Household’s Allocation of Payment for Ecosystem Services in “La Antigua” Watershed, Veracruz, México

• Author: Erin C. Pischke,Kelly W. Jones,Kathleen E. Halvorsen,Theresa Selfa,Veronique Sophie Avila-Foucat,Karla J. Rodriguez-Robayo,David Torrez,Jacob Salcone
• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Date: 01 June 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/10704965211003148
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Journal of Environment &

Development

2021, Vol. 30(2) 191–213

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/10704965211003148

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Household’s Allocation of

Payment for Ecosystem

Services in “La Antigua”

Watershed, Veracruz,

M´

exico

Veronique Sophie Avila-Foucat

1

,

Karla J. Rodriguez-Robayo

2

, Kelly W.

Jones

3

, Erin C. Pischke

4

, David Torrez

5

,

Jacob Salcone

6

, Theresa Selfa

7

, and

Kathleen E. Halvorsen

8

Abstract

Payment for ecosystem services (PES) is an environmental policy looking to improve

ecosystem conservation and well-being. Assets have been used to evaluate socio-

economic outcomes of the program; however, the allocation of PES at a household

level and its explaining variables have not been addressed. Thus, the aim of this article is

to study the allocation of PES in nondurable and durable goods and the determinants of

this household decision. Results from the La Antigua watershed located in Mexico

indicate that the PES program is primarily used in durable goods, mainly on health,

house infrastructure, agricultural inputs, and reforestation. Econometric models show

1

Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, y Laboratorio Nacional de Resiliencia Costera, Universidad

Nacional Autónoma de M´

exico (UNAM), M´

exico

2

Centro de Investigación Tibaitat´

a, Corporación Colombiana de investigación Agropecuaria, Colombia

3

Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

4

Ecosystem Workforce Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

5

Posgrado en Econom´

ıa, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de M´

exico (UNAM), M´

exico

6

United Nations Environment Program, Geneva, Switzerland

7

Department of Environmental Studies, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of

New York, Syracuse, NY, USA

8

School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University, East Lansing,

MI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Veronique Sophie Avila-Foucat, Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de

M´

exico, Circuito Mario de La Cueva, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacan 04510, Mexico.

Email: savila@iiec.unam.mx and savila_1@yahoo.com.mx

that this allocation to one or several assets depends on the average age of the

household head, on participation in a community organization, and on the average

income. In contrast, government transfers are not signif‌icant. Based on this, policy

recommendations are made related to the program’s socioeconomic outcomes and

alignment with other conditional cash transfer.

Keywords

payment for ecosystem services, assets, conditional cash transfer, Mexico,

environmental policy

Introduction

The Sustainable Development Goals encourage actions in all countries toward

eradicating poverty, protecting the environment, and guaranteeing peace and

prosperity (United Nations, 2015). Thus, public policies need to guide efforts to

reach these goals. In many countries, payment for ecosystem services (PES) is

a common policy instrument targeting environmental and human well-being

outcomes. PES programs were conceptualized as economic instruments to re-

duce market failures related to natural resource conserva tion. Wunder (2015)

def‌ines PES as voluntary transactions between ecosystem service users and ser-

vice providers, subject to agreed rules related to the management and generation of

ecosystem services.

Initially, PES was conceptualized as a market-based approach; however, the

real-world implementation of these programs has tended more toward a public or

a hybrid line where a transaction between providers of the ecosystem service and

the users involves several institutions, such as local governments and non-

governmental organizations (Muradian et al., 2013;Rodr´

ıguez-Robayo & ´

Avila

Foucat, 2013,2014;Wunder et al., 2018). In Mexico, where this study takes place,

the PES program was initially implemented by the national government in a public

approach (federal) due to the diff‌iculties in marketing ecosystem services but also due

to the opposition of neoliberal policies by landowners (McAfee & Shapiro, 2010). But

in the last decade, Mexico has started matching funds, that is, a hybrid PES approach

that can involve government, nongovernment, and private actors.

Matching funds are similar to the federal program in that they are also based on

compensating ecosystem service suppliers conditioned on the providers maintaining

ecosystem services through concrete natural resource management actions such as soil

and forest conservation. Most of the time, this compensation is paid in cash (Costedoat

et al., 2016) but at other times in kind. Conditionality is intended to increase the

environmental outcomes that the program wants to reach, and often, land cover is used

as an indirect measure of hydrological, biodiversity, or carbon ecosystem services

targeted by the program (Alix-Garcia et al., 2012;B¨

orner et al., 2017). Based on this

conditionality on ecosystem services conservation (or land cover related to this

192 The Journal of Environment & Development 30(2)