Payments for Ecosystems Services—Their Role in Creating Rural-Urban Synergies

Abstract

In this chapter, rural-urban synergies are examined in the context of land and water management interventions and how these are stimulated by payments for ecosystems services (PES). A review of PES literature highlights, by drawing on 10 European case studies, that PES are based on core principles of (i) the recognition of both ESS suppliers and users; and (ii) that payment is conditional on ESS improvements flowing from ESS interventions. Key findings from the analysis include that the most successful PES schemes are cross-sectoral and multi-scalar in their impacts and may represent a correction of prevailing market relations of subsidy dependencies. The opportunities to combine the valorisation of rural distinctiveness with the enhanced opportunity for urban ESS delivery should be an ambition of PES schemes. Such objectives demand clear compensations for lost earnings in PES schemes, a flexible (or ESS-centric) territorial approach to developing PES partnerships and a greater understanding of public-private blended finance to devise PES innovations