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Assessing Community Readiness for Payments for Ecosystem Service Schemes

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Primary forest conservation is crucial for combating climate change, achieving conservation goals, and meeting Sustainable Development Goals. Compensation schemes for communities are key policy tools but require insight into local deforestation drivers and community preferences. Using Q-methodology, Christopher Fleming explores discourses in three communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Image courtesy of interviewee. September 24, 2024

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This video discusses the challenges and potential of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes aimed at promoting conservation in developing countries, particularly in regions rich in natural resources like the Congo. It highlights the historical context where developed nations seek conservation while relying on developing nations to manage and protect vital ecosystems. Despite substantial funding (around $40 billion annually), PES schemes have not performed as expected, mainly due to a lack of understanding of the needs and desires of local communities.

This video describes a collaborative study that utilized Q Methodology to assess community perspectives in the Congo regarding PES schemes. This video approach involved creating a set of statements related to forest conservation, which community members ranked based on their agreement. Three distinct groups emerged from the analysis:

1. **Conservationists**: Open to new conservation ideas and preferred collective over individual payments.
2. **Aspirational Artisans**: Strongly connected to the forest and desired involvement in governance of conservation efforts.
3. **Passive Conflicted Farmers**: Concerned about agricultural income and environmental impacts, but disinterested in governance.

The findings emphasize the necessity of designing PES schemes that resonate with community values, particularly intergenerational legacies, and favor collective benefits over individual compensation. It advocates for localized governance of these schemes and suggests that further research should define attributes of successful PES frameworks and involve communities in selecting and designing these initiatives. The conclusion stresses that understanding local priorities is crucial for the effective implementation of conservation initiatives.

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Here are five key points from the video regarding the challenges and potential improvements in payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes:

1. **Disparity in Conservation Responsibilities**: The developed world values conservation and desires a sustainable approach, but much of the responsibility falls on developing nations, which contain vital natural resources such as tropical forests and biodiversity.

2. **Limitations of PES Schemes**: Although around $40 billion annually is allocated to PES schemes, their effectiveness has been limited due to donor-driven agendas that often do not align with the needs and preferences of recipient communities in developing countries.

3. **Community Engagement through Q Methodology**: The research involved Q methodology to uncover community perspectives on forest conservation and PES schemes by generating statements through expert solicitation and focus groups, allowing community members to rank their priorities on these topics.

4. **Diverse Community Attitudes**: The study identified three distinct community groups—conservationists, aspirational artisans, and passive conflicted farmers—each with differing views on conservation, governance involvement, and desired payment methods for PES. Across all groups, there was a shared preference for social and collective payments over individual payments.

5. **Need for Convideoual Understanding**: For PES schemes to succeed, it’s essential to understand community desires and prioritize aspects like intergenerational legacy over cash incentives in scheme design. Effective governance is likely to be community-led, and future research should focus on identifying specific attributes of successful PES models tailored to local needs.

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Here are the key quotes extracted from the video, focusing on core ideas and themes:

1. **Value of Conservation**:
- "We've known for a very long time that the developed world values conservation and would like to see the world get on a more sustainable path."

2. **Responsibility of Developing Countries**:
- "We're asking the developing world to do a lot of the heavy lifting... much of the world's natural resources, tropical forests, biodiversity... are located in the developing world."

3. **Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)**:
- "There's been this idea of how do we transfer the value that the developed world has for conservation to the people who actually bear the costs of conserving these landscapes."
- "Despite around $40 billion a year being transferred through these types of schemes... they haven't worked as well as we would like."

4. **Understanding Local Needs**:
- "...we haven't really understood what the receiving country wanted or the receiving communities wanted out of the scheme."

5. **Findings from the Study**:
- "One of the key questions we were trying to explore was if there were going to be payments under a PES scheme to this community, how did they want 'em delivered?"
- "...all of the groups really favored social payments, collective payments as opposed to individual..."

6. **Group Classifications**:
- "The first group we've called the conservationists... open to new ideas."
- "The second group we've called aspirational artisans... strongly culturally connected to the forest..."
- "The third group... the passive conflicted farmers... concerned about their ability to earn income from agriculture."

