Fairly efficient or efficiently fair: an evaluation of payment schemes for environmental services in Asia

Conserving the environment in tandem with
alleviating poverty is a primary goal in the objective to
improving the environment, particularly in Asia, and
Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) is recognised as
a tool to help achieve these two goals.
Market-based instruments such as PES have been
developed to capture at least some of the financial
value of environmental services by monetising and
commoditising environmental services in response
to the fact that conventional markets fail to reflect the
full or true value of free services such as pure water,
which saves the need for artificial purification, or
natural pollination, which enhances crop yields.