Unpacking ‘Success’: Applying Local Perceptions to Interpret Influences of Water Fund Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Ecuadorian Andes

Abstract

NGOs, government agencies, and green businesses proclaim water fund arrangements in Latin America as successful payments for ecosystem services (PES) systems. Associated success narratives emphasize that PES allows downstream ecosystem service beneficiaries to incentivize upstream land managers to pursue conservation activities. However, recent scholarship questions their on-the-ground influence. This article assesses the success narrative of Quito, Ecuador’s Fondo para la protección del Agua’s (FONAG) as a model water fund PES arrangement. Using a novel perceived directionality framework, the author compares the FONAG claims about its influence to ethnographic evidence from three participating rural communities. The findings suggest that statements of direct, causal influence on local conservation activities overlook local context and ignores nuance within the interactions between program incentives and in community activity. This study urges future assessments of PES arrangements to recognize complexities in political, economic, and social context.

Keywords:

• Conservation
• ecosystem services
• Ecuador
• grounded theory
• qualitative methods
• water fund

Notes

Acknowledgments

I thank the several anonymous reviewers and Michael D. Tyburski for comments on previous iterations of the paper.

Notes

1 EPMAPS was called EMMAP-Q at the initiation of the agreement.

2 http://original.livestream.com/cgi_plenary/video?clipId = pla_ba7a86cf-6342-46e8-be63-23210cb4262c

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation GSS Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award #1303138, the Applied Biodiversity Science NSF IGERT program, and the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research.