7. **Universal Concerns**:
- "They all thought it was really important to be able to hand down the forest to their children and grandchildren."

8. **Points of Consensus**:
- "If you can find points of consensus, that gives you an opening for some conversations."
- "Start from a base of a solid base of consensus."

9. **Recommendations for PES Schemes**:
- "If we want these schemes to work, we need to better understand what the recipient communities want out of these schemes."
- "The place to start is the legacy to the intergenerational story."

10. **Future Research Directions**:
- "Let's really hone down on specific attributes of a scheme."

These quotes highlight the complexity of implementing conservation efforts through PES schemes and underline the importance of understanding local community perspectives and preferences.

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We've known for a very long time that

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the developed world values conservation,

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and would like, you know, would like to see the worth,

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the world get on a more sustainable path.

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But really we're asking the developing world to do a lot

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of the heavy lifting in that, you know, much

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of the world sort of natural resources, tropical forests,

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biodiversity and so forth and,

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and huge carbon sinks are located in the developing world.

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Um, and,

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and so there's been this idea of

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how do we transfer the value that the developed world has

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for conservation to the people who actually bear the costs

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of, of conserving these landscapes.

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And, and so one of the things that have come up

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with is this idea of payments for ecosystem services or,

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or PES schemes

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and PES schemes are very much this idea that,

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international organizations funded from by,

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mostly from the developed world,

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will pay people in the developing world to

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conserve natural assets,

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conserve forests and and and so forth.

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But despite around $40 billion a year being transferred

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through these types of schemes,

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they haven't worked as well as we would like.

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And, and so I guess on, on, on,

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on balance, you would say these PE schemes

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haven't lived up to expectations.

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Why the Congo? Um, well, huge tracks of, of tropical forest.

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They're the largest, tech,

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tropical forest after the Amazon.

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Um, and, you know, right at the front

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and center of this trade off this,

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this conflict if you like, between, development extract,

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resource extraction and, and, and conservation.

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So a really good pla exactly the kind of place the payment

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for ecosystem services scheme is supposed to work.

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One of the findings that are extra to one of the failings

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of PES schemes has been that we haven't really understood

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what the, the receiving country wanted

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or the receiving communities wanted out of the scheme.

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So they've been very donor driven.

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Uh, and, and so if you look at this, a piece of work by,

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you know, POR and colleagues who study 20 years

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of these schemes in Costa Rica,

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and she basically found that they were, were costly,

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they were complex, and they were always donor

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led, not community led.

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Um, and, and she

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and her colleagues were pretty clear that she felt

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that was the, the primary driver of the lack of uptake

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of these types of schemes.

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I guess this, this paper, this piece

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of work was a collaboration between colleagues

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of mine here at Griffith University,

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but also colleagues at the Wood Well Climate Research

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Center based in Massachusetts.

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And, the people at Wood,

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well have been working in the Congo for quite some time,

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as well as other parts of Africa and South America.

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Um, so they were sort of our entry into the location,

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if you like, of, of the study study we bought the,

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the research method, which was something

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called Q Methodology.

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Uh, so Q is a method that tries

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to unpick the key discourses or the dominant discourses or,

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or, mindsets of communities.

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So what do they think about this, this PS thing?

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What do they think about forest conservation, the use

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of forests and, and so forth.

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And so the method involves,

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creating a set of statements.

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And these statements are, we have 37 in this, in this case.

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Um, and these statements are essentially created by,

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expert solicitation plus focus groups in the communities.

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And these statements are all around, you know,

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things like the design of the scheme, the use

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of forests and so forth.

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And then we ask respondents,

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so the people in the communities on a one-to-one basis.

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So at an individual level to, rank

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or place these statements in a, in a spectrum from sort

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of most agree with, to least agree with.

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And we force them to do it in something

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that looks a little bit like a normal distribution,

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which means they can only place a very small number of cards

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as, as the most degree

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and very small number of cards as the least degree.

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And, and most of the,

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the other ones end up in the middle of the distribution.

