World Heritage Sites and the Integration of Biodiversity into an International PES Framework

Abstract

With various payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs and pilot projects underway around the world, the need for institutional support for scaling-up PES to international and global levels is becoming increasingly significant. However, in such a new and fast-growing field, there remain important challenges on both the supply and demand sides that need to be overcome. An overview of the ongoing discussion on International Payments for Ecosystem Services (IPES) provides the background necessary for highlighting the conceptual, economic, geographic, and social hurdles that are impeding the development of large-scale PES mechanisms. With particular emphasis on biodiversity conservation, the existing willingness to pay for the preservation of critical ecosystem services will be at the heart of future work on developing IPES. By identifying the fundamental challenges impeding the development of IPES, the opportunity presented by using the World Heritage Convention (WHC) as a model upon which to base future efforts will be explored. The capacity that the WHC model has for tapping into a greater demand and for clearing up the difficulties in adequately “packaging” a biodiversity-based supply of ecosystem services will be offered as the basis for the argumentation.

KEYWORDS:

• biodiversity conservation
• economic incentives
• ecosystem services
• payments for ecosystem services
• natural capital valuation
• World Heritage Convention