Contesting market-based conservation: Payments for ecosystem services as a surface of engagement for rural social movements in Mexico
Abstract
The Mexican National Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs, which provide
financial incentives for rural landholders to conserve forest, were originally designed
under the logic of market-based conservation. Based on a multi-sited, multi scalar
ethnography of the Mexican national PES programs, this article examines the process
through which a national rural social movement was able to redefine the market-based
narrative of PES, the historical and political context that provided this window of
opportunity, and the ways in which their engagement led to a hybridization of the
policy itself. The involvement of the rural social movement introduced a very different
conception of PES – as a recognition by Mexico’s federal state and urban society of
the value of campesino environmental stewardship and an economic support to allow
them to remain on the land. Their direct involvement in the redesign of the programs
had a significant impact on their conformation that reflected this vision of revaluing
the rural: the inclusion of agroforests and sustainably managed timber lands; requirements
for self-defined forest management plans; provision of dedicated funding for technical
assistance; and the training of local extensionists. I believe that in mapping the
evolution of the Mexican national PES program we can begin to see how, in this particular
place and time, rural social movements employed PES as a "useful surface of engagement"
(Escobar 1999, p. 13) for contesting the market-based notions of the federal state,
international lending institutions and conservation NGOs. I position this analysis
in the context of the global project of “grabbing green” and as an example of the
frictions that can inhibit and even partially reverse the logic of the seemingly inexorable
rise of market-based conservation policy and projects.
Type
Journal articleSubject
market-based; environmental policy; payments for ecosystem services; rural social
movements; Mexico; Latin America.Market-based
Environmental policy
payments for ecosystem services
rural social movements
Mexico
Latin America
social movement theory
critical theory
neoliberal
discourse analysis
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