Paying for ecological services in Ecuador: The political economy of structural inequality

Paying Indigenous communities to conserve land for carbon sequestration is a controversial way of tackling climate change. Critics argue that paying for ecological services (or ‘PES’) in the form of carbon offset programmes reduces land and social relations to an economic transaction that devalues Indigenous livelihoods and communities. At the same time, empirical studies have shown that Indigenous communities have accepted and even embraced the idea of being paid to conserve land for climate change mitigation. This paper explores this apparent contradiction by investigating the implementation of Programa Socio Bosque (PSB), a PES carbon sequestration programme in Ecuador. Drawing upon primary fieldwork in the highland province of Chimborazo, it makes the case that PES programmes need to be understood as form of state power that reconfigures and reinforces the ways in which Indigenous peoples engage with the state. Particularly important in this regard is the role of the state in reinforcing the agrarian conditions under which Indigenous communities use and interpret PES payments while at the same time reconfiguring new forms of land conservation. Empirically, the research reveals important complementarities between the goals of carbon sequestration PES programmes and Indigenous land-use practices. Methodologically, it highlights the importance of situating the study of PES programmes in a context of land struggles, community–state relations and agrarian change.