Justicia y equidad social en los sistemas de Pago por Servicios Ambientales

Payments for Environmental Services (PSA) are meant as a transfer of monetary or non-monetary resources among social actors, aiming to create incentives and aligning individual and / or collective decisions of land use with the public interest in management of natural resources. PES can be articulated through a market or other mechanisms such as incentives or public subsidies. In other words, PES are considered to be voluntary transaction when a buyer is purchasing a well-defined environmental service of at least one service provider if and only if the service provider secures service provision. However, in practice PES programs rarely meet this restrictive definition. Most common problems are often a not entirely voluntary nature of the program, the difficulties a clear causal link between some practice in land use and the amount of services provided, as well as problems setting a long-term resource monitoring for the level of service delivery. The purpose of this article is to examine through a critical literature review of case studies from Latin America whether PES programs are regulated sufficiently to achieve - apart from its main objectives, the conservation of the environment and create opportunities - equity and social justice standards among service providers.