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Financial incentives are increasingly popular in development and conservation. A common application involves paying for conservation activities, such as for farmers to set aside land for forests, known as payments for ecosystem services (PES). Debates about incentives such as PES center around the promise and perils of applying market logics to conservation or development goals. A key concern is the potential of financial motivations to crowd out non-financial motivations such as altruism or responsibility. Theoretical debates about the potential impacts of PES programs often assume that PES programs are understood as such by participants—as transactions characterized by a payment for a service—but research has not sufficiently investigated the extent to which these assumptions hold in practice. We studied Costa Rica’s long-standing PES program in the traditional cattle ranching region of Guanacaste via in-depth interviews with program managers, local experts and participants to better understand the range of values and views associated with program payments. We find that whereas program leadership primarily communicated the program as clearly-defined payments for specific services provided, most farmer participants framed financial payments from the program as a form of non-transactional support recognizing their ongoing care for the land and forest. This finding—that market framings did not fully transfer from program leadership through local managers to farmer participants—shows how participants might experience PES programs not as payments for services per se, but as acknowledgement for land stewardship and an additional form of rural development assistance. The support for stewards framing of PES, as suggested by participants themselves, points to a potential leverage point in designing PES programs that enhance (rather than undermine) connections to nature. More broadly, incentive programs of all sorts might consider program framings that reinforce the kinds of values (e.g., social cohesion, health) they seek to improve.

Conservation policy relies on input from science, yet scientists are often frustrated by the ‘gap’ between their recommendations and policy decisions. In this paper we examine one such ‘gap’: how a long-standing conflict of values functioned to ‘infect’ the synthesis and application of riparian science for salmon habitat restoration projects. We do this by analysis of a policy debate over the required minimum width of riparian buffers in voluntary conservation programs on agricultural lands in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Based on an analysis of expert interviews and document analysis, we first outline the key features of the values debate. We then show the ways values ‘infected’ the debate over the science of riparian restoration. We identify a set of four ‘stumbling blocks’ in the science to policy gap that together led to both an intractable debate and an oversimplification of the science: conflation of science and policy, application of science out of context, limited consideration of alternatives, and obscuring debate via technical and bureaucratic language. We conclude with a set of ‘waypoints’ that can help ecologists, conservation managers and policy makers to better navigate the journey from science to policy.

For cities seeking sustainability, the Ecological Footprint seems to be an excellent metric, potentially catalyzing actions directed outwards, at environmental problems beyond city limits. But does this metric actually guide cities down sustainable pathways? Through a case study of the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Plan, we ask what barriers and side effects accompany a city’s application of a specific metric to measure achievement towards sustainability goals. Our case study began by examining a particular approach to achieving EF reduction (proposed by the City: local beef). Through a triple-loop learning approach, we broadened our analysis to include additional policy options not originally on the table. For each of four policy options (1. local beef, 2. grass-fed beef, 3. payments for ecosystem services, and 4. using a proxy metric focused on individual and community leadership), we evaluate their ability to meet the Ecological Footprint metric, consider their potential to address the broader goal and discuss their feasibility as policy options for the city. Our analysis showed the ways the Ecological Footprint metric: (a) focused attention on non-actionable policy areas, (b) was non-responsive to promising policy options and (c) limited the types of policy options considered. In this case we demonstrate how the choice of the Ecological Footprint as a metric and goal had unintended consequences and instead shifted attention and policy inwards. By avoiding this ‘metric trap’, cities might contribute importantly to regional and global sustainability.

There is increasing recognition in academic circles of the importance of adaptive governance for the sustainability of social-ecological systems, but little examination of specific implications for the 34% of land-use where human activities are pervasive but potentially commensurate with functioning ecosystems: agricultural production systems. In this paper, we argue for the need to view food systems and agro-ecosystems as multi-scalar complex adaptive systems and identify five key challenging characteristics of such systems: multi-causality; cumulative impacts; regime shifts; teleconnections and mismatch of scales. These characteristics are necessary features of multi-scalar adaptive systems, and apply equally to social and natural subsystems. We discuss the implications of these characteristics for agricultural production systems and consider how governance can rise to these challenges. We present five case studies that highlight these issues: pollinator declines; payments for ecosystem services; pest control and pesticide resistance; downstream aquatic systems in Tasman Bay, New Zealand; and riparian buffers in Puget Sound, USA. From these case studies we derive recommendations for managing agricultural systems, both specific and general. Ultimately, adaptive governance of agro-ecosystems will likely hinge upon three paradigm shifts: viewing farmers and ranchers not only as food producers but also as land and water managers; seeking not yield maximization but rather resilient management of food ecosystems; and critically, as it transcends the production-system literature, engaging broad audiences not only as consumers but also citizens.