Making Nature Count: enhancing payments for environmental service initiatives in Ecuador and Colombia

Abstract

It is a joint initiative between CIFOR (PI Dr Sven Wunder) and Ohio State University's Faculty of Latin American Studies (Co-PI Dr Douglas Southgate) and focuses on emerging payments-for-environmental-services (PES) schemes in Ecuador and Columbia. This region has remarkably high biodiversity by global standards, but much of it is threatened by habitat loss and degradation through logging, transformation to pasture, and expanding small-scale agriculture. Various approaches are being tried to reverse this, including recently different forms of PES and other economic incentives and innovative conservation financing mechanisms. Many of the initiatives are emerging in isolation, with little opportunity for those involved ' buyers, sellers and intermediaries ' to share experiences and build a broader body of knowledge and understanding.