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Not the same for everyone: Community views of Mexico's payment for environmental services programmes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2017

LUCIA ALMEIDA-LEÑERO ,
DANIEL REVOLLO-FERNÁNDEZ ,
ANGELA CARO-BORRERO ,
ISABEL RUIZ-MALLÉN ,
ESTEVE CORBERA ,
MARISA MAZARI-HIRIART  and
FERNANDA FIGUEROA
LUCIA ALMEIDA-LEÑERO
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Ciencias – Departamento de Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Mexico City, Mexico
DANIEL REVOLLO-FERNÁNDEZ
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Ecología, Mexico City, Mexico CONACYT-Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Azcapotzalco, Mexico City, Mexico
ANGELA CARO-BORRERO
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Ciencias – Departamento de Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Mexico City, Mexico
ISABEL RUIZ-MALLÉN
Affiliation:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona – Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
ESTEVE CORBERA
Affiliation:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona – Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona – Department of Economics and Economic History, Barcelona, Spain
MARISA MAZARI-HIRIART
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Ecología, Mexico City, Mexico
FERNANDA FIGUEROA*
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Ciencias – Departamento de Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Mexico City, Mexico
*
*Correspondence: Dr. Fernanda Figueroa e-mail: ffigueroa@ciencias.unam.mx
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Summary

Conservation policies have often been designed and implemented assuming that targeted communities are socially and politically homogeneous. Payment for environmental services (PES) programmes have often overlooked intra-community differences, which affect the understanding of implementation requirements and access to benefits, thus underestimating their effects on the programme's legitimacy and impacts. We explore how the views of local communities about the socio-environmental performance and dynamics of Mexico's PES differ within forest communities, considering two groups: local community authorities and the remaining beneficiaries in two different PES programmes. Informed by a nationwide survey, we constructed 35 indicators and found significant differences between these groups for 10 indicators. Local community authorities concentrated knowledge and information, relations with outside actors and control over benefit distribution. We found that community authorities and beneficiaries diverged in their views about the extent to which PES knowledge is shared across community members, how related implementation decisions are pursued and the fairness of benefit distribution, which we argue suggests this is a form of ‘elite capture’ favoured by PES design and implementation. Efforts should be invested in ensuring that PES programme benefits are equitably distributed in order to avoid widening pre-existing social and political asymmetries.

Keywords

elite captureequityforest conservationMexicosocial heterogeneity
Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 201 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2017 

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