Rubber and Carbon: Opportunity Costs, Incentives and Ecosystem Services in Acre, Brazil

The concept of ‘opportunity costs’ has been important in theoretical discussions of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). It focuses attention on economic trade‐offs of individual landholders and can make providing ecosystem services, such as tropical forest carbon sequestration, appear to be a cost‐effective way to reduce near‐term carbon emissions. Yet in practice, the concept may be less useful. This article examines how a programme in the...