Local Government-Led PES for Watershed Protection: Cases from the Philippines

Progress towards ‘payments for environmental services’, or PES, is grounded in an understanding of the conscious and subconscious models used and applied by policy makers and citizens. Although many forest policies have incentive tendencies, variants of PES schemes have evolved that follow a more ‘regulatory’ framework, rather than being based on business-like principles of conditionality and voluntary transactions. In developing countries, PES schemes that are based on top-down regulatory sanctions may be unsustainable as a result of insufficient resources and weak implementation strategies. A combination of a business-like model based on voluntary transactions has more potential if markets for ES are also increased.