Fairness and Efficiency: A Challenge for Payment for Environmental Services in Asia

Payment for environmental service (PES) is commonly defined as a market-based environmental policy instrument to efficiently achieve environmental protection. However, an increasing body of literature shows that the prescriptive conceptualization of PES cannot be easily generalized and implemented in practice and the commoditization of ecosystem services is problematic and may be unfair. To investigate the underlying causes, this study combined a quantitative and qualitative research approach using case studies in Indonesia, the Philippines and Nepal. The empirical observations on emerging PES-mechanisms in the Asian case studies show that interdependency of fairness and efficiency should be the main consideration in designing and implementing a PES scheme in developing countries