State Forestry Incentives and Community Stewardship: A Political Ecology of Payments and Compensation for Ecosystem Services in Guatemala’s Highlands

Abstract

Muchos programas de pagos por servicios ambientales (PSA) en América Latina persiguen motivar la protección del medio ambiente por medio de la valuación de los servicios que generan para la sociedad, y a través de ello proporcionar fondos para el desarrollo local. Este artículo se enfoca en los programas de incentivos forestales de Guatemala los cuales han experimentado una rápida expansión. Nuestro análisis pretende mostrar la complejidad de una modalidad de PSA que compensa a los participantes por buenas prácticas de gestión forestal. Desde el enfoque de la política ecológica, investigamos el impacto de estos incentivos con respecto a los beneficios para los participantes locales y el acceso a los recursos en dos municipios del altiplano. Los participantes en el área rural a través del buen manejo de los bosques, han aprovechado la oportunidad de recibir pagos por esfuerzos de conservación preexistentes, motivando también a organizaciones comunitarias a inscribirse a estos programas. La inscripción en los programas no obstaculiza la continuidad en los beneficios que resultan de sus tierras, pero la participación en el PSA también implica la apertura de los bosques manejados tradicionalmente por indígenas al control estatal tecnócrata. Los programas pueden incrementar los ingresos económicos de los hogares rurales en pobreza por un tiempo limitado pero con frecuencia estos programas privilegian a los hombres jefes de familia que poseen tierras suficientes para la inscripción. Nuestro argumento es que para estos participantes estos incentivos forestales no mercantilizados pueden tener la flexibilidad para satisfacer las necesidades de los pequeños poseedores de tierra, un resultado que no se encuentran en los programas de PSA basados en el mercado y enfocados en la producción de servicios ecosistémicos específicos. Esta investigación puede ofrecer indicios importantes para el programa de REDD+ (United Nations initiative for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), ya que destaca los beneficios sociales y ecológicos de la administración comunitaria e indígena de bosques y la importancia de priorizar la distribución amplia de los fondos REDD+ a los poseedores que mantienen actividades forestales sostenibles.

Beyond Market Logics: Payments for Ecosystem Services as Alternative Development Practices in the Global South

“…On the one hand, structures such as development pathways, which include economic, environmental and political context as well as local institutional, social and cultural norms, clearly shape the specific ways in which PES theory will be adopted, adapted and applied in practice (Bétrisey et al, 2018;Osborne and Shapiro-Garza, 2018;Rodríguez-Robayo and Merino-Perez, 2017;vonHedemann and Osborne, 2016). At the same time, structure alone does not account for the many observed deviations from the economistic, neoliberal model of PES.…”

“…Existing scholarship notes that the complex processes through which institutional bricolage (Cleaver, 2012) is enacted, the embedding of these primarily economic transactions in the historically determined and politically influenced institutions in the site of implementation (Polanyi, 1944), offers opportunities for the original model of PES to be adapted, hybridized or transformed (vonHedemann and Osborne, 2016;Ishihara et al, 2017;McElwee, 2012;McElwee et al, 2014;Shapiro-Garza, 2013a;Van Hecken et al, 2015). In turn, these embedded, but constantly evolving, institutions influence the ability of PES to alter local practices and of engaged actors to adopt, contest or adapt initiatives to meet their own priorities.…”

“…These assumptions include the belief that the degradation of ecosystems can be counteracted with the provision of direct, financial incentives with prices set by a market; that voluntary participants will engage in conservation efforts if the incentives are sufficient to cover opportunity costs; that transaction costs will be low; and that the effectiveness of such efforts can be easily quantified and measured (Muradian et al, 2010;Vatn, 2010;Wunder, 2005). A growing body of research has begun to explore the dynamic processes through which 'actually existing' PES initiatives (Bakker, 2010) have defied the logic of this model as they are altered and adapted to conform to specific development pathways and local contexts, influenced and altered through the situated agency of the actors involved (McElwee et al, 2014;Hendrickson and Corbera, 2015;Milne and Adams, 2012;Osborne and Shapiro-Garza, 2018;Shapiro-Garza, 2013b;Van Hecken et al, 2015;vonHedemann and Osborne, 2016).…”

Transitions in Payments for Ecosystem Services in Guatemala: Embedding Forestry Incentives into Rural Development Value Systems

“…Advocates of PINPEP in fact purposefully excluded marketization of ecosystem services from the programme (ibid.). Other PES programmes more focused on measured carbon, for example, have led to much greater loss of access to the other benefits gained from the land (Osborne, 2011;Osborne and Shapiro-Garza, 2018;vonHedemann and Osborne, 2016). Quantifying selected ecosystem services within the incentives would lead to the prioritization of these measurable outcomes and sideline other objectives that are not as quantifiable, such as values that are prioritized by the sector comunitario (Kolinjivadi et al, 2017;McElwee, 2017).…”

The importance of communal forests in carbon storage: Using and destabilizing carbon measurement in understanding Guatemala's payments for ecosystem services

“…The design of PES initiatives varies, but they broadly function as an agreement between ecosystem service users (or their NGO or government proxy) and providers where some sort of compensation given to the providers is “conditional on agreed rules of natural resource management” (Wunder 2015, 8). The format of these programs ranges from market exchanges for measured carbon sequestration to government subsidies to improve ecosystem services in general (vonHedemann and Osborne 2016). These various forms of PES are being rolled out within existing governance systems, interacting with complex land‐use histories, social values, economic systems, and ecosystems (Larner 2003; McCarthy 2005; Shapiro‐Garza et al 2020).…”