Ecosystems provide services that sustain, strengthen and enrich various constituents of human well-being. The unique feature of most of these services is that they are unaccounted and unpriced, and therefore remain outside the domain of the market. For this reason, the use of innovative instruments for the management and measurement of transactions between provider and beneficiaries of environmental services–known as payment for ecosystem services (PES)–has become a promising response option. In this volume, leading experts from the field of ecological economics address a wide range of issues dealing with the valuation of ecosystem services–a key to PES–and major challenges to PES schemes. They also explore payment options for rural development worldwide, implications for the long-run sustainability of the arrangement, and synthesis of major knowledge gaps in the field. A special feature of this book is the many case studies from developing economies like India, Nepal, China and countries from Africa and Latin America. Also included are case studies from Australia and other developed countries where PES models have been successfully designed and executed for carbon emission, watershed services, genetic material and nutrients cycling. One of the first in its field, this volume will be useful to teachers and postgraduate students of environmental sciences and management, environment economists, policymakers, researchers and conservation managers.
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