Payments for Ecosystem Services in Latin America (PESILA)

The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment documents the trends in losses of ecosystem services, especially on lands outside traditional protected areas and proposed payments for ecosystem services (PES) among the policy mechanisms to mitigate these losses. The core idea of PES is that external ecosystem service beneficiaries make direct, contractual and conditional payments to local landholders and users in return for adopting practices that secure ecosystem conservation and restoration. From focusing on cons erving and promoting individual ecosystem services, the regional research agenda has moved towards assessments of policies to provide multiple (bundled) ecosystem services in land-use, and most recently with other public policy objectives such as poverty alleviation, protection of indigenous rights and food security. PESILAs main aim is to develop a full scale research proposal that will activate a wider network of researchers in Latin America and Europe, involving Norwegian and EU funding and research partners not present in the current pre-proposal. This will be achieved, inter alia, by taking advantage of established networks of PES researchers in Latin America, as well as networks through on-going EU projects on ecosystem services valuation. The pre-project will also review tools for the design of bundled payments that provide balanced incentives for multiple ecosystem services, and for strategic environmental assessment of trade-offs with other policy objectives in Latin America.