More than just linking the nodes: civil society actors as intermediaries in the design and implementation of payments for ecosystem services–the case of a blue carbon project in Costa Rica

ABSTRACT

While in many cases the benefits of ecosystem services (ES) can be enjoyed on different scales, the provision of ES requires engagement and commitment at the local scale. Therefore, the local level becomes important when thinking about compensation schemes or payments for ecosystem services (PES) as an approach to managing ES. The difficult task of bringing together different actors and institutions at different scales for specific conservation projects at the local level often remains in the hands of intermediaries. In this paper, we investigate the role of a civil society organisation (CSO) as an intermediary organisation in a PES scheme, the Community Blue Carbon Project (CBCP) in Costa Rica. To assess the role of intermediaries in a PES scheme, we rely on social network analysis and examine the position and role of the intermediary organisation. Based on Net-Map interviews, which is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualise, discuss and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes, we find that the intermediary organisation in the CBCP is composed of several institutional and individual intermediaries who create both formal networks for connecting the international to the local level and informal networks for creating trusting relationships among the actors. Different spatial levels are reflected within the CSO’s organisational structure, and the CSO mitigates the distributional, procedural, recognition and contextual aspects of environmental justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Social network analysis
• Net-Map
• community-based conservation
• governance
• equity
• Central America

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on research conducted in the CiVi.net project, which is funded under contract number 282750 within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The third author’s field stay has been funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) through a PROMOS scholarship (Programm zur Steigerung der Mobilität von deutschen Studierenden). We would like to thank all the involved stakeholders in the case study for participating as well as Fundación Neotrópica for their invaluable support during the case study visit. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Barbara Schröter http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8066-8446

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission under Grant 282750 within the Seventh Framework Programme.