Understanding the diversity of institutions for Ecosystem Services provision: a tentative integrative conceptual framework

The ecosystem services (ES) framework has been developed to analyze relationships between the ecosystemsand human activities, and further has been used to promote conservation market based instruments, and especially payments for ecosystem (or environmental) services (PES). Whereas most of the literature debates the concept and governance of PES, especially its market or non-market nature, and proposes typologies of PES, the comprehensive analysis of the possible institutions and instruments that can be mobilized for conservation purposes have not been in a systematic way. This communication proposes to provide a framework to analyze the diversity of institutional arrangement that can be mobilized to maintain or foster ES provision. Reviewing existing literature on ES as well as economic and social science on policy instruments, this framework puts emphasis on biophysical characteristics of ES and societal contexts in which instruments are set, to better understand emergence of the different institutions and their potential of results. We illustrate this framework with empirical cases mainly from Latin America including public and private parks, corridors, eco-labels, contractual payments, land planning, collective action and financial transfers for resource management. (Texte intégral