Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State

Abstract

Prominent advocates of payments for ecosystem services (PES) contend that markets in biodiversity, carbon storage, and hydrological services can produce both conservation and sustainable development. In Mexico's national PES programs, however, conceived as models of market-based management, efficiency criteria have clashed with antipoverty goals and an enduring developmental-state legacy. Like other projects for commodification of nature, Mexico's PES is a hybrid of market-like mechanisms, state regulations, and subsidies. It has been further reshaped by social movements mobilized in opposition to neoliberal restructuring. These activists see ecosystem services as coproduced by nature and campesino communities. Rejecting the position of World Bank economists, they insist that the values of ecosystems derive less from the market prices of their services than from their contributions to peasant livelihoods, biodiversity, and social benefits that cannot be quantified or sold. These divergent conceptualizations reflect contrasting understandings of the roles of agriculture and of the state in sustainable development. The Mexican case exposes contradictions within neoliberal environmental discourse based on binary categories of nature and society. It suggests that conservation policies in the global South, if imposed from the North and framed by neoliberal logic, are likely to clash with state agendas and local development goals.

Los más notables partidarios del pago por servicios al ecosistema (PES) sostienen que los mercados relacionados con biodiversidad, acumulación de carbono y servicios hidrológicos pueden generar conservación y desarrollo sostenible. Sin embargo, en los programas nacionales del PES de México, concebidos como modelos de manejo en el contexto de mercado, los criterios de eficiencia han entrado en conflicto con las metas contra la pobreza y un legado perdurable de desarrollo de estado. Como ocurre en otros proyectos para la comodificación de la naturaleza, el PES mejicano es un híbrido de mecanismos basados en el mercado, regulaciones gubernamentales y subsidios. Adicionalmente, el PES ha sido reconfigurado por movimientos sociales promovidos en contra de reestructuraciones de tinte neoliberal. Estos activistas conciben los servicios al ecosistema como algo coproducido por la naturaleza y las comunidades campesinas. En rechazo a la posición de los economistas del Banco Mundial, insisten en que los valores de los ecosistemas se derivan menos de los precios de mercado por sus servicios que de sus contribuciones al sustento campesino, la biodiversidad y los beneficios sociales que no pueden ser cuantificados ni vendidos. Estas conceptualizaciones divergentes reflejan la visión contrastada sobre los papeles que les corresponden a la agricultura y al Estado en el desarrollo sostenible. El caso mejicano pone de manifiesto contradicciones dentro del discurso ambiental neoliberal basado en las categorías binarias de naturaleza y sociedad. De ello se desprende que las políticas de conservación en el Sur global, si son impuestas por el Norte y enmarcadas con lógica neoliberal, están expuestas a chocar contra las agendas de Estado y las metas locales de desarrollo.

Key Words:

• commodification of nature
• development
• ecosystem services
• Mexico
• neoliberalism

关键词:

• 自然商品化
• 发展
• 生态系统服务
• 墨西哥
• 新自由主义

Palabras clave:

• co-modificación de la naturaleza
• desarrollo
• servicios al ecosistema
• México
• neoliberalismo

Acknowledgments

We thank the many social movement organizers, NGO leaders, government officials, and rural community members in Mexico who gave their time and opinions freely and with infinite patience. We would also like to thank three anonymous reviewers for very helpful suggestions. The UC-MEXUS Foundation, Institute of International Studies of the University of California at Berkeley, and Tinker Foundation supported the field research in Mexico. The authors contributed equally to the conceptualization and writing of this article.

Notes

1. “Environmental services” and “ecosystem services” are both used in policy discourse. We use ecosystem services because “environmental” services has a second meaning: services such as toxic waste cleanup, emissions-reduction technologies, or environmental impact assessments.

2. This article does not address obstacles to commodification posed by the characteristics and agency of nonhuman nature noted by geographers, although that, too, is a factor in Mexican PES.

3. This article focuses on tensions between neoliberal PES and the Mexican state and social movements. For more information on program implementation and interaction with local level actors, see Shapiro (2007).

4. The consequences of this approach, which depends on continuing North–South and urban–rural inequalities, is explored in McAfee (2009).

5. During the period from 2003 to 2008, the exchange rate was relative steady. We use the approximate average exchange rate of 0.09 Mexican pesos/U.S. dollars.

6. Nucleo agrario is an inclusive term for a variety of common property tenure systems codified by the Mexican state, including ejidos (peasant associations) and comunidades (indigenous communities with tenure that has historical precedence).

7. ANEC is the Asociacion Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras de Productos del Campo. UNORCA is the Union Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autonomas. EZLN is the acronym of the armed wing of the Zapatista movement, which seized power in parts of Chiapas in January 1994 and continues to govern “autonomous zones” in parts of that state.

8. Degree of marginalization is calculated at the municipal level by the Mexican federal bureau of statistics (INEGI) based on socioeconomic indicators including income.

9. The national minimum wage at the time was US$9/day (MX$101.22).

10. Other organizations that rallied behind MECNAM included the El Barzon credit-reform movement, corporatist rural organizations (Congreso Agrario Permanente and Confederacion Nacional Campesina), and leftist political parties (Partido Revolucion Democratica, and Partido del Trabajo; Rubio 2007).

11. The new committee included representatives from CONAFOR, INE, SEMARNAT, the National Water Commission (CNA), two coffee producer associations (the National Coordinating Committee of Coffee Producer Organizations [CNOC] and the State Coordinating Committee of Organic Coffee Producers of Oaxaca [CEPCO]), two community forestry organizations (the Mexican Network of Peasant Forestry Organizations [Red-MOCAF] and the National Union of Community Forestry Organizations [UNOFOC]), a coalition implementing PES in Oaxaca (the Environmental Services of Oaxaca [SAO]), and UNORCA.