Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Agricultura y la Alimentación- FAO
Pagos por Servicios Ambientales (PSA) en Paisajes Agrícolas
Pagos por servicios ambientales (PSA)
Usos de los PSA
Current PES schemes focus on water, carbon, or biodiversity and respond mainly to public, but increasingly also to private interest in addressing an environmental problem through positive incentives to land managers.
So far PES schemes have been developing mainly around three groups of environmental services:
• water quality and quantity, often including soil conservation measures in order to control erosion and sediment loads in rivers and reservoirs (which decreases storage capacity and increases treatment costs) and to reduce the risk of land slides and flooding;
• carbon sequestration (and in some cases protection of carbon storage) to respond to demand from the voluntary and regulatory greenhouse gas emissions markets (Kyoto Protocol, European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme - EU ETS);
• biodiversity conservation, by sponsoring the conservation of areas of important biodiversity (in buffer zones of protected areas, biological corridors or even in remnant patches of native vegetation in productive farms) and protecting agricultural biodiversity.
Most PES schemes are area-based, that is, direct payments (in cash or in kind) are provided upon adoption and maintenance of a particular type of land use or management (e.g. adoption of soil and water conservation measures or tree plantations or agro-forestry to increase carbon sequestration). In these cases, funds are normally collected from external users or beneficiaries, by charging an ecosystem service management fee added to water bills or park entrances.
These schemes can be part of large national programmes of public payments or private agreements, or they can respond to demand from credits from cap and trade schemes for carbon or biodiversity offsets for example.
