Highlights
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- The PES debate is polarised between pro-market and anti-neoliberal arguments.
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- Despite socialist anti-market rhetoric, Nicaragua tends to adopt market-based PES.
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- It is hard to resist the dominant ‘epistemic circulation’ of PES successes.
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- Only through a political–cultural reconceptualisation can PES attain its potential.
Abstract
As
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) continues to gain attention as a
policy tool for securing efficient and effective environmental
governance, a rising tide of criticism warns of the potentially
detrimental social–ecological consequences of nature commodification and
‘green neoliberalism’. These concerns are also expressed at
international policy fora, where the market rhetoric has met with
political resistance from countries belonging to the ‘Bolivarian
Alliance for the Peoples of Our America’ (ALBA). But despite this
ideological opposition, some ALBA countries are increasingly integrating
PES into their environmental policies. In this article we consider the
reasons underlying this apparent contradiction and relate it to the
notion of ‘epistemic circulation’. On the basis of a study on the
evolution of PES-thinking in Nicaragua (an ALBA member) and a
reassessment of the supposed ‘success’ of an influential pilot project,
we shed light on the forces driving the adoption of particular PES modes
and contextualise practical difficulties to endorsing more critical
approaches to the tool. Instead of either ideologically rejecting PES as
a neoliberal evil or embracing it uncritically as the new panacea, we
argue that it is precisely through the socio-political processes
surrounding environmental governance debates that the application of PES
is shaped. In practice, it may either contribute to an imposed and
dispossessing form of capitalism, or tend towards a more negotiated and
socio-culturally embedded version of it. Only through its
reconceptualisation based on political–cultural primacy rather than
market-fetishism can PES achieve its true potential within a broader
strategy towards improved environmental governance.
Keywords
- Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES);
- Epistemic circulation;
- Neoliberalism;
- Conservation;
- Sustainable development;
- Nicaragua
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