Drawing on the literature concerning effective Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) programmes and on more than 30 case studies, this book aims to identify good practice in the design and implementation of PES programmes so as to enhance their environmental and cost effectiveness.

One of the aims of the CoLUPSIA project is to explore options for establishing payments for ecosystem services (PES) within the two districts where the project is working: Seram and Kapuas Hulu. These guidelines were prepared to support the CoLUPSIA team in completing this assessment and have since been revised to incorporate some findings from the field assessments.

This novel text assembles some of the most intriguing voices in modern conservation biology. Collectively they highlight many of the most challenging questions being asked in conservation science today, each of which will benefit from new experiments, new data, and new analyses. The book's principal aim is to inspire readers to tackle these uncomfortable issues head-on. A second goal is to be reflective and consider how the field has reacted to challenges to orthodoxy, and to what extent have or can these challenges advance conservation science. Furthermore, several chapters discuss how to guard against confirmation bias. The overall goal is that this book will lead to greater conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity by harnessing the engine of constructive scientific scepticism in service of better results.

This report sets the economic and business case for urgent and ambitious action on biodiversity. It presents a preliminary assessment of current biodiversity-related finance flows, and discusses the key data and indicator gaps that need to be addressed to underpin effective monitoring of both the pressures on biodiversity and the actions (i.e. responses) being implemented. The report concludes with ten priority areas where G7 and other countries can prioritise their efforts.

Where benefits and costs accrue at different scales, financial intermediaries are needed to facilitate relations between global-scale buyers and local-scale providers of carbon sequestration and storage. These intermediaries can help to collect and distribute payments and to promote the scheme to potential beneficiaries. The benefits distributed should compensate for the transaction, opportunity and implementation costs incurred by stakeholders for providing ecosystem services. Therefore, calculating the costs and understanding who incurs them are essential for benefit sharing. Targeting benefits according to a set of criteria that match the objectives of the specific mechanism increases the mechanism’s efficiency. As the level of performance-based payments may not be able to compete with the opportunity costs of highly profitable land uses, performance-related benefit-sharing mechanisms should be focused on areas with moderate opportunity costs. Benefits should be divided into upfront payments to cover startup costs and to give an initial incentive for participation, and payments upon delivery of ecosystem services to ensure adherence to conditionality.

This book represents a comprehensive overview of the field gathering the thoughts and expertise of hundreds of social scientists from around the world. This edition focuses on the transformative role of the social sciences in confronting climate and broader processes of environmental change.

Current regulatory approaches have not prevented the loss of biodiversity across the world. This book explores the scope to strengthen conservation by using different legal mechanisms such as biodiversity offsetting, payment for ecosystem services and conservation covenants, as well as tradable development rights and taxation. The authors discuss how such mechanisms introduce elemhents of a market approach as well as private sector initiative and resources. They show how examples already in operation serve to highlight the design challenges, legal, technical and ethical, that must be overcome if these mechanisms are to be effective and widely accepted.