Impacts of payments for environmental services on local development in northern Costa Rica: A fuzzy multi-criteria analysis

Background

This paper evaluates the impacts of reforestation projects conducted through Costa Rica's Payment for Environmental Services (PSA) program, which pays landowners for different forest uses. The researchers developed an evaluaton framework that was first based on a set of prinicipals (economic, social, institutional, biological) that were in-term subdivided into different categories. These evaluation criteria were evaluated and weighted through the help of local experts, then used to guide a series of landowner interviews.

Conclusions & Takeaways

The results were strongly correlated to socio-economic class, whereby landowners who depended on their plot of land as a source of livelihood saw negative impacts and poor prices from underdevelopped markets for thinning products, and wealthier landowners saw benefits since they weren't already using their land for economic gain and therefore had lower opportunity costs.