THE OUTCOMES OF TRANSLATING NEOLIBERAL ENVIRONMENTAL THEORY: A CRITICAL ANAYLSIS OF PAYMENTS FOR ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) is a conservation mechanism that aims to commodify ecosystems based on the services they provide. PES programs represent a neoliberal approach to conservation by expanding the economy into environmental management. The successful creation of markets in which ecosystem services are valued and sold is thought to ensure their future sustainability. This market-based approach to conservation is considered to be more efficient, transparent, simple, and apolitical than alternative conservation mechanisms. However these benefits are contingent upon the successful establishment of free markets for completely commodified ecosystem services. As PES programs have been implemented, they have consistently failed to create free markets. In this thesis I argue that the requirements of markets and the process of commodification are incompatible with the characteristics of ecosystems. Due to this incompatibility, policymakers are forced to alter the design of PES programs in such a way that they are not demand generating, self-sufficient free markets as anticipated by theory. The success of PES programs in maintaining or increasing the provision of ecosystem services is unclear, as is the claim that they will simultaneously reduce rural poverty. In this thesis, I provide a critical analysis of Costa Rica's PES program to demonstrate the translation of neoliberal economic theory to state environmental policy

Mapping adaptive capacity and smallholder agriculture: applying expert knowledge at the landscape scale

The impacts of climate change exacerbate the myriad challenges faced by smallholder farmers in the Tropics. In many of these same regions, there is a lack of current, consistent, and spatially-explicit data, which severely limits the ability to locate smallholder communities, map their adaptive capacity, and target adaptation measures to these communities. To explore the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in three data-poor countries in Central America, we leveraged expert input through in-depth mapping interviews to locate agricultural landscapes, identify smallholder farming systems within them, and characterize different components of farmer adaptive capacity. We also used this input to generate an index of adaptive capacity that allows for comparison across countries and farming systems. Here, we present an overview of the expert method used, followed by an examination of our results, including the intercountry variation in expert knowledge and the characterization of adaptive capacity for both subsistence and smallholder coffee farmers. While this approach does not replace the need to collect regular and consistent data on farming systems (e.g. agricultural census), our study demonstrates a rapid assessment approach for using expert input to fill key data gaps, enable trans-boundary comparisons, and to facilitate the identification of the most vulnerable smallholder communities for adaptation planning in data-poor environments that are typical of tropical regions. One potential benefit from incorporating this approach is that it facilitates the systematic consideration of field-based and regional experience into assessments of adaptive capacity, contributing to the relevance and utility of adaptation plans