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Background Around a quarter of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions originate from the agricultural, forest and other land use sectors (AFOLU), driven primarily by deforestation, forest degradation and emissions from unsustainable livestock, soil and nutrient management practices. At the same time, there is a large potential for climate change mitigation in the sector. Economic incentives-based programmes, which aim to change behaviour around preserving or restoring ecosystems services, have grown in popularity in the last two decades. Initially such programmes were implemented for environmental conservation. But more recently they have been promoted as a climate change mitigation measure, and some programmes also aim to improve socio-economic outcomes and alleviate poverty. Payment for Environmental Services (PES) is one such approach where users of an environmental service pay the owners or managers of the service, conditional on changes in behaviours that are likely to affect the provision of environmental services. Despite their increasing popularity, key policy questions around the effectiveness of PES on both environmental and socio-economic outcomes remain unanswered. Objectives To address the gaps in knowledge around effectiveness of PES, 3ie and the University of Johannesburg undertook a mixed methods systematic review, funded by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF). The objective was to assess the effects of PES programmes on environmental and socio-economic outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs). This assessment includes identifying and synthesising evidence on how PES programme effects vary by programme design, implementation, context, and by sub-groups of PES programme participants.
Duvendack et al. (Fri,) studied this question.