Money for Monos: An Analysis of the Payment for Environmental Services Program in the Osa Peninsula

Wildlife conservation and agriculture are often seen as conflicting activities, particularly in tropical forest environments. Focusing on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, this paper demonstrates that such topics need not be thought of in terms of mutual exclusivity. Additionally, this paper explores the ways in which rural Costa Ricans think of and interact with the primary forests and how they cultivate the land, either for personal use or for commercial agricultural practices. The Payment for Environmental Services Program (PES) is used as a framework to analyze the intersections of political, social, and economic ties to land. The PES program has existed since the mid 1990s and has the potential to revolutionize the way governments and, in turn, people value the ecosystems and wildlife. Costa Rica implemented the world’s first program on a national scale in which land users are compensated for various environmental protection efforts. This ranges from reforestation to strictly conservation of existing forested areas. Funded by taxes, international donors, and down-stream benefactors, PES is a voluntary service that promotes poverty alleviation, carbon sequestration through forest conservation, as well as increased water quality and availability. Costa Rica’s programs, unlike other countries, implements both forest conservation and water quality provisions. The social and economic implications of these programs have been written about extensively, justifying the theoretical and economic frameworks that underlie the payments. However, the claimed environmental benefits and socioeconomic impacts have yet to be thoroughly reviewed. Using an ethnographic approach, I triangulate the stakeholders, government officials, tour guides, and farmers. Additionally, spatial analysis through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provides a comprehensive view of the policy, economic, and cultural factors affecting wildlife management and preservation.Geography and the Environmen

Reimagining the potential of Earth observations for ecosystem service assessments

The benefits nature provides to people, called ecosystem services, are increasingly recognized and accounted for in assessments of infrastructure development, agricultural management, conservation prioritization, and sustainable sourcing. These assessments are often limited by data, however, a gap with tremendous potential to be filled through Earth observations (EO), which produce a variety of data across spatial and temporal extents and resolutions. Despite widespread recognition of this potential, in practice few ecosystem service studies use EO. Here, we identify challenges and opportunities to using EO in ecosystem service modeling and assessment. Some challenges are technical, related to data awareness, processing, and access. These challenges require systematic investment in model platforms and data management. Other challenges are more conceptual but still systemic; they are byproducts of the structure of existing ecosystem service models and addressing them requires scientific investment in solutions and tools applicable to a wide range of models and approaches. We also highlight new ways in which EO can be leveraged for ecosystem service assessments, identifying promising new areas of research. More widespread use of EO for ecosystem service assessment will only be achieved if all of these types of challenges are addressed. This will require non-traditional funding and partnering opportunities from private and public agencies to promote data exploration, sharing, and archiving. Investing in this integration will be reflected in better and more accurate ecosystem service assessments worldwide

Merging of industry and environment in Costa Rica

Exploring existing and future mechanisms to conserve land and fragile ecosystems in Costa Rica.Geography and the Environmen

Coproduce conservation technology with conservation decisionmakers and practitioners to increase its impact

Addressing the biodiversity crisis will mean developing and adopting new resources and methods that effectively improve public conservation efforts. Technologies have a long track record of increasing the efficiency of carrying out time-consuming tasks or even making new feats possible, and if applied thoughtfully, can serve as a key means of strengthening conservation outcomes. Yet technology development sometimes proceeds without clear mechanisms for application and scaling, or key adopters like government agencies are not able to use the technologies. To overcome these discrepancies, we recommend the use of a coproduction model of conservation technology development that starts from detailed knowledge of conservation laws, regulations, and policies; identifies choke points in those processes amenable to technological solutions; and then develops those solutions while integrating existing users and needs. To illustrate the model, we describe three tools recently developed to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of implementing the U.S. Endangered Species Act. We also highlight several outstanding questions and challenges that the broad conservation technology and policy communities may help address