How payments for ecosystem services can undermine Indigenous institutions: The case of Peru's Ampiyacu-Apayacu watershed

Payments for ecosystem services have come to dominate international policies for addressing tropical deforestation. Political ecologists, degrowth scholars, and Indigenous activists have critiqued these approaches on the grounds that by centering economic growth, they can disrupt local conservation systems and compromise forest-dwelling communities' ability to protect forests and live well. Meanwhile, Indigenous groups have developed positive alternatives to ‘green growth’ strategies, including buen vivir (good living) in Latin America. In Peru, the National Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) serves as the state's flagship initiative to address tropical deforestation in Indigenous communities by paying communities for demonstrated reductions in deforestation, so long as they invest those funds according to an agreed up on management plan. We analyzed how the NFCP has interacted with quality-of-life plans, Indigenous planning tools rooted in buen vivir. Our findings suggest that the NFCP has eroded local systems for conservation, including the minga, an Amazonian tradition of mutual aid and shared labor for subsistence livelihoods, pushing communities to replace these systems with commodity production and employer-employee relationships. We argue that instead of imposing onerous conditions and steering communities towards evermore commodity production, conservation initiatives should support the implementation of quality-of-life plans. We suggest that climate justice organizers, political ecologists, and degrowth scholars explore and advocate for such initiatives.