The social impacts of payments for environmental services in Costa Rica

When Costa Rica set up its Payments for Environmental Services (PES) programme in 1995, it was widely praised for pioneering global efforts to introduce compensation systems for environmental services. The programme seeks to encourage forest protection and management by paying forest owners for four environmental services provided by their forests: carbon, biodiversity, watershed management, and landscape beauty. This programme was the result of a process of institutional capacity building initiated decades previously in which an institutional framework, with a solid legal, organisational and social base was
established.