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O Working Paper CEsA/CSG n.º 140 é uma reflexão, da autoria do investigador Dario Belluomini, sobre os Pagamentos por Serviços Ambientes (PSA), ou seja, um dos instrumentos mais inovadores no âmbito das políticas ambientais. Através de exemplos práticos, em contextos muito diferentes – desde países desenvolvidos a países em desenvolvimento – o investigador demonstra a complexidade deste instrumento e a sua utilidade para a protecção do meio-ambiente nos próximos anos.
Abstract
This paper present a thorough reflection on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)
programs, which may be viewed as the most innovative tools of the ‘environmental policy
toolkit’. These are incentive-based mechanisms, compensating landowners to manage the
natural resources under their control in a sustainable way (generating environmental
services such as biodiversity protection and ecotourism), instead of clearing land or
excessively exploiting their natural resources. After briefly discussing the most
significant findings in the environment and development research stream, we will present
how the roots of PES lie in public economic theory, with regard in particular to
1 An earlier version of this paper has been presented at ISEG – University of Lisbon (Portugal) during the
workshop “Sustentabilidade, Terceiro Setor e Redes Sociais em Debate 1” in February 2016.
WP 140 / 2016
More Working Papers CEsA / CSG available at
http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~cesa/index.php/menupublicacoes/working-papers
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environmental externalities. Later, after debating the proper definition of PES and its
main concepts (e.g. additionality, perverse incentives, conditionality), we shall also
comment the main case-studies on the topic, in order to provide clear examples of how
these instruments may be applied in several different context (i.e. both in developing and
developed countries, either by public or private agents). As it shall be shown, given their
high adaptability to local conditions, PES are likely to become extremely important in
next decades’ environment safeguard interventions.
Keywords Externalities, environmental taxes and subsidies (H 23), Forestry (Q 23),
Sustainability, environment and development (Q 56), Relation of economics to other
disciplines (A 12).
