge aims to show for the society a real sustainable development. It seems like the Polluter Pays principle has received exaggerated attention if compared with others important principles contemplate on theoretical works of international environmental law. Therefore and according to Leite (2010) all the principles of environmental law   but especially the Polluter Pays principle, should be combined with others as the citizenship participation, information, democracy, the principle of prohibition of ecological retrogression, and the respect to a minimum ecological existential.¹  

It’s imperative that new mechanism of PES and REED+ must be include small stakeholders and increase the participation of local communities. On that regards,  my recommendation is to add the following elements:

•      Technical support in agroforestry practices aims to explore the comparative advantages of the diverse regions.
•         Technical support to improve the cultural and recreational services that are offered by ecosystems 
•          Execute programs of environmental education to increase the awareness and to keep the traditional knowledge.