Very true. Many times humans know what is right but do not follow it.

I believe that yes, environmental education is key in this regard.

Absolutely. You need to value the ecosystem services otherwise the comparison of different land uses and agriculture management regimes biased. The income for the landowner is necessary, but how the local economy and society benefits from the ecosystem services is also significant.

Dear Himlal,

I totally agree with you,  the ES approach is not widely understood by policymakers, the general public and the private sector. This is clearly illustrated in the Congo basin countries, through the development and implementation of management plans (MP) of natural production forests.

The scheme by which the management plans of production forests are drafted in countries such as Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, DRC, is typically on the ES approach. The MPs are drafted based on multi-resource inventories, at least at the level of products/goods including timber and non-timber forest products (NTFPs). But if inventories are "quite well" designed for timber resource (the main interest of the private sector) , little is done for what concerns NTFPs (the main interest of local communities) in both quality and quantity views. The final MP drafted by the private (forest concessionaire) will just give some global directives concerning the use of NTFPs (medicinal plants, foods, service products). The policy makers, in the other hand, do not have enough means to make sure the concept of ES approach proposed is fully respect.

The main cause being the lack of solid and scientifically standards/norms for (1) controling the quality of Mps, and (2) if the document of the MP has finally been aproved by the forest administration, the lack of standards for monitoring the way those Mps are being implemented in the field as to respect the concept of ES approach.

I conclude that the concept of ES approach although it is underlined in most of forest policies in the Congo Basn countries, it is not well designed and applied in the field. If well designed and applied, it can be a key element for enhancing global well being of different stakeholders, from the local level to the global world.

I agree with you, we still need to make a lot of progress in terms of environmental policies and the valuation of ecosystem services so that the issue is more open and more visible to the public and private sectors.

However, we already see some interesting initiatives in Brazil, for example, there are already several public and private projects of economic valuation of ecosystem services. In Brazil, the National Water Agency develops the Volunteer Water Producer program, which provides technical and financial support for the implementation of water and soil conservation actions, such as the construction of terraces and basins. infiltration, re-adaptation of vicinal roads, recovery and protection of springs, reforestation of areas of permanent protection and legal reserve, environmental sanitation, etc. It also provides for the payment of incentives (or a kind of financial compensation) to rural producers who have proven to contribute to the protection and recovery of springs, generating benefits for the river basin and population.

Whenever resources are used, somebody pays for them. In so far as the beneficiaries do not pay for them, people who have not benefited pay instead. Fairness obviously improves if the beneficiaries pay. The polluter-pays principle has therefore been adopted as an international norm, by OECD in the first instance (The UN tried unsuccessfully to get it called more accurately 'the user-pays principle').

The answer to your question is 'yes, of course'.

The challenges are firstly to identify the beneficiaries correctly and secondly to find ways of ensuring that they cannot escape paying.

see my Fair Principles for Sustainable Development: Essays on Environmental Policy in Developing Countries, editor and author of one chapter, Aldershot, Edward Elgar, 1993