Investment in natural capital restoration is rapidly increasing as a response to the widespread ecological degradation of dryland areas in Latin America. Nonetheless, few attempts have been made to evaluate the costs and benefits of restoration initiatives in dryland ecosystems. By combining ecological and economic information, we assessed the benefits and costs of restoring ecosystem services in a dryland forest landscape in the Colliguay Valley, in central Chile. An active restoration program was evaluated by comparing its benefits and costs over a twenty five-year period.

Biodiversity is crucial for the production of a range of marketed and non-marketed ecosystem goods and services. This paper reviews the empirical evidence for the role of terrestrial biodiversity and biodiversity conservation in economic development and poverty, at both the macro (e.g. country) and micro (e.g. farm) scales.

Presently, the mountain gorilla in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo is endangered mainly by poaching and habitat loss. This paper sets out to investigate the possible resolution of poaching involving the local community by using benefit sharing schemes with local communities.

The illegal exploitation of wild abalone in South Africa has been escalating since 1994, despite increased enforcement, leading to collapse in some sections of its range. South Africa banned all wild abalone fishing in 2008 but controversially reopened it in 2010.

The paper discusses the application of Elinor Ostrom’s Social Ecological Systems (SES) framework, using as example a community organization in Costa Rica, which collectively extracts turtle eggs.

Many protected areas are not successfully conserving biodiversity, often despite adequate management within their borders. Changes in land use outside protected areas can alter ecological function inside protected areas and result in biodiversity loss given that protected areas are almost always parts of larger ecosystems. Economic incentives are seen as one of the most promising avenues to influence conservation goals.

This Brief presents a framework that can be used to assess the potential impact of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes.

Factors that determines the impact of PES are discussed such as additional forest conservation through targeted payments and the risk for unintended incentives and consequences and feelings of injustice among those who don´t receive payments. The brief further discuss the role for PES in national REDD+ policy.

A framework that can be used to assess the potential impact of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes.