This research was conducted in compliance with ethics guidelines at Universidad de los Andes (UdeA) and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Overall, these guidelines included considerations over participants’ well-being, anonymity, and data storage to minimize psychological, physical and moral risks. Additionally, I adopted the Belmont’s Report ethical principles and guidelines for research involving human subjects, namely:
respect, beneficence, and justice (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979). Respect for participants involves treating people as autonomous agents and that people with diminished autonomy should be especially protected. Beneficence refers to the rules of (1) do no harm, and (2) maximize benefits and minimize possible harm. Justice, in turn, refers to considerations about who receives the benefits of the research and who gets the burdens.
With these principles in mind, an informed consent (Appendixes 5,6 and 10) was read out loud prior to conducting any research method to ensure that individuals were voluntarily participating in the research, acknowledging the relevant risks and benefits. Although this research does not involve the disclosure of sensitive information, all responses were anonymously recorded and stored on my computer with exclusive access to protect participants’ identity and confidentiality. Along these lines, in Chapters Three and Four, I explicitly avoided mentioning the participants’ names and positions to maintain anonymity. The informed consent included an explanation of the general objective of this thesis, the funding sources, the time it would take to finish the task, the use of the information, the rationale behind the incentives (for the economic experiment) and a contact number for further questions (Appendixes 5,6,10). All quantitative data is available for verification (following the replicability principle in quantitative research) in Mendeley online repository.
I disseminated the results of this dissertation in two events targeting research actors: a policy day in Bogotá to which more than 80 PES practitioners and academics attended (funded through Environment for Development Initiative) and a workshop in Buenaventura targeting the Afro-Colombian community leaders from the country’s Pacific region (funded through a small grant given by the UAB’s Fundació Autònoma Solidaria).
I acknowledge that my “positionality” as a researcher is likely to have influenced my access to participants and the data collection process in general. Positionality refers to the extent to which the observable characteristics of the researcher (e.g., gender, race, class) might influence the data collection and interpretation process (Johnston, Gregory, Pratt,
& Watts, 2000). The debate about positionality is directly related to how the researcher is positioned in relation to power and how a politics of position can help transform
unequitable or discriminatory debates (Johnston et al., 2000). As this dissertation involves people who differ in their educational level, wealth, and economic and political power, my position as a Ph.D. candidate, institutionally affiliated to both UdeA and UAB, facilitated access to both high-level interviewees for Chapters Four and Five, and landowners and farmers who participated in surveys and economic experiments for Chapters Six and Seven. My position as a Ph.D. candidate from a foreign university and being affiliated to one of Colombia’s most prestigious universities, certainly opened doors to high level participants. All the data gathering was conducted in Spanish;
therefore, no language bias is expected to be present in this research. Further, one key aspect to highlight is that research in Colombia is highly limited by security concerns, meaning that I had to obviously consider public order and overall field work conditions (e.g., accessibility) for the selection of study sites. As a woman researcher, I was always accompanied by a research assistant or a co-researcher to mitigate personal risks.
Another relevant issue to reflect on is that of expectations. In my own field work experience, I have usually observed that research participants expect benefits that go well beyond the scope of the research project or the researcher capacity (e.g., bringing possible money or development projects in the future). When this was the case, I opted to avoid raising any false hopes and to be very honest and realistic about my role and capacities as a Ph.D. researcher.
While offering a mixed methods approach to contribute to PES debates in terms of conceptualization and implementation, this thesis has potential limitations regarding the validity of its findings. The quality assessment of any piece of research (either qualitative or quantitative) is generally measured in terms its validity (Bryman, Becker, & Sempik, 2008; Flick, 2009). There are several types of validity, but the three most important types of research design validity are: context validity (to what extent the situation under which
the research is carried out represents real life), internal validity (the extent to which the research design allows to draw conclusions with a high level of theoretical rigour), and external validity (to what extent can the findings be generalized from the larger population) (Newing, 2011).
The findings of this thesis cannot, of course, be easily generalized or transposed to wider populations or applied to every other context. Assessing the external validity of a framed field experiment, for example, requires a comparison of the experimental results to self-reported or observed behaviours in real settings. Still, the findings drawn from areas with high potential for restoration (Cundinamarca) and with a pronounced need for conservation (Caquetá) might provide learnings for other settings facing similar threats.
Further, the methods applied in this dissertation, and in particular the Q-method, the motivations survey, and the forest conservation game can be replicated to provide empirical evidence in other PES contexts. In the discussion section of each empirical chapter and in the Conclusions of this dissertation (Chapter Seven), I elaborate on future research avenues that take into account the limitations of each of the methods applied in this thesis.
Chapter Three. Pragmatic
Conservation: discourses of Payments for Ecosystem Services in Colombia
Lina Moros, Esteve Corbera, María Alejandra Vélez and Daniel Flechas Accepted in Geoforum (July 2019)
Abstract
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes incentivise landowners to maintain, restore or enhance ecosystem services. Currently, there are more than 550 active PES programmes worldwide, expected to support conservation efforts and, ideally, to also reduce rural poverty. In this article we explore the discourses that underpin PES debates and practice in Colombia, a late-comer to the PES agenda in Latin-America. Informed by interviews with PES actors and Q-methodology (n=41), we identify three PES discourses:
conservation conduit, contextual conservation, and inconvenient conservation. The narratives diverge in their framing of deforestation processes; their most preferred PES design features; the likely role of payments in changing people’s motivations to conserve biodiversity over time; and the potential effectiveness of PES, specifically when the latter aim to contribute to peace-building efforts and reducing illicit crop cultivation. The conservation conduit and contextual discourse are by far the most popular, while the inconvenient conservation narrative is only endorsed by academic actors. This suggests the existence of a broad community which believes PES are a pragmatic conservation strategy and who supports PES because payments can correct the often-uneven distribution of conservation costs and benefits. This overall positive engagement with PES, we argue, may facilitate the increase and upscaling of PES initiatives throughout the country, provided that funding and other supporting social conditions are met.
Keywords: Payments for Ecosystem Services, Q-methodology, discourses, Colombia