| dc.description.abstract | Human well-being depends to a great extend on ecosystem services (ES). However, the current rates of abstraction and use of these goods and services in order to sustain and increase human well-being give rise to trade-offs in consequence of their overexploitation and unsustainable use. Often the aftermath are high social and economical costs. Also marine and coastal ecosystem services add up to a high percentage of the globally provided services for our well-being. However, increasing fishing activities, industrial and agricultural pollution, coastal development and other anthropogenic influences are putting high pressure on these ecosystems. Additionally, compared to terrestrial conservation and protection, marine conservation lacks behind and several studies showed how marine protected areas fail in achieving their objectives of marine conservation. Due to the ineffectiveness of common top-down and command and control approaches to solve the above mentioned trade-offs, market-based mechanisms receive more and more attention. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is one of these mechanisms. These payment schemes are believed to have mutual benefits including the continuous and sustainable provision of ES while taking other social and economical aspects into account. This is especially true for natural resource management practices on the terrestrial scale.
For the marine and coastal environment, however, similar payment schemes have received little attention until now. Taking into account that various studies already document and give information on the values of fisheries, tourism, carbon sequestration, and coastal protection, it is likely that MPES hold a great potential for marine and coastal conservation. Considering the potential MPES have for marine and coastal conservation, the objective of this research project is to show what the lessons learnt are from payments for ecosystem services and to what extend these insights can be used for the successful implementation of MPES. Hence, the steering research question is: What can we learn from terrestrial payments for ecosystem services for the successful implementation of Marine Payments for Ecosystem Service ?
From the literature several success conditions and design principles for terrestrial PES could be derived and then divided into four different categories (1) institutional context, (2) biophysical context, (3) social context, and (4) economic context. These aspects are the foundation for the developed preliminary assessment framework. The framework focuses on design principles of MPES interventions which contribute to their likelihood of success on implementation. By applying the framework to three different MPES examples (of which two case studies have been identified as success stories, namely Individual Transferable Quotas and Marine Protected Areas; while the other example - mangroves as blue carbon sinks which has not been implemented yet due to various reasons) its applicability and feasibility was tested.
Due to the broad design of the framework it allows the analysis of success conditions of different types of MPES schemes. Keeping some limitations of the framework in mind its application indicates that the terrestrial versions of PES deliver important information about success conditions, key factors and design principles for potential MPES schemes. Furthermore, through the application of the framework the presence of different design principles which influence the potential success of a payment scheme could be identified and weighted. The creation of a stewardship behaviour of the resource manager/land-owner turned out to be of great importance in order to achieve sustainable land- and resource-use practices. Inclusion and active participation of stakeholders are other important criteria. Also, special attention should be paid to the institutional conditions and their interplay. Good and effective local institutions are essential for achieving sustainable management practices for natural ecosystems. For this reason, especially tenure, property and use-rights have to be considered and further investigated in order to reach equitable and sustainable solutions which include local communities, their social implications, economic development and marine and coastal conservation. | |