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So we derive these statements with things.

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You know, a couple of examples of statements is that the,

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the forest is a great asset.

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We should use more of its resources to improve livelihood.

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So that's printed on the card, in English and French

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and, and also illustrated.

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We had an illustrator, you know,

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make these cards a little bit more engaging

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and also help with, with low literacy rates.

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Um, and then the person would receive that card

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and go, well, I'm gonna place that

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where I think it is on this,

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this c continual move most to least degree.

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And when people do this, we typically find they, they agree

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with everything to begin with.

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So they get the first card, yeah, over that side, that side,

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that side, keep putting them,

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and then they realize they've filled up the, the,

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the agree side of, of the, the,

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what we call the, the sorting mat.

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And then they have to bring, bring them back slowly

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and really look at them relative to each other.

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Um, once we do that, once we've done that, we take a photo

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to every individual, puts them onto the

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sorting mat, all these cards.

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We take a photo, and then we transfer

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that data into basically to excel.

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Um, so we can do some further analysis.

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Um, and what the analysis does, it's,

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it's called factor analysis.

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It basically groups people, into

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like-minded segments of the community.

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Um, and so in this case, we found three groups, essentially.

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So three groups, that, you know,

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each group thinks roughly the same about the big issues.

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Um, and,

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and once we've done that, the next step really

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is more qualitative.

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It's like, okay, well, we know

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how this group have sorted their cards.

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What does that tell us about them?

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What we learned from that? What can we draw out of that?

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Uh, and so we came up with three, three groups.

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So the first group we, we've called the conservationists,

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and they, and they were open to new ideas.

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So statements that were around forest conservation,

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they ranked very highly, statements

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around forest clearing.

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They, they disagreed with,

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and they showed strong support for, for skill building,

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new technologies and so forth.

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One of the, the key questions we were trying to explore

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was if there were going to be payments under a PES scheme

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to this community, how did they want 'em delivered?

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Did they want them, as individual payments

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or as collective payments?

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Did they want them in cash

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or did they want it in terms of better infrastructure,

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medical facilities, for example?

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Or did they want it in terms of agricultural, inputs,

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seeds, fertilizer, and so forth?

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Um, it turned out across all of the groups,

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and I'll talk to the other two groups shortly,

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but it turned out that all of the groups really

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favored social payments, collective payments as opposed

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to individual, which again, is, is probably something that

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us coming from a, a western viewpoint,

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from a developed world viewpoint,

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wouldn't have thought upfront.

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We we're all very used to individually focused payments.

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Um, and so that may be one of the reasons some of the,

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these schemes aren't going as well as we would've liked.

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So they, so the first group was conservationists.

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The second group we've called aspirational Artisans,

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strongly culturally connected to the forest,

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and quite confident in their ability

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to earn income from agriculture.

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They weren't concerned about the impacts so much

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of agriculture and farmer farming on the forests.

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Um, and they were very clear they wanted

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to be involved in the governance of any, any kind

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of conservation or, or PE scheme.

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And that was another one of, the things we were trying

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to find out was how do they want

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their schemes to be managed?

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Do they want them to be managed by the,

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the international donor, by, you know,

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the local government by a central government

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or at the community level?

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Uh, and it's interesting

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because across the groups, some didn't want

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to be involved in governance at all.

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Um, but this factor two, these, these aspirational artisans,

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they were very clear they wanted to be involved

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and in charge of the governance of such a scheme.

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And then we had a third group

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who we've labeled the passive conflicted farmers.

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They were concerned about their ability

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to earn income from agriculture and get access to markets.

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Um, but they were also concerned about environmental effects

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on their yields

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and their ability to, to grow, strong support

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for social compensation over private or individual.

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Um, but we've called them passive

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because they had no interest in

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being involved in, in governance.

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Um, they were also concerned about the connection

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with the forest and what it would mean for

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next generation's children and, and grandchildren.

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The final step really was to tease out the,

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the key lessons in terms of PS design,

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but also tease out statements where

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everybody almost agreed or disagreed.

