Paying for environmental services from agricultural lands: an example from the northern Everglades

Abstract

Recreation 46w ww ww w. .f fr ro on nt ti ie er rs si in ne ec co ol lo og gy y. .o or rg g © © The Ecological Society of America A gricultural lands supply many ecosystem services desired by society, beyond merely providing food and fiber (Clay 2004). Cultivated lands and grazing systems account for nearly 50% of the global land surface (Asner et al. 2004; MA 2004). Although agriculture produces food and fiber often at the expense of biodiversity, water quality, and soil conservation (eg Bennett and Balvanera 2007;Kareiva et al. 2007), alternative policies and management of these lands could increase the provision of multiple ecosystem services (Boody et al. 2005;Robertson and Swinton 2005;Swinton et al. 2006).Agri-environmental programs that are designed to increase provision of environmental services from agricultural land rarely pay directly for the documented services produced. Rather, they either offer subsidies or cost-sharing for implementing best management practices (BMPs) or taking land out of production, or use regulations to limit adverse environmental effects (Feather et al. 1999;Kleijn and Sutherland 2003). Government programs often provide incentives to adopt agency-prescribed management practices without determining whether the desired environmental benefits are achieved ). An alternative approach is to pay directly for environmental services produced through Pay-forEnvironmental Services (PES) programs (Ferraro and Kiss 2002;Pagiola et al. 2004Pagiola et al. , 2007Wunder et al. 2008). These programs draw from the concept of valuing ecosystem services (eg Daily et al. 2000; Tallis and Karieva 2005;Brown et al. 2007), although designing workable PES programs from this concept is a distant reality.Of the many policy and technical requirements of PES programs, first and foremost is the need to identify environmental services valued by buyers who are willing and able to pay for them. The theory is that by focusing on environmental results and not just practices, market-like programs will encourage producer-sellers to innovate and seek cost efficiencies in providing services ( There is growing interest in implementing market-like programs that would pay farmers and ranchers for producing environmental services (beyond those that generate food and fiber) from working agricultural lands. I In n a a n nu ut ts sh he el ll l: :• There is increasing interest in developing Pay-forEnvironmental Services (PES) programs to encourage the provision of multiple ecosystem services from agricultural lands, but few examples of such programs exist • The Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP) has been designing a PES program in which state agencies pay ranchers for producing environmental serviceswater storage and reduced phosphorus loading -on private ranchlands in south-central Florida • The PES concept in FRESP differs from traditional cost-share or conservation programs, in that the intent is to pay ranchers for providing documented environmental services, rather than to offer cost-sharing opti...

Payments for Ecosystem Services—the Case of Forests

“…Up-front payments are usually desirable when PES activities involve setup investments, whereas output-based payments are frequently paid after ES delivery [86]. In some government-financed schemes, up-front payments are the only possibility due to the annual budgetary allocations [43].…”

Poverty reduction, environmental protection and ecosystem services: A prospective theory for sustainable development

“…Price policies and economic incentives are usually based on reliable valuation of ecosystem services and dedicated capital flow to link the service demanders and providers. It is very difficult to implement such projects on a large scale (Bohlen et al, 2009). As for the global-scale need for poverty reduction and environmental protection, it is utterly inadequate to simply undertake eco-compensation at the local scale.…”

Understanding Relationships among Agro-Ecosystem Services Based on Emergy Analysis in Luancheng County, North China

“…The increasing focus on ecosystem services research started from the recognition and monetary valuation of the benefit flows from ecosystems to society, such as mapping supply and demand and assessing the current and future status of ecosystem services [6]. The research has progressed in recent times to the mechanism of providing ecosystem services and management based on different ecosystem services, using different methods [7][8][9][10][11][12]. While managing multiple ecosystem services simultaneously is important, it is also extremely challenging.…”