Bridging the gap between forest conservation and poverty alleviation: the Ecuadorian Socio Bosque program

TL;DR: In this paper, a new theoretical framework is proposed for environmental education in rural, underserved communities in Latin America, based on previous research in the areas of education, anthropology, social capital, and environmental education.

TL;DR: In the Ecuadorian Amazon, roads play the major role in transforming land cover as mentioned in this paper, and since the beginning of the oil development in this region, oil exploration and road building have been linked.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that under conditions consistent with emerging REDD+ programs, money spent on a mixture of carbon payments and biodiversity payments has the potential to incentivize the provision of greater climate benefits than an equal amount of money spent only on carbon payments, when diversifying payments across multiple services allows a funding agency to spend less on additional rents to existing suppliers of avoided deforestation and more on incentivizing the participation of new suppliers.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the concept of total economic value (TEV) of ecosystem services (ES) provided by forest ecosystems and identify that PES often include compensation as a proxy for the supply of ES and largely neglect to encompass the different attributes of an ES' TEV, particularly existence values.

TL;DR: Payments for environmental services (PES) are part of a new and more direct conservation paradigm, explicitly recognizing the need to bridge the interests of landowners and outsiders as discussed by the authors, but many field practitioners and prospective service buyers and sellers remain skeptical about the concept.

TL;DR: The Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) and the Grain to Green Program (GTGP) are among the biggest programs in the world because of their ambitious goals, massive scales, huge payments, and potentially enormous impacts.

TL;DR: In this paper, an alternative and novel theoretical approach to the conceptualization and analysis of payments for environmental services (PES) is presented, taking into account complexities related to uncertainty, distributional issues, social embeddedness, and power relations.

TL;DR: Costa Rica pioneered the use of the payments for environmental services (PES) approach in developing countries by establishing a formal, countrywide program of payments, the PSA program as discussed by the authors.