Browsing by Author "Platais, G."

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  • Can payments for environmental services help reduce poverty? An exploration of the issues and the evidence to date in Latin America
    Pagiola, Stefano; Arcenas, A.; Platais, G. (Elsevier, 2005)
    This paper examines the main ways in which Payments for Environmental Services (PES) might affect poverty. PES may reduce poverty mainly by making payments to poor natural resource managers in upper watersheds. The extent of the impact depends on how many PES participants are in fact poor, on the poor's ability to participate, and on the amounts paid. Although PES programs are not designed for poverty reduction, there can be important synergies when program design is well thought out and local conditions are favorable. Possible adverse effects can occur where property rights are insecure or if PES programs encourage less labor-intensive practices.
  • Ensuring that the poor benefit from payments for environmental services
    Pagiola, Stefano; Arcenas, A.; Platais, G. (2003)
    Systems of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) are being increasingly used to finance conservation in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, and elsewhere. A critical dimension of these systems concerns their impact on the poor. This paper reviews the main linkages that have been hypothesized to exist between PES systems and poverty, drawing on data from the main on-going and planned PES systems in Latin America, and particularly on those supported by the World Bank. The main poverty-reduction impact of PES is likely to come from payments made to often poor natural resource managers in upper watersheds. The extent to which this will occur depends on how many potential participants in PES programs are in fact poor, and on the amount of the payments. There are, however, also some potential threats. Dealing with many small, poor land users can impose high transaction costs, thus threatening to cut the poor off from participating in PES systems. Careful design of the system is needed to avoid this problem, as in Costa Rica's development of collective contracting mechanisms to reduce transaction costs. Where property rights are insecure, the poor who depend on forests and other natural ecosystems for their livelihood may be displaced as PES increases the value of those ecosystems. This seems to have been an issue in Colombia's Cauca Valley, for example. The landless poor may find themselves affected, either positively or negatively, by labor market and other changes induced by the establishment of PES systems (for example, they may be harmed if the conservation practices encouraged by PES systems are less labor intensive than the practices they replace). It is in many cases too early to provide conclusive answers to these questions. The paper focuses on clearly identifying several concrete research hypotheses to be studied in a two-year research program we are undertaking, and reviewing available evidence for any initial lessons.
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    Payments for Environmental Services
    Pagiola, Stefano; Platais, G. (The World Bank, 2002)
    Despite their value, environmental services are often lost as land users typically receive no compensation for the services their land generates for others and therefore have no economic reason to take these services into account in making decisions about land use. The payment for environmental services (PES) approach is an example of efforts to develop systems in which land users are paid for the environmental services they generate. The central principles of PES are that those who provide environmental services should be compensated for doing so and that those who receive the services should pay for their provision. Aspects concerning PES include: identifying environmental services; financing compensation for environmental services; developing effective compensation systems; and establishing the institutional framework.
  • Payments for environmental services: From theory to practice
    Pagiola, Stefano; Platais, G. (2006)
    This paper aims to help in the design and implementation of PES programs. It draws primarily on the experience of the World Bank in helping its member countries develop Payments for Environmental Services(PES) programs, but also on a broader review of similar efforts.