| The Pro- Poor Rewards for Environmental Services in Africa is a project being implemented by World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), Nairobi. It focuses on addressing issues of environmental degradation by rewarding the stewards of ecosystem services for adopting certain land use patterns that generate services which are beneficial to external stakeholders. My research was part of an initial scoping study done in Mount Kenya region to explore existence of payments for environmental services (PES) to stewards of ecosystem services. Our study also examined the scope of PES in alleviating poverty in the region. From the cases we observed, none of the cases satisfied the definition of PES. The projects had little impact on the health of environment and poverty levels of the community. The reasons could be attributed to factors like lack of tenure rights and supportive government policies, also the unequal power relations between the buyers and the sellers of ecosystem services.;Key Words: Ecosystem, Payment for Ecosystem Services, PES-like, buyers and sellers... |
