Contesting Market-Based Conservation: Payments for Ecosystem Services as a Surface of Engagement for Rural Social Movements in Mexico

The Mexican national Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs, which provide financial incentives for rural landholders to conserve forest, were originally designed under the logic of market-based conservation. Based on a multi-sited, multi-scalar ethnography of Mexico's PES programs, this article examines the process through which a national rural social movement was able to redefine the market-based narrative of PES, the historical and political context that provided this window of opportunity, and the ways in which the movement's engagement led to a hybridization of the policy itself. The involvement of the rural social movement introduced a very different conception of PES – as a recognition by Mexico's federal state and urban society of the value of campesino (peasant) environmental stewardship and the economic support needed to allow these stewards to remain on the land. The direct involvement of movement members in the redesign of the programs had a significant impact on their conformation that reflected this vision of revaluing the rural: the inclusion of agroforests and sustainably managed timber lands; requirements for self-defined forest management plans; provision of dedicated funding for technical assistance; and the training of local extensionists. In mapping the evolution of the Mexican national PES programs we can begin to see how, in this particular place and time, rural social movements employed PES as “useful surfaces of engagement” (Escobar 1999: 13) for contesting the market-based notions of the federal state, international lending institutions and conservation non-governmental organizations. I position this analysis in the context of the global project of “grabbing green” and as an example of the frictions that can inhibit and even partially reverse the logic of the seemingly inexorable rise of market-based conservation policy and projects.