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Because the idea is if you can find points of consensus,

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that gives you an opening for some conversations.

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If you are trying to introduce something new into a

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community, don't open with something

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that we know people would, don't have consensus on

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because you'll just end up in a fight and,

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and it won't get the community support.

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So the fact that we could look at the statements

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and go, which, which statements were pretty much ranked the

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same by everybody in the community,

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then you could start from a, a base

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of a solid base of consensus.

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Um, so some

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of those statements were things like the young people are

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better off getting educated and,

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and leaving, leaving the village and finding work.

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Um, it is something we often find in developing communities

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across the globe when we do these kind of things.

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Older people are looking at younger generations and,

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and they don't often don't see a future

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for them in those local communities.

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But they also thought it was really,

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and this is another consensus statement,

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they all thought it was really important to be able

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to hand down the forest to their children and grandchildren.

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Um, so that's suggests to me that could be

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where you would start a conversation

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around introducing a PES scheme.

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And in terms of statements that they didn't agree with the,

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the disagreement statements, there was a real mix

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around market access.

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Some felt market access was a real problem

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for agricultural sustainability.

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Others were quite confident in their

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ability to, to access markets.

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And there was also a real disagreement around

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whose responsibility it was to pay for conservation.

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So some groups were, yes, the, the developed world

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have a responsibility to help us conserve these forests.

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Others were of the opinion that no,

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we shouldn't be relying on outsiders to pay for it.

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So that's a, a hard,

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that's probably not the place to start there.

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If you are having a conversation about the introduction

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of a scheme in this community, start with the high,

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handing it down to children and grandchildren story.

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Don't start with who pays story,

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and then you're more likely to, I think,

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to get this thing sort of up and running.

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I think the conclusion is if we want these schemes to work,

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we need to better understand

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what the recipient communities want out of these schemes.

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And, and coming in with a, a,

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a western developed world mindset, if it's all about cash

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and, and, and payments in this community at least, and,

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and this is quite consistent

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with other things we've seen in other parts of the world,

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that's not the place to start.

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The place to start is the, the, the legacy

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to the intergenerational story.

11:25.485 --> 11:28.145
So let's start with that and design a scheme from there.

11:28.525 --> 11:29.545
In terms of governance,

11:30.535 --> 11:33.185
most likely local governance will work better.

11:33.185 --> 11:35.025
Community level governance will work better,

11:35.365 --> 11:37.065
but not everybody wants to necessarily be

11:37.225 --> 11:38.345
involved, but that's probably okay.

11:39.325 --> 11:44.265
Um, I think the next step in research wise is

11:44.365 --> 11:49.225
to more precisely define the attributes

11:49.225 --> 11:50.545
of what a good scheme looks like.

11:51.245 --> 11:55.245
So perhaps design some can candidate schemes go into the

11:55.245 --> 11:57.765
community and say, if you could choose between scheme A

11:57.765 --> 11:59.405
or B, which would you choose?

11:59.425 --> 12:01.445
And, and why? So really narrow down.

12:01.445 --> 12:04.165
We've got a, we've got a broad picture now of, of things

12:04.165 --> 12:05.485
that are important or not important

12:05.545 --> 12:07.205
and things that, that have consensus and don't.

12:07.665 --> 12:10.125
Um, but let's really hone down on specific

12:10.125 --> 12:11.485
attributes of a scheme.

12:12.025 --> 12:14.325
Um, and then ultimately we would love to have the funding

12:14.385 --> 12:16.125
to implement such a scheme and see how it goes.

