Payments for Ecological Services and Eco-Compensation

Policy makers in the People’s Republic of China have been experimenting with new approaches to environmental management, resulting in a wide array of policy and program innovations under the broad heading of eco-compensation. Many of these are market-based instruments, particularly payments for ecological services—currently an emerging policy debate regarding the extent to which beneficiaries should pay, and the providers should be compensated—for the provision of natural resources and environmental services to promote sustainable, balanced growth. These proceedings are a collection of papers presented at the International Conference on Payments for Ecological Services convened in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in September 2009 to support eco-compensation programs in the country.