On the role of social equity in payments for ecosystem services in Latin America: A practitioner perspective

One of the main debates surrounding payments for ecosystem services (PES) is to what extent should PES design focus on social equity concerns. While much of the debate is centered around theoretical arguments, here we focus empirically on the question of whether there are trade-offs between social-environmental effectiveness and social equity in PES design and implementation. Towards this end, we use a survey targeted at 61 PES practitioners in 12 Latin American countries, where equity is treated in a multidimensional way, not only including distributional concerns but also elements of recognition and procedure, reflected across a set of 15 indicators. Results suggest that PES which practitioners describe as being more equitable are also perceived to be more successful in jointly achieving the social-environmental goals of the PES program they are involved with. This suggests that from a practitioner perspective a concern for social equity may be advocated for not only from a normative stance ( because it is the right thing to do ), but also for instrumental reasons ( because it may contribute to PES success ). © 2020 Elsevier B.V.We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt-Professorship endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture of the Basque government (Grant number PI2015-1-103). B.L. and U.P. are supported under the Basque Centre for Climate Change ?Unit of Excellence? (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; MDM-2017-0714). We are thankful to Neville Ash, Brigitte Baptiste, Juan Camilo Cardenas, Mar?a Virginia Casasfranco, Eneko Garmendia, Phan Ha, Francesca Louise Mcgrath, Lucia Madrid, Ignacio Palomo, Ina Porras, Joaqu?n Salda?a, Leticia Santos de Lima, and Noelia Zafra-Calvo for their help disseminating the survey. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and and Adriana Maria Bernal Escobar, Esteve Corbera, Gert Van Hecken, Roldan Muradian, Meine Van Noordwijk, and Tobias Vorlaufer for their helpful comments to earlier drafts of the paper. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt-Professorship endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture of the Basque government (Grant number PI2015-1-103 ). B.L. and U.P. are supported under the Basque Centre for Climate Change “Unit of Excellence” ( Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness ; MDM-2017-0714 ). We are thankful to Neville Ash, Brigitte Baptiste, Juan Camilo Cardenas, María Virginia Casasfranco, Eneko Garmendia, Phan Ha, Francesca Louise Mcgrath, Lucia Madrid, Ignacio Palomo, Ina Porras, Joaquín Saldaña, Leticia Santos de Lima, and Noelia Zafra-Calvo for their help disseminating the survey. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and and Adriana Maria Bernal Escobar, Esteve Corbera, Gert Van Hecken, Roldan Muradian, Meine Van Noordwijk, and Tobias Vorlaufer for their helpful comments to earlier drafts of the paper