Payment for forest environmental services in Vietnam: An analysis of buyers’ perspectives and willingness

To mobilize more resources for conservation, the government of Vietnam has implemented a Payment for Forest Environment Services (PFES) policy that creates a market by collecting payments from a rather limited set of ecosystem services (ES) buyers and setting up a forest protection and development fund. Herein ES buyers do not interact with ES providers, and their participation is primarily based on regulatory compliance. We therefore asked, ‘what could be the real motivation for private-sector buyers of ES in Vietnam?’ We found that, although private-sector voluntary engagement is currently lacking, it is interested and willing to pay for ES. However, in their perspective, the ES that are regulated by the PFES policy had very weak elements of private goods and are thus difficult to be rationed. On the governance side, although the government has created a PFES structure, it neither facilitates direct engagement between ES buyers and providers, nor does it create an enabling environment for the emergence of voluntary payment schemes. To sustain the PFES, we suggest that along with amending laws and regulatory procedures to make ES more marketable, the government should evolve from regulating to enabling PFES negotiations using existing structures.