Response to Comment on “Using ecological thresholds to evaluate the costs and benefits of set-asides in a biodiversity hotspot”

Abstract

Finney claims that we did not include transaction costs while assessing the economic costs of a set-aside program in Brazil and that accounting for them could potentially render large payments for environmental services (PES) projects unfeasible. We agree with the need for a better understanding of transaction costs but provide evidence that they do not alter the feasibility of the set-aside scheme we proposed.

A comparative study of transaction costs of payments for forest ecosystem services in Vietnam

“…This obviously requires trust and transparency within the group. Our second recommendation is to make better use of remote sensing techniques and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), since these are expected to help (i) bring down TC considerably as a result of less need for field monitoring (Banks-Leite et al, 2015), and (ii) facilitate efficient and accurate monitoring of forest areas, boundaries, and forest quality. For example, the PFES scheme in Son La is mainly based on existing records of a household's land allocation in the early 2000s, which are not considered accurate and up to date (To et al, 2012).…”