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Payments for Environmental Services (PES) are praised as innovative policy instruments and they influence the governance of forest restoration efforts in two major ways. The first is the establishment of multi-stakeholder agencies as intermediary bodies between funders and planters to manage the funds and to distribute incentives to planters. The second implication is that specific […]

The research and development community should focus more effort on reintegrating food production and conservation in smallholder-managed landscapes. The interpretation of sustainable intensification appears to differ considerably depending on the program, but invariably it involves the goal of producing more food without clearing new areas of natural vegetation or further degrading the environment. Doubts about […]

A literature review revealed heavy reliance on a few key publications for identification of medicinal plant species from local or vernacular names and a lack of citation of voucher specimens in many publications. There is a need for more reliable and standardized data on the identity of species used for medicine, especially because local names […]

For landscape ecology to produce knowledge relevant to society, it must include considerations of human culture and behavior, extending beyond the natural sciences to synthesize with many other disciplines. Furthermore, it needs to be able to support landscape change processes which increasingly take the shape of deliberative and collaborative decision making by local stakeholder groups. […]

Flat fees in payment for environmental services (PES) schemes promote administrative ease, and are perceived as egalitarian. However, when environmental-service (ES) buyers are heterogeneous in their income and water-consumption levels, this scheme may not be optimal, as total payments might become too low and services under-supplied. This paper estimates willingness to pay (WTP) higher fees […]

This article reviews research on forests in Central America under the lens of common pool resources literature. It briefly presents research in the region and highlights some limitations of the majority of common property scholarship. The article draws on three case studies in Guatemala and Nicaragua that were part of a study on forest tenure […]