Benefit Distribution and Equity in Ecuador's Socio Bosque Program

Abstract

In this article we analyze the equity and distribution of financial incentives in Ecuador's Programa Socio Bosque (PSB). PSB aims to conserve native ecosystems on privately owned lands while reducing rural poverty. Based on the analysis of 1,563 conservation contracts, representing nearly 900,000 ha of land in Ecuador and more than 90,000 beneficiaries, we scrutinize the regional distribution of benefits among three regions (the Coast, the Andes, and the Amazon) and two contract types: land under individual ownership and land under collective ownership. We compare incentive distribution before and after a substantial change in the incentive scale, differentiating collective and individual landowners as well as forests and páramo ecosystems. Although PSB is a mechanism that incentivizes conservation stewardship, its distributional equity and ability to reduce rural poverty remain questionable, because poverty levels and population density in collective contracts are not sufficiently considered in the incentive scale.

Keywords:

• collective landownership
• conservation
• Ecuador
• equity
• incentive distribution
• individual landownership

Acknowledgments

We thank the three anonymous reviewers who provided valuable comments. Furthermore, we gratefully acknowledge the input from interviewees and our colleagues who reviewed earlier versions of this article. We are grateful for the financial support of the LUCID Research School. We are of course alone responsible for any shortcomings.