Dividing “Above” and “Below”: Constructing Territory for Ecosystem Service Conservation in the Ecuadorian Highlands

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) arrangements aim to influence human activities in critical ecosystems that produce, among other services, water, biodiversity, and carbon sinks. In practice, PES arrangements ultimately seek to redefine and territorialize space for conservation. Establishing control over activities within a targeted area is challenging, however, particularly when these areas are carved from landscapes where people are living and working. Drawing on an empirical case study of a water fund PES from Ecuador called Fondo para la Proteccion del Agua (FONAG), this article employs data from participant observation, key informant interviews, and archival documents to examine labor of the páramo guards, the local residents directly paid as employees of FONAG for their work as intermediaries between the water fund and rural Andean communities. Their labor goes toward (1) patrolling the páramo ecosystem “above” in higher elevations and (2) recruiting the collective labor of their neighbors to do conservation work from “below” in lower elevations. The páramo guards’ labor directly contributes to enforcing FONAG’s territorial claim on the land, necessary to pursue the commodification of ecosystem services that are derived from it. In highlighting the tensions and contradictions that emerge from the guard position, this article demonstrates how territorial claiming through market-based environmental governance entails labor and multiple governmentalities to circulate value.