Agricultural systems are no longer evaluated solely on the basis of the food they provide, but also on their capacity to limit impacts on the environment, such as soil conservation, water quality and biodiversity conservation, as well as their contribution to mitigating and adapting to climate change. In order to cope with these multiple service functions, they must internalize the costs and benefits of their environmental impact. Payments for ecosystem services are hoped to encourage and promote sustainable practices via financial incentives.
The authors show that while the principle is straightforward, the practice is much more complicated. Whereas scenic beauty and protection of water sources provide benefits to the local population, carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation can be considered international public goods, rendering potential payment schemes more complex. Few examples exist where national or international bodies have been able to set up viable mechanisms that compensate agricultural systems for the environmental services they provide. However this book provides several examples of successful programs, and aims to transfer them to other regions of the world. The authors show that a product can be sold if it is clearly quantified, there exists a means to determine the service's values, and there is a willing buyer.
The first two sections of the book present methodological issues related to the quantification and marketing of ecosystem services from agriculture, including agroforestry. The third and final section presents case studies of practical payments for ecosystem services and experiences in Central and South America, and draws some lessons learnt for effective and sustainable development of ecosystem services compensation mechanisms.
Bruno Rapidel is an agronomist working with CIRAD (France) and posted at CATIE (Central America). His main area of current research is on the methods to design agroforestry systems, using crop models and participatory approaches. He coordinates a scientific partnership platform established in CATIE between six partners to generate multi-disciplinary work to increase the competitiveness and sustainability of the agricultural sector of Mesoamerica through the quantification, valuing and development of all the potential products and environmental services of AFS with perennial crops.
Fabrice DeClerck is a community and landscape ecologist at CATIE. His primary research interest are the conservation of biodiversity within agricultural landscapes, and the functional role that this conserved biodiversity plays in the provisioning of ecosystem services. He also participates in interdisciplinary research that explores how conservation can be promoted within the Mesoamerican context through different political, social and economic instruments.
Jean-Francois Le Coq is an agro-economist working with CIRAD and posted at UNA, Heredia, Costa Rica. He carries on researches on agricultural and environmental policies, farmers' organizations and commodity chains. He specifically analyses the political framework and governance of the instruments of agro-environmental policies, payment for environmental services programs and green certifications schemes.
John Beer is the Research and Development Director of CATIE where he has worked for the last 30 years on the value of agroforestry systems (AFS) as a systemic response to the complex problems faced by rural agricultural and forestry based communities. His specific research interests are in the potential of coffee and cacao AFS to provide ecosystem services including a focus on productivity and nutrient cycling as well as on the adaptation of different research and development methodologies for AFS.
