Payments for environmental services (PES) from tourism: a realistic incentive to improve local livelihoods and sustain forest landscapes in Viet Nam's northern highlands

De Groot, Kira (2011). Payments for Environmental Services from tourism – A realistic incentive to improve local livelihoods and sustain forest landscap es in Viet Nam’s northern highlands MSc Thesis, Wageningen University. Payments for Environmental Services (PES) described a s an arrangement where beneficiaries of the environmental services, for example downstream wate r users, hydro-power plants or tourism businesses, provide direct economic incentives to loc al land stewards for the maintenance of forest ecosystems and the associated environmental services such as watershed conservation, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and scenic beauty. Although to urism is by many PES advocates identified as a major user of environmental services, an extensive review of publications and existing PES programs confirmed that so far neither much academic information nor practical experience is available on the interface of PES and tourism. There fore, this thesis combined a theoretical discussion of basic concepts with an empirical analy sis of the current PES practices in Viet Nam, one of the first countries worldwide who applies a PES po licy that regulates payments from tourism. The PES schemes were considered in terms of a policy arr angement. This policy arrangement approach (PAA) emphasized how PES arrangements entail a new w ay of steering in the environmental policy domain and require and foster fundamental changes betwe en state, private sector and civil society relationships. The main challenge in implementing t ourism-related PES schemes lies in the appropriate design of the institutional framework. This thesis developed such a framework for the specific case of Ba Be National Park. It describes h ow payments from tourism can be bundled with payments from hydro power plants and flow into a loc ally established PES fund from which payments are then dispersed to contracted local land st ewards. Bundling of payments increases the chances to reach payment rates that are high enough to make a significant contribution to improving local livelihoods. Individual contributions from tourism are in the pilot schemes still comparably small, but once measures to up-scale the schemes and to include mainstream and high- end tourism are taken, tourism-related PES can be a p romising sustainable financing mechanism for conservation.

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