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A Briefing Document For Wwf On The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Payment For Ecosystem Services Essay

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A briefing document for WWF Panama on the strengths and weaknesses of Payment for Ecosystem Services.

Definitions:

Wunder (2005) categorises Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) into five criteria stating that it needs:

1. To be voluntary
2. To be well defined
3. One buyer
4. One provider
5. Provider to have secure provision of ES

Wallace, (2007) defined ecosystem services (ES) as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems, which include food, water, timber and cultural values”.

Current status:
Increasingly there is a need to conserve global tropical habitats as it is currently estimated that 45% of all carbon is stored in the forests in terrestrial habitats (Garcia-Ulloa and Pin Koh, 2016). Therefore, there is a need for international cooperation. Recently at the United Nations Paris Climate Change Convention in 2015, 195 countries agreed to a global climate change pact. In this the countries agreed to reduce their carbon emissions to limit the amount of global warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels (Fawcett et al., 2015). As a result of this agreement the use of Payment for Ecosystem Services are likely to become more widespread by governments of forest-rich countries wishing to lower their carbon emissions. This may encourage local people to benefit from preserving and reforesting habitats in the tropics which would be beneficial for primate conservation.

REDD +
In 2008 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) initiated a programme

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