From ecosystems we derive food and fiber, fuel and pharmaceuticals. Ecosystems mediate local and regional climates, stabilize soils, purify water, and in general provide a nearly endless list of services essential to life as we know it. To understand how to manage these services it is essential...

The payment for ecosystem services (PES) emerges as part of an arsenal of tools for innovative domestic financing for otherwise absent markets relating to natural resource management. Its traditional framework aspects of conditionality, voluntary transaction, at least one buyer and seller, and...