Social-ecological enabling conditions for payments for ecosystem services

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The concept of "enabling conditions" centers on conditions that facilitate approaches to addressing social and ecological challenges. Although multiple fields have independently addressed the concept of enabling conditions, the literature lacks a shared understanding or integration of concepts. We propose a more synthesized understanding of enabling conditions beyond disciplinary boundaries by focusing on the enabling conditions that influence the implementation of a range of environmental policies termed payments for ecosystem services (PES). Through an analysis of key literature from different disciplinary perspectives, we examined how researchers and practitioners refer to and identify enabling conditions within the context of PES. Through our synthesis, we identified 24 distinct enabling conditions organized within 4 broad themes: biophysical, economic, governance, and social-cultural conditions. We found that the literature coalesces around certain enabling conditions, such as strong ecosystem science and existing institutions, regardless of disciplinary background or journal audience. We also observed key differences in how authors perceive the direction of influence for property type, program objectives, and number of actors. Additionally, we noted an emphasis on the importance of the contextual nature of many enabling conditions that may cause certain conditions to have a disproportionate impact on successful implementation in some circumstances. Unraveling the relative importance of specific enabling conditions in diverse contexts remains a research frontier. Ultimately, no single disciplinary perspective is likely to provide all necessary insights for PES creation, and given the intertwined nature of enabling conditions, practitioners need to consider insights from multiple dimensions. Our work suggests opportunities to better connect diverse conversations through integration of concepts, a common vocabulary, and a synthetic framework.

Payments for Ecosystem Services as a Policy Mix: Demonstrating the institutional analysis and development framework on conservation policy instruments

“…Early PES research has noted that context matters for the interpretation of PES impacts (Landell‐Mills and Porras, ). The growing literature on the classification of PES also emphasizes the need to characterize context (Wunder, ; Porras et al , ; Sommerville et al , ; Swallow et al , ; Muradian et al , ; Vatn, ; Karsenty, ; Shelley, ; Pirard, ; Tacconi, ; van Noordwijk et al , ; Wunder, ; Hausknost et al , ; Huber‐Stearns et al , ). Syntheses of PES findings increasingly point to institutional and socio‐ecological contextual factors in explaining its impacts (Wunder, ; Wunder et al , ; Angelsen, ; Greiber, ; Muradian et al , ; Pascual et al , ; Vatn, ; Ferraro, ; Corbera, ; Raes et al , ).…”

“…Fletcher and Büscher () note that much of the recent literature (Vatn, ; Dempsey and Robertson, ; Pirard and Lapeyre, ; Gómez‐Baggethun and Muradian, ; Van Hecken et al , ) argues that PES is not a market instrument or neoliberal because of the substantial mix of public funding and regulation of PES implementation on the ground. Yet, the interaction between the institutional context factors and the design of the PES arrangements has not been thoroughly analysed (Huber‐Stearns et al , ).…”

Global state and potential scope of investments in watershed services for large cities

“…In some cases, as with Colombia, where four of their seven large cities employ IWS, there may be national level programs, legal instruments, or concerted NGO efforts to initiate and support IWS 9 , 11 , 26 , 27 . As hypothesized by previous research 22 , while not all variables are needed for IWS to exist in a city, a combination of sufficient enabling conditions such as political support 28 , strong conservation need 29 , or outside conservation funding 30 could provide sufficient conditions for an IWS program to emerge. We emphasize that knowledge of which conditions are critical in specific contexts would be important for IWS program design, program success, and long term IWS sustainability.…”

“…A variety of disciplinary perspectives such as those from economics 16 – 18 , political science 6 , 19 , 20 , and ecology 21 hypothesize specific factors that influence the establishment of ecosystems services strategies such as IWS. We define these enabling conditions as factors that increase the likelihood of a change in governance approach, strategy, or management regime 22 . Though much of the research on enabling conditions for ecosystem services programs has been theoretical or has only evaluated specific cases, a recent synthesis of the literature on payments for ecosystem services programs identified 24 distinct enabling conditions (Fig.…”

Freshwater biodiversity conservation through source water protection: Quantifying the potential and addressing the challenges

“…Species are not distributed uniformly within catchments and especially not within ecoregions (Abell et al, 2008). Source water protection programmes rarely encompass entire catchments, and many existing programmes are located at relatively higher elevations with smaller catchments (Huber-Stearns et al, 2017;Romulo et al, 2018); in these systems, the species richness among freshwater taxa such as fish is most likely to be lower, yet a significant diversity of groups of species and functional assemblages critical for conservation may occur (Matthews, 1998;Pease, González-Díaz, Rodiles-Hernández, & Winemiller, 2012). Although water-related benefits will be transmitted downstream, these benefits are likely to attenuate with distance, presumably with reduced benefits for freshwater species as the distance from source water-related activities increases.…”