ABSTRACT

Introduction Payments for avoided deforestation, whether made to nation states, regions or local land users, can be seen as an international type of payment for environmental services (PES). Wunder (2005) defines PES as a voluntary transaction, where a welldefined environmental service (ES) (or a land use likely to secure that service) is being ‘bought’ by a (minimum one) ES buyer from a (minimum one) ES provider, if and only if the ES provider secures ES provision (conditionality).