Payments for environmental servic es are normally discussed in terms of ‘ buyers ’ and ‘ sellers ’ – as if there are only two sides of a coin. Taking this analogy, we may see the ‘ brokers ’ (those that act as a third party between the buyers and the sellers) as the third side of the coin. However, the chance that a coin will land on this side and reach a stable equilibrium is small – it normally falls to either of the two other sides. What is presented are twenty ‘aspects’ of Rewarding the Upland Poor in Asia for Envir onmental Services Th ey Provide (RUPES), suggesting that rewarding upland poor for environmental services ES is a well-polished diamond, rather than a coin. All these aspects can co-exist and all reveal insights into what is at the core, yet none of them are the full and only truth. We start with an ecologists view that not all environmental services are the same (or some are more so than others), and suggest that the different phases and stages in histories of land use change offer different opportunities for protection and rehabilitation. An economics perspective blends in with insights ranging from some firm ‘micro’ economical theory of how farmers may modify their decisions in the face of changing price incentives to the fully empirical ‘macro’ perspectives of how the concept of ‘economic growth’ can and should be corrected for non-sustainable resource exploi tation. We then move to a social perspective and some of the ethical questions of whether access to environmental services is part of the ‘human birth right’ or whether they can be seen as subject to economic transactions. Looking at ‘ management ’ aspects of multi- stakeholder Integrated National Resource Managed (INRM) we see that ‘lack of trust’ and conflict are dominant aspects of the current ‘loose-loose’ for both the rural poor and environmental services, and that stopping bad pr actice might initially be more effective than looking for new mechanisms. The distinction between ‘ bonding ’ and ‘ bridging ’ forms of social capital then leads us to a ‘ political ecology ’ of trust as the basis for successful partnership between the poor providers of ES and the (slightly) better off beneficiaries
Année de publication
2004
Auteurs
Chandler F J; Tomich T P; van Noordwijk, M.
Langue
English
Mots clés
environmental impact, poverty, stakeholders
