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Payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes have been increasingly implemented in developing countries where gender-related inequalities are generally prevalent. A randomized field trial in Kenya revealed the impacts of participants’ gender in conservation auctions and in environmental performance of action- and outcome-based PES schemes and provided evidence for associations between the gender effects and traditional gender roles. First, we identified differences between men and women in the utilities of the contract and relative risk aversion as potential drivers of the decrease in bids by women compared to men in the auction for action-based contracts. Second, we observed a gender-specific difference in perceptions of risk in the outcome-based approach when women increased their bids. Third, women achieved lower tree survival than men, despite women providing more effort. In this context, we identified the inequality in reciprocal labor for male and female contract holders as a possible source of the gendered tree survival. This case study showed that targeting women improves gender equity in terms of access to project decision-making, trainings and cash, and can significantly improve the effectiveness of the PES scheme.

To mobilize more resources for conservation, the government of Vietnam has implemented a Payment for Forest Environment Services (PFES) policy that creates a market by collecting payments from a rather limited set of ecosystem services (ES) buyers and setting up a forest protection and development fund. Herein ES buyers do not interact with ES providers, and their participation is primarily based on regulatory compliance. We therefore asked, ‘what could be the real motivation for private-sector buyers of ES in Vietnam?’ We found that, although private-sector voluntary engagement is currently lacking, it is interested and willing to pay for ES. However, in their perspective, the ES that are regulated by the PFES policy had very weak elements of private goods and are thus difficult to be rationed. On the governance side, although the government has created a PFES structure, it neither facilitates direct engagement between ES buyers and providers, nor does it create an enabling environment for the emergence of voluntary payment schemes. To sustain the PFES, we suggest that along with amending laws and regulatory procedures to make ES more marketable, the government should evolve from regulating to enabling PFES negotiations using existing structures.