To What Extent Are Cattle Ranching Landholders Willing to Restore Ecosystem Services? Constructing a Micro-Scale PES Scheme in Southern Costa Rica

Abstract

Deforestation and the unsustainable management of agricultural and livestock production systems in tropical mountain areas have caused fragmented and degraded landscapes. Payment for ecosystem services (PES) could be an effective policy instrument with which to reduce deforestation and restore disturbed ecosystems. The national-scale PES program in Costa Rica is recognized as being successful; however, its financial resources have been mostly dedicated to forest protection, and much less to reforestation projects. This paper aims to construct a micro-scale PES scheme by using primary data generated through spatial modeling and socio-economic and stated preference surveys (choice experiment) in southern Costa Rica. The results suggest that, on average, landholders would agree to implement restoration projects on their own private pasturelands if an appropriate holistic place-based approach was applied encompassing biophysical, social, economic, and institutional aspects. Willingness-to-accept values allow payments to be linked to cattle farmers’ estimates of specific ecosystem services (ES) and land opportunity costs. The economic valuation of three ESs (erosion control, water availability, and biodiversity) allows construction of a layered payment scheme, which could encourage the development of a potential partnership between national and local institutions and NGOs as alternative buyers of ESs, reduce transaction costs, and improve household well-being.