Carbon storage in Mexico: making ecosystem services equitable and legitimate

Markets for ecosystem services are being promoted across the developing world. These markets have developed amidst claims that people need economic incentives to conserve ecosystems and their services. However, these markets must be designed and implemented in ways that are fair to local people.

Ecosystems provide critical services for the functioning of natural and human systems, for example cleansing, recycling and renewing biological resources. Markets for ecosystem services aim to generate payments from people who benefit from the goods and services provided by ecosystems. When creating such markets, planners must make sure that the benefits are fairly distributed (equity) and that everyone involved accepts the processes and outcomes (legitimacy).

One ecosystem service is the storage of carbon in trees and forests. Since the 1990s, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has encouraged companies from developed countries to fund reforestation activities across the rural developing world. Research from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK considers the Fondo Bioclimático pilot project in Chiapas, Mexico.

The Fondo Bioclimático project, registered in 1997, has contracts to grow forests over the next thirty years. It now involves 650 farmers from 33 communities in Chiapas State. Focusing on two ‘ejidos’ (areas of common land), Yalumá and Rincón Chamula, the research shows:

• Internal struggles over property rights in the Yalumá ejido mean there has never been strong collective action for managing common forests.
• The participation of the Yalumá people was initially limited, because the project was affiliated with a regional organisation which local people did not support.
• Carbon forestry in Yalumá included individual holdings, but appeared to favour richer households with land available for tree planting.
• The shared history of migration in the Rincón Chamula ejido creates strong social cohesion, leading to active management of forest resources.
• Women were not involved in making decisions and they were less interested in the project than men when it moved away from development-oriented objectives to a narrower focus on tree planting.
• The transfer of knowledge about the project has been limited to community representatives, though this may help to reduce misunderstandings.

Payments from the carbon project have been insufficient to encourage better forest management plans. However, they have improved welfare in both communities. The authors conclude that:

• Ecosystem service markets can be based on both individually owned property and shared, common property; informal rights and voluntary contracts are often sufficient for markets to work.
• The success of carbon storage as an ecosystem service has created a demand that is less focused on development. Unless equity and legitimacy are made central to planning and implementation, existing inequalities between community members will be reinforced.

Source(s):
‘The Equity and Legitimacy of Markets for Ecosystem Services’, Development and Change, Vol.38, No.4, pages 587-613, by Esteve Corbera, Katrina Brown and W. Neil Adger, 2007 Full document.

Funded by: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (UK)

id21 Research Highlight: 10 January 2008

Further Information:
Esteve Corbera
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Zuckerman Institute for Connective Environmental Research
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ
UK

Tel: +44 1603 593900
Fax: +44 1603 593901
Contact the contributor: e.corbera@uea.ac.uk

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK

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