Assessing Community Readiness for Payments for Ecosystem Service Schemes for Tropical Primary Forest Protection in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Primary forest conservation is essential for limiting climate change, for meeting conservation objectives, and the Sustainable Development Goals. Schemes that compensate communities for forgone extractive uses are important policy tools, but effective deployment demands an understanding of local deforestation drivers and host communities’ preferences. We use Q-methodology to reveal discourses present in three communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Our results reveal three factors with a common emphasis on forest conservation and preferences for compensation in the form of social investments, rather than cash. The main contrasts were in attitudes towards farming. The first discourse, we call conservationist—open to ideas, displayed a commitment to learning better practices for community material benefit in service of forest conservation. The second discourse, which demonstrated greater confidence in their capacity to support livelihoods from farming, we call aspirational artisans. The third, which was acutely aware of the impact of their farming on forest conservation, we called passive, conflicted farmers. We also demonstrate an aspiration for the continued development of farming amongst participants, which although still correlated with preferences for forest conservation, may lead to compensation schemes inadvertently stirring future land use tensions if design does not reconcile agricultural development and conservation.