Market-Based Instruments for Ecosystem Services: Institutional Innovation or Renovation?

• DOI: 10.1080/08941920.2013.820815
• Publication Date: 2013-09-21T00:21:26Z
• Authors: Valérie Boisvert; Philippe Méral; Géraldine Froger
• Keywords: economic incentives; 330; 0211 other engineering and technologies; 577; biodiversity offsets; payments for environmental services; 02 engineering and technology; 15. Life on land; [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences; market-based instruments; institutional arrangements; ecosystem services

Recent years have seen widespread experimentation with market-based instruments (MBIs) for the provision of environmental goods and ecosystem services. However, little attention has been paid to their design or to the effects of the underlying pro-market narrative on environmental policy instruments. The purpose of this article is to analyze the emergence and dissemination of the term “market-based instruments” applied to the provision of environmental services and to assess to what extent the instruments associated are genuinely innovative. The recommendation to develop markets can lead in practice to a variety of institutional forms, as we show it based on the example of payments for environmental services (PES) and biodiversity offsets, two very different mechanisms that are both presented in the literature as MBIs. Our purpose is to highlight the gap between discourse and practice in connection with MBIs.