Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are a fast-growing forest conservation instrument across the Global South which often operate within a broader policy mix. We analyze the collective and individual development strategies that result from the dynamic interplay of multiple PES programs in a context of common-property. Our case study is the municipality of Amanalco, in the State of Mexico, a temperate forest site of high hydrological importance where multiple state and NGO-led PES programs have been implemented with communities since the early 2000s. We show that participating communities strategically coordinate and combine revenues from several PES programs for sustainable logging, a long-standing economic path perceived by participants as a viable conservation strategy of the forest commons. We show how PES programs act as ‘inputs to production’ for community-based forestry, and, by doing so, reinforce the forestry industry and increase related revenues, which eventually trickle down to individual households. Our analysis illustrates how communities hybridize and adapt PES schemes to pursue local development strategies.
Zaga-Mendez et al. (Wed,) studied this question.