Conservation finance, markets for ecosystem services, and payment for ecosystem services are mechanisms being adopted, adapted, and expanded in conservation efforts globally.  These tools and markets can involve government or non-government organizations paying landowners for voluntary conservation on their land or can include service users paying service providers.   Payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes – providing financial incentives to landowners or managers whose actions generate benefits to others where these benefits would otherwise go uncompensated - in particular, have received considerable attention.  

Benefits, limitations, and best practices literature for PES schemes is growing as are on-the-ground examples.  Academic research has increased exponentially and organizations throughout the world are now investing in writing about, tracking, and implementing PES approaches.  Offered here are just a few resources publicly available that can offer some summary information about PES approaches.  

Summaries, Markets, and Case Studies
Each of the links below will take you to an external document or website. Many of these documents are published by the Katoomba group and IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development)
 

• Getting Started: A Primer on PES
• Some thoughts on “best practices” and overall guidance
• What is happening with ecosystem services markets?
• Payment for Watershed Services (PWS):
  • Overview of PWS in the Developing World
  • State of Global PWS case studies
  • An example: Vittel
  • Case studies around the world
  • The Voluntary Carbon Market in review
  • Forests and their Valuable Ecosystem Services: PES evaluation
• Other Resources
• U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Environmental Markets
• Costa Rica’s National Payment for Ecosystem Services Program (note: website is in Spanish)
• The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
• IPCC – Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
• These are only a few of the many resources and efforts around payments for ecosystem services not to mention resources about ecosystem services more generally.