482 Francis E. Putz and Pieter A. Zuidema
(Wilshusenet al. 2002). The “conservation incen-
tive agreement” (CIA) approach promoted by
Conservation International (Gullisonet al. 2001)
is the best-known type of direct payment for
tropical forest conservation. Advocates of this
approach argue that the benefits of CIAs to
rural communities generally exceed those that
the communities would receive from loggers har-
vesting timber from the same lands. Opponents
are concerned that negotiations between well-
funded international conservation organizations
and poor rural communities are unlikely to be fair,
and that development of locally adapted conser-
vation strategies is impeded by these outside inter-
ventions (Chapin 2004, Romero and Andrade
2004). Clearlytherewillonlybelong-termconser-
vation benefits of agreements negotiated between
wealthy and powerful outside groups and forest-
rich but financially poor rural people if the latter
remain satisfied with the negotiated agreements.
In light of recent progress towards understanding
community–company partnerships in the trop-
ics (e.g., Mayers and Vermeulen 2002), there are
good reasons to hope for fruitful marriages of
conservation and development, at least when the
relationship is approached honestly and in an
informed way.
Another option to promote forest protection
is to pay forest owners for the environmental
services their forests provide (Landell-Mills and
Porras 2002, Wunder 2007). For example, such
payments for environmental services (PES) are
being used to maintain the hydrological functions
of the forested water catchments for the city of
Quito, Ecuador, and PES from a national program
in Costa Rica are being used to compensate farm-
ers for profits lost as a result of protecting patches
of forest important for wildlife populations and
the ecotourists they attract (Pagiolaet al. 2002,
Scherret al. 2004). Similarly, in the interest of
reducing atmospheric concentrations of carbon
dioxide, PES are being used to promote carbon
sequestration through reforestation in Ecuador,
Mexico, Uganda, Malaysia, and elsewhere in the
tropics (e.g., de Jong 2004). Resource economists
and sociologists, with the hel pof a few ecologists
(e.g., Basset al. 2000), are developing ways to use
PES for biodiversity protection and to increase the
effectiveness and equitability of PES projects.
More than any other approach to improving
matrix management practices, voluntary third-
party certification of forest products harvested in
environmentally sound, socially appropriate, and
economically viable manners has changed the
ways tropical forests are treated (e.g., Dickinson
et al. 2004, Nebelet al. 2005). By linking con-
sumers concerned about the fates of the forests
from which their flooring, furniture, Brazil nuts,
or health-care products are derived with the
harvesters of these products, the certification
program of the FSC has stimulated substantial
improvements in forest management practices
(Nittler and Nash 1999), now covering mil-
lions of hectares of natural forest in the tropics
(www.fsc.org). The costs of certification are both
direct (i.e., paying for the forest audits) and indi-
rect (i.e., modifying management practices so as
to be eligible for certification), but for companies
and communities interested in marketing their
products to environmental and socially concerned
consumers, the benefits are apparently sufficient
to warrant the additional expenditures (Dickinson
et al. 2004). Unfortunately, although the FSC
is an international non-governmental and non-
profit organization with many members from the
USA, markets for FSC-certified products are much
stronger in the UK and northern Europe.
The ecological foundations for these market-
based mechanisms for promoting forest preser-
vation and conservation through sustainable
resource use require careful regulation and
regular monitoring because markets have no
conscience and least-cost options are typically
preferred. For example, a PES for climate change
mitigation might involve reforestation, a pro-
cess about which most people have good feel-
ings. Unfortunately, maximizing rates of carbon
sequestration in plantations often entails nar-
row spacings of exotic trees, fertilizing heavily
with nitrogen fixed by the fossil-fuel expensive
Haber–Bosch process, and treating native species
as weeds (e.g., Evans 1982). The undesirable eco-
logical consequences of such an approach may
seem obvious, but the alternatives also have dis-
advantages. It is often argued, for example, that
by intensifying management in a small area of
plantations,pressureisrelievedonthemoreexten-
sive areas of natural forest (reviewed by Cossalter