Situated Payments for Ecosystem Services: Local Agencies in the Implementation of the Sloping Land Conversion Programme in Southwest China

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is an innovative initiative to use market instruments for conservation that has spread across the world since the late 1990s. In assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of PES initiatives, global scholarship has focused on an outcome‐oriented approach. This has led to debate on PES programmes’ contributions to, and the trade‐offs between, conservation and development. Taking the Sloping Land Conversion...