Payment for Ecosystem Services and the Challenge of Saving Nature

In a seminal and underappreciated book, Green Imperialism, Grove (1995) explains the rise of a global environmental consciousness as a result of European colonial expansion. Grove details how, by the mid-seventeenth century, “. . . a coherent and relatively organized awareness of the ecological impact of the demands of emergent capitalism and colonial rule started to develop, to grow into a fully fledged understanding of the limited nature of the earth’s natural resources and to stimulate a concomitant awareness of a need for conservation” (p. 6). In particular he documents the growing belief that loss of forests, particularly in island settings, could negatively affect shipping, agriculture, and even the local climate. The colonial powers awoke to the importance of what today would be called ecosystem services and set about trying to restore them and diminish their further degradation. In recent decades humankind’s reliance on the natural world has increasingly been expressed through the concept of ecosystem services. In the time period covered by Grove, ecosystem services were seen as vital for maintaining the economic output of the colonies. Today they are judged important as a way of framing conservation imperatives to convince humans of the value of the natural world. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment began a rapid shift in the concept of ecosystem services from an academic backwater to the mainstream of conservation and environmental policy. Nature noted how recent developments “seem to herald ecosystem services entry into mainstream scientific and political thinking” (Nature 2009:764). Ecosystem services have now become the central metaphor within which to express humanity’s need for the rest of living nature. As the Global Environment Outlook-4 report rightly points out, “As the basis for all ecosystem services, and the foundation for truly sustainable development, biodiversity plays fundamental roles in maintaining and enhancing the well-being of the world’s more than 6.7 billion people, rich and poor, rural and urban alike” (UNEP 2008:160). Important research is being undertaken to establish empirically the value of ecosystem services and their distribution in space and time. The concept of ecosystem services increasingly structures the way conservationists think, the ways they explain the importance of nature to often skeptical policy makers, and the ways they propose to promote its conservation. Is this a good thing? Not entirely. There are risks to the current enthusiasm for the ecosystem services concept. Conservation has a history of placing great faith in new ideas and approaches that appear to offer dramatic solutions to humanity’s chronic disregard for nature (e.g., sustainable development, community conservation, sustainable use, wilderness), only to become disillusioned with them a few years later. The payment for ecosystem services framework fits this model disturbingly well. Like the seductive ideas that preceded it, it is being adopted with great speed, and often without much critical discussion, across the spectrum of conservation policy debate and developing a life of its own independent of its promulgators. There is particular risk with the idea of payments for ecosystem services as an effective way of achieving conservation. The argument goes that people depend on the services provided by ecosystems and that the way to ensure their continued provision is to pay for them— thus ensuring services are sustained and the species and ecosystems providing the services are conserved. Arguments for the importance of conserving ecosystem services and value of payment for ecosystem services as a tool for conservation are typically compelling and carefully crafted. Yet we are worried about the approach of payment for ecosystem services as a conservation strategy. In the spirit of constructive criticism, we outline here seven problems with ecosystem services. If these are addressed, the role of payment for ecosystems services in conservation will be clearer and arguments for conservation itself made stronger. If not, all the research and policy enthusiasm for ecosystem services may turn sour, in the process costing time and invaluable support. First, in a world of relentless pursuit of economic logic, there is a real risk that economic arguments about services valued by humans will overwrite and outweigh noneconomic justifications for conservation. As many advocates for the approach point out, payments for ecosystem services should be one of a set of tools used in pursuit of conservation. Multiple arguments for conservation are