"Challenges and Insights in Implementing Payments for Ecosystem Services in Developing Countries"

00:00:00 - We've known for a very long time that the developed world values conservation, and would like, you know, would like to see the worth, the world get on a more sustainable path. But really we're asking the developing world to do a lot of the heavy lifting in that, you know, much of the world sort of natural resources, tropical forests, biodiversity and so forth and, and huge carbon sinks are located in the developing world. and, and so there's been this idea of how do we transfer the value that the developed world has for conservation to the people who actually bear the costs of, of conserving these landscapes. And, and so one of the things that have come up with is this idea of payments for ecosystem services or,
00:00:45 - and PES schemes are very much this idea that, international organizations funded from by, mostly from the developed world, will pay people in the developing world to conserve natural assets, conserve forests and and and so forth. But despite around $40 billion a year being transferred through these types of schemes, they haven't worked as well as we would like. And, and so I guess on, on, on, on balance, you would say these PE schemes haven't lived up to expectations. Why the Congo? well, huge tracks of, of tropical forest.
00:01:28 - tropical forest after the Amazon. and, you know, right at the front and center of this trade off this, this conflict if you like, between, development extract, resource extraction and, and, and conservation. So a really good pla exactly the kind of place the payment for ecosystem services scheme is supposed to work. One of the findings that are extra to one of the failings of PES schemes has been that we haven't really understood what the, the receiving country wanted or the receiving communities wanted out of the scheme. So they've been very donor driven. and, and so if you look at this, a piece of work by,
00:02:10 - of these schemes in Costa Rica, and she basically found that they were, were costly, they were complex, and they were always donor led, not community led. and, and she and her colleagues were pretty clear that she felt that was the, the primary driver of the lack of uptake of these types of schemes. I guess this, this paper, this piece of work was a collaboration between colleagues of mine here at Griffith University, but also colleagues at the Wood Well Climate Research Center based in Massachusetts. And, the people at Wood, well have been working in the Congo for quite some time, as well as other parts of Africa and South America. so they were sort of our entry into the location,
00:02:51 - the research method, which was something called Q Methodology. so Q is a method that tries to unpick the key discourses or the dominant discourses or, or, mindsets of communities. So what do they think about this, this PS thing? What do they think about forest conservation, the use of forests and, and so forth. And so the method involves, creating a set of statements. And these statements are, we have 37 in this, in this case. and these statements are essentially created by,
00:03:31 - And these statements are all around, you know, things like the design of the scheme, the use of forests and so forth. And then we ask respondents, so the people in the communities on a one-to-one basis. So at an individual level to, rank or place these statements in a, in a spectrum from sort of most agree with, to least agree with. And we force them to do it in something that looks a little bit like a normal distribution, which means they can only place a very small number of cards as, as the most degree and very small number of cards as the least degree. And, and most of the, the other ones end up in the middle of the distribution.

"Understanding Community Perspectives on Forest Conservation: Insights from Q Methodology"

00:04:12 - You know, a couple of examples of statements is that the, the forest is a great asset. We should use more of its resources to improve livelihood. So that's printed on the card, in English and French and, and also illustrated. We had an illustrator, you know, make these cards a little bit more engaging and also help with, with low literacy rates. and then the person would receive that card and go, well, I'm gonna place that where I think it is on this, this c continual move most to least degree. And when people do this, we typically find they, they agree with everything to begin with. So they get the first card, yeah, over that side, that side, that side, keep putting them, and then they realize they've filled up the, the, the agree side of, of the, the,
00:04:54 - And then they have to bring, bring them back slowly and really look at them relative to each other. once we do that, once we've done that, we take a photo to every individual, puts them onto the sorting mat, all these cards. We take a photo, and then we transfer that data into basically to excel. so we can do some further analysis. and what the analysis does, it's, it's called factor analysis. It basically groups people, into like-minded segments of the community. and so in this case, we found three groups, essentially. So three groups, that, you know, each group thinks roughly the same about the big issues.
00:05:34 - and once we've done that, the next step really is more qualitative. It's like, okay, well, we know how this group have sorted their cards. What does that tell us about them? What we learned from that? What can we draw out of that? and so we came up with three, three groups. So the first group we, we've called the conservationists, and they, and they were open to new ideas. So statements that were around forest conservation, they ranked very highly, statements around forest clearing. They, they disagreed with, and they showed strong support for, for skill building, new technologies and so forth. One of the, the key questions we were trying to explore
00:06:19 - to this community, how did they want 'em delivered? Did they want them, as individual payments or as collective payments? Did they want them in cash or did they want it in terms of better infrastructure, medical facilities, for example? Or did they want it in terms of agricultural, inputs, seeds, fertilizer, and so forth? it turned out across all of the groups, and I'll talk to the other two groups shortly, but it turned out that all of the groups really favored social payments, collective payments as opposed to individual, which again, is, is probably something that us coming from a, a western viewpoint, from a developed world viewpoint,
00:06:59 - We we're all very used to individually focused payments. and so that may be one of the reasons some of the, these schemes aren't going as well as we would've liked. So they, so the first group was conservationists. The second group we've called aspirational Artisans, strongly culturally connected to the forest, and quite confident in their ability to earn income from agriculture. They weren't concerned about the impacts so much of agriculture and farmer farming on the forests. and they were very clear they wanted to be involved in the governance of any, any kind of conservation or, or PE scheme. And that was another one of, the things we were trying
00:07:40 - their schemes to be managed? Do they want them to be managed by the, the international donor, by, you know, the local government by a central government or at the community level? and it's interesting because across the groups, some didn't want to be involved in governance at all. but this factor two, these, these aspirational artisans, they were very clear they wanted to be involved and in charge of the governance of such a scheme. And then we had a third group who we've labeled the passive conflicted farmers. They were concerned about their ability to earn income from agriculture and get access to markets. but they were also concerned about environmental effects

