Making PES work for Vietnam - a multi-scale policy analysis of payments for forest environmental services

Samenvatting (Engelstalig)

As natural ecosystems
continue to degrade, mainly due to human activities, payment for ecosystem
services (PES) is becoming an increasingly popular way to use market logic and
economic rationality in ecosystem management. This study aims to understand how payment for forest environmental services (PFES) policy, initially introduced
as a neoliberal concept, has been shaped by a local context in which it is
situated: Vietnam. It was found that PFES understandings and practices differ
significantly from the ideal portrayed in the neoliberal PES definition, with
very weak elements of conditionality and voluntariness. The neoliberal logic to
address environmental problems by providing monetary incentives does not
correspond with the views held by the Vietnamese PFES participants and is
barely translated into implementation. Although PFES has brought some changes
to policy conceptualization and discourses, these changes don’t significantly
alter the pre-existing forest governance structures at local and national
levels. It is recommended that PES be understood and analysed in its situational
history, practices and scales; in Vietnam PFES is characterized by an
actor-oriented, learning-based approach to co-invest in stewardship.