GEF Investments on Payment for Ecosystem Services Schemes

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
(MEA), The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity study
(TEEB) and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity
and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) provide a comprehensive and
useful framework to understand human dependence on ecosystem
services and how best to protect these services in
perpetuity. In these three authoritative studies, payment
for ecosystem services (PES) is listed as one of the
mechanisms that should allow societies to pay for the
maintenance of these services. Ecosystem services are
receiving increased attention in the context of human
development through The Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity study (TEEB). This is an international
initiative designed to call attention to the global economic
benefits of biodiversity, and the growing costs of
biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. In TEEB s
Report for Policymakers, PES schemes are listed as
potentially useful mechanisms to compensate those who
maintain the flow of ecosystem services. The study
emphasizes that PES schemes offer considerable potential to
raise new funds for biodiversity or to use existing funding
more efficiently, and that both the public and private
sectors can play a role in establishing PES in different contexts.