Incentives, Livelihoods, and Forest Ecology: Payments for Ecosystem Services in Guatemala’s Western Highlands

Abstract

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs are a form of environmental governance that offers compensation to land owners or managers who provide ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, water filtration, or erosion control. Guatemala has three national forestry incentive programs, a form of PES, that grant payments to private landowners and communal forest managers for existing forest preservation, reforestation, and agroforestry. Participants receive annual payments for 5-10 years for completing activities deemed to be good forestry practices that are assumed to provide ecosystem services. While this form of PES is not tied to ecosystem service markets, it does act as a new form of neoliberal conservation in that the programs aim to shape individuals’ behavior and instill responsibility for conservation through offering incentives. This dissertation examines the social and environmental impacts of this form of PES through assessing Guatemala’s national forestry incentive programs that began over 20 years ago but have received little scholarly attention to date. In particular, I explore (1) how marginalized groups use PES as a “surface of engagement” to make demands on the state and, to a certain degree, successfully modify and reframe PES programs; (2) how incentive payments and land tenure affect the ecosystem service of carbon sequestration; and (3) how successfully PES can change forest management behaviors among those who choose to participate. I utilize a mixed methods approach of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and carbon forestry plots in order to explore these questions in a truly interdisciplinary way. I find that PES in Guatemala has been used as a tool for political organization by smallholders and indigenous communal forest managers, creating advocacy around forests in ways that have not been seen before. These groups have been successful at shaping PES in Guatemala towards their own needs, but still remain constrained by preexisting land inequalities and power asymmetries. I also find that (1) land tenure is a much larger determining factor of the size of standing carbon stocks than the presence or absence of an incentive payment and (2) incentives have the potential to help prevent localized forest degradation because the most heavily utilized plots are enrolled first. Additionally, I demonstrate how management plans written by forestry experts and annual reviews act as technologies of governance that can slightly change forest management behaviors, although participation in the programs is limited to those who own relatively larger amounts of land. The incentives provide an opportunity for political organization, encourage attention to forest management, and provide a small supplemental income. They face challenges, however, in their continued ties to unequal systems of land tenure and lack the ability to change more fundamental causes of poverty and forest degradation.