Incentives for climate mitigation in the land use sector—the effects of payment for environmental services on environmental and socioeconomic outcomes in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A mixed‐methods systematic review

Abstract

Unsustainable practices in the land use sector contribute to climate change through the release of greenhouse gases. Payment for environmental services (PESs) provide economic incentives to reduce the negative environmental impacts of land use and are a popular approach to mitigate climate change in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Some PES programmes also aim to improve socioeconomic outcomes and reduce poverty. This systematic review examines the effect of programmes on environmental and socioeconomic outcomes. We identified 44 quantitative impact evaluations and 60 qualitative studies of PES programmes for inclusion in the review, to assess both the effects of PES and identify context, design and implementation features that may influence PES effectiveness. The studies covered 18 programmes from 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and Pacific, South Asia and Sub‐Saharan Africa. The review finds that PES may increase household income, reduce deforestation and improve forest cover, but the findings are, however, based on low and very low quality evidence from a small number of programmes and should be treated with caution. Qualitative evidence indicates that several factors influence whether PES programmes are likely to be effective in different contexts and suggests that the inclusion of strong governance structures and the effective targeting of both locations and participants may improve intervention effectiveness. Funders, implementing agencies and researchers should collaborate to develop a coordinated programme of rigorous, mixed‐methods impact evaluation implemented across contexts. Until such evidence is available, PES programmes remain a high‐risk strategy for climate change mitigation.

The impacts of agroforestry interventions on agricultural productivity, ecosystem services, and human well‐being in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A systematic review

“…While there are no similar reviews of agroforestry interventions, previous reviews have synthesized evidence on the effectiveness of certification schemes and PES programs, which were policy instruments used for several agroforestry interventions included in our review (Oya et al, 2017; Snilstveit et al, 2019). Oya et al (2017) reviewed 43 quantitative and 136 qualitative studies and found that certification schemes tend to increase prices and income from produce but had no consistent effect on wages or household income.…”

“…They two PES studies we included were also included by Snilstveit et al (2019). They found the PES programs may increase household income and improve environmental outcomes across all PES programs included, which held true when we considered only agroforestry PES programs.…”

“…Quasi-experimental designs use rigorous statistical methods to adjust for nonrandom assignment between treatment and control groups to make causal inferences. We include the following types of quantitative impact evaluation studies (Snilstveit et al, 2019): Ideally, studies would have included both baseline and postintervention data. However, given the small number of studies meeting this criterion, we include studies with only post-intervention outcome data as long as they use some method to control for selection bias and potential confounding factors.…”

PROTOCOL: The effects of small class sizes on students’ academic achievement, socioemotional development, and well‐being in special education

“…Given a sufficient amount of included qualitative studies, we will conduct a thematic synthesis following the procedures presented in Thomas and Harden (2008) and applied in other Campbell systematic reviews such as that of Snilstveit et al, 2019). A thematic synthesis has three stages, which are interwoven and to an extent overlapping.…”

Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Payments and Property Rights on Forest User Decisions

“…However, state ownership is often weakly enforced in practise or is locally contested (Unruh, 2008;Rakotonarivo et al, 2018). While much can be learned from reviews on the importance of various contextual, design, and implementation features on the effectiveness of PES schemes (e.g., Börner et al, 2017;Snilsveit et al, 2019;Wunder et al, 2020), evidence is missing for how the effectiveness of PES in incentivising pro-conservation behaviour might vary between land tenure systems such as communal and individual ownership of forestlands. Yet, pilot or real-world interventions to address this knowledge gap would be difficult to implement because of practical costs and ethical concerns.…”