全球变化知识资源中心

In this article, I examine the limitations of payment for ecosystem services (PES) carbon forestry programs in their ability to alleviate rural poverty and mitigate global climate change within the market context in which they operate. Turning to the Scolel'te program in Mexico's southernmost state, Chiapas, I illustrate how, in 2008, international buyers of carbon credits produced in the region began to alter their sourcing decisions in response to shifting dynamics within the global economy-what I refer to here as market risk. I then use a commodity chains framework to (1) reveal how program managers in Scolel'te sought to protect the program in the face of such risk by using their relative positions of power to govern how carbon credit producing farmers operated and (2) illustrate the implications of this market risk and the decisions of program managers for farmers participating in the program. I find that the governance decisions made by program managers in the face of market risk led to a series of unintended outcomes that included the dissolution of the social relations of production between program managers and carbon credit-producing farmers as well as the social relations within participating communities. As a result, farmers began to leave the program, abandoning their agroforestry plantings and limiting the full realization of the program's positive environmental and social outcomes in the region.