Developing pro-poor markets for environmental services in the ...

4 Socio-economic framework for evaluating and monitoring
markets for environmental services
The characteristic of the Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) sector in the Philippines
is that most of these critical and significant areas are owned or managed by the government.
As such, the emergence of markets for environmental services necessitates that government
plays a major role. As discussed in Section 3, protected areas are numerous, and most of them
fall under the purview of the national and local governments. It is thus not surprising that
many of these markets are directly created by law, through the introduction of varying
economic instruments.
The socio-economic framework used for evaluating markets for environmental services
hinges on the following main questions:
• What are the forms of markets that exist? What are the economic instruments used?
• Do these markets target conservation and development objectives simultaneously, or are
they exclusive to the environment? If the former is true, what mechanisms are involved to
ensure this?
• Are there actual or potential social costs involved in the creation of these markets? Or are
there social benefits that may or have inadvertently arisen out of the creation of these
markets?
Because of the nascent feature of markets for environmental services in the Philippines,
quantitative measurement of their impacts is difficult to pursue at this point. Most economic
instruments have been introduced only during the past three years, including setting-up the
institutional mechanisms for these instruments. For others that were introduced earlier, such
as the second case study presented here, there has not been sufficient experience for socioeconomic
impacts to have taken place and be quantified. Analysis is thus limited to potential
impacts, particularly with respect to strategies and programmes for which the economic
instruments were created.
In testing the framework, the study relied mainly on key-informant interviews. Most of these
were the main actors involved in the creation and implementation of the economic
instruments, thus have a good grasp of the historical events and the issues at hand. Survey
questions dealt with economic, social, legal, institutional, and biophysical factors, where
applicable. Economic questions focused on the economic instruments being employed,
revenues generated from the scheme, types of programmes for which the revenues were
intended for, and employment and income-generation potentials from both the instrument and
the programmes. The survey tried to establish if revenues generated were being used for
social-development goals, aside from trying to meet environmental objectives. Biophysical
questions dealt more on the potential or realised effects of the instrument on biodiversity,
albeit in a qualitative manner. Social questions attempted to determine whether or not there
were social displacements, including those relating to traditions and norms that may have
occurred due to the application of the instrument; or in the first case study, even from the
general set-up of how the PA is being managed. Legal and institutional factors were more
descriptive in nature, whereby questions focused on the legal environment, which allowed for
the instrument to be created, and the corresponding institutional set-up for its implementation.
Two case studies are presented here. The first deals with a PA under the NIPAS system, the
Apo Island Protected Landscape and Seascape (AIPLAS), a marine sanctuary that was
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