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The recognition of ecosystem services for the welfare of society has been widely disseminated within the scientific community, as well as the interest of the population regarding its relevance has increased significantly. This paper presents as an object of investigation the Payment for Environmental Services (PES), which is regarded as an instrument of environmental management capable of generating economic value from the protection and maintenance of ecosystems through economic incentives to environmental services “providers”. Considering that PES materializes through contracts, this paper has analysed its theoretical assumptions as well as the institutional elements that form a PES market and its use as a tool for environmental public policy. Thus, two projects under the Water Producer Program of the National Water Agency (ANA) were investigated, through the following dimensions of analysis: the institutional arrangements; a remuneration methodology; opportunity cost; monitoring; and efficiency of the projects. The results demonstrate that although PES is viewed as a genuine market tool, in practice the schemes are agent-driven, which implicates in a redesign of its conceptual framework of issues that may be linked to private property to a broader perspective that comes from the environmental service. It has also been identified that cost-effectiveness measurements associated with the program in comparison to other environmental policies are poorly explored in the field of ecosystem service studies, which may cause doubts on the power of such an instrument in behaviour induction and environmental conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]