Conditional Transfers, Ecosystem Services, and Poverty Alleviation

In the poverty agenda of developing countries, the literature warns of the problem of “payments for ecosystem services" overloading.

By trying to both protect environmental services and reduce poverty, payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs face expensive trade-offs, inefficiencies, and the danger of diluting policy focus. This presentation analyzes PES as a form of conditional transfer and discusses some of the global experiences of conditional transfer from social protection in large-scale public works programmes, especially those with an environmental component. The social component of PES is an important factor to create political will and financial resources, and to gather momentum.