Ecosystem services in development: frontier of green colonialism or tool for social justice?

The conceptual framework of ecosystem services - the explicit valuation of ecosystems’ utility to human society - has become a dominant conservation paradigm in recent decades. Some conservation interventions based on ecosystem service frameworks also integrate development goals, often through compensation to rural landowners or land managers in economically developing nations in exchange for maintaining desired ecosystem services through Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs. The push to integrate development concerns into these programs comes, in part, from rural landowners seeking recognition for their conservation efforts. Yet others contend that ecosystem service-focused interventions have colonialist and neoliberal underpinnings that produce negative outcomes for participants, deepen social and spatial inequalities, and undermine Indigenous resource sovereignty. This chapter explores recent debates on the ability of an ecosystem services framework to move towards socially just development goals. In particular, it highlights activism by potential beneficiaries to shape programs for their own needs, as well as the shortcomings of PES programs that prioritize ecosystem services desired by those financing the programs. Critically, Indigenous Peoples live on a significant portion of the world’s forests that provide key ecosystem services and are thus actively engaged in these debates on shaping or rejecting PES programs. Drawing on a Guatemalan case study where some Indigenous communal forest managers have opted to participate in state-led payments for ecosystem services programs, this chapter explores the ability of this intervention to simultaneously achieve conservation and development goals as envisioned by local communities.