Extract

Summary: ● A range of factors, including increased awareness of the pace of environmental decline, the limits of traditional approaches to environmental protection, and the significant benefits provided by healthy ecosystems, have stimulated worldwide interest in mobilizing wider support for conservation. ● Ecosystems and the valuable services they provide remain threatened in large part due to pervasive economic externalities (uncompensated third-party impacts) and the continued ‘invisibility’ of nature in much economic decision-making. ● Payments for ecosystem services (PES) attempt to correct such externalities by encouraging resource managers to provide ecosystem services through conditional payments from beneficiaries.