"Building Consensus for Sustainable Conservation: Insights from Community Perspectives on PES Schemes"**

00:08:20 - and their ability to, to grow, strong support for social compensation over private or individual. but we've called them passive because they had no interest in being involved in, in governance. they were also concerned about the connection with the forest and what it would mean for next generation's children and, and grandchildren. The final step really was to tease out the, the key lessons in terms of PS design, but also tease out statements where everybody almost agreed or disagreed. Because the idea is if you can find points of consensus,
00:09:02 - If you are trying to introduce something new into a community, don't open with something that we know people would, don't have consensus on because you'll just end up in a fight and, and it won't get the community support. So the fact that we could look at the statements and go, which, which statements were pretty much ranked the same by everybody in the community, then you could start from a, a base of a solid base of consensus. so some of those statements were things like the young people are better off getting educated and, and leaving, leaving the village and finding work. it is something we often find in developing communities across the globe when we do these kind of things. Older people are looking at younger generations and,
00:09:42 - for them in those local communities. But they also thought it was really, and this is another consensus statement, they all thought it was really important to be able to hand down the forest to their children and grandchildren. so that's suggests to me that could be where you would start a conversation around introducing a PES scheme. And in terms of statements that they didn't agree with the, the disagreement statements, there was a real mix around market access. Some felt market access was a real problem for agricultural sustainability. Others were quite confident in their ability to, to access markets. And there was also a real disagreement around
00:10:27 - So some groups were, yes, the, the developed world have a responsibility to help us conserve these forests. Others were of the opinion that no, we shouldn't be relying on outsiders to pay for it. So that's a, a hard, that's probably not the place to start there. If you are having a conversation about the introduction of a scheme in this community, start with the high, handing it down to children and grandchildren story. Don't start with who pays story, and then you're more likely to, I think, to get this thing sort of up and running. I think the conclusion is if we want these schemes to work, we need to better understand what the recipient communities want out of these schemes.
00:11:08 - a western developed world mindset, if it's all about cash and, and, and payments in this community at least, and, and this is quite consistent with other things we've seen in other parts of the world, that's not the place to start. The place to start is the, the, the legacy to the intergenerational story. So let's start with that and design a scheme from there. In terms of governance, most likely local governance will work better. Community level governance will work better, but not everybody wants to necessarily be involved, but that's probably okay. I think the next step in research wise is to more precisely define the attributes
00:12:14 - So perhaps design some can candidate schemes go into the community and say, if you could choose between scheme A or B, which would you choose? And, and why? So really narrow down. We've got a, we've got a broad picture now of, of things that are important or not important and things that, that have consensus and don't. but let's really hone down on specific attributes of a scheme. and then ultimately we would love to have the funding to implement such a scheme and see how it goes.

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