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The University of Southampton
Biological Sciences

Why monitoring matters in the design of payments for ecosystem services schemes Seminar

Time:
13:00 - 14:00
Date:
28 January 2014
Venue:
Building 85 Room 2207

For more information regarding this seminar, please telephone Kim Lipscombe on 02380 597747 or email K.R.Lipscombe@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

Julia is interested in how people interact with natural resources and how incentives can be best designed to maintain ecosystem services; for example the growing field of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and how schemes such as REDD+ can effectively deliver global environmental benefits while also having a positive impact on local livlihoods. She also has a strong interest in the design of robust conservation monitoring using different types of data, and in analysing the evidence underpinning environmental policies and decisions.

Conditionality is fundamental to the idea of payments for ecosystem services. However payments can only be conditional on the supply of ecosystem services if services can be monitored. Monitoring the supply of ecosystem services, whether carbon sequestration, biodiversity or hydrological services, is of course extremely difficult. Using examples from UK agri-environment schemes, and payments for biodiversity conservation in western Madagascar, I explore the conditions under which payment by effort may be favoured over payment by results, illustrate that robust monitoring of outcomes will be impossible for many payment schemes, and discuss additional values of monitoring; beyond trend detection.

Speaker information

Dr Julia Jones, Bangor University

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