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This document summarizes current findings from an evaluation of Mexico’s National Payments for Hydrological Services from 2003-2010. Th evaluation seeks to understand the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the program, with the goal of extracting lessons learned and identifying room for possible future improvement.
Findings: an analysis of program selection criteria and the characteristics of lands enrolled suggests the program has met the dual goals of targeting funds to areas of ecological and social priority. Specifically:
on average, land enrolled over all years between 2004 and 2010 had similar risk of deforestation, higher hydrological priority and similar degree of marginality to all forested lands in the country. That is to say, land which was enrolled was broadly representative of available land
looking at the evolution of the program over time, targeting to high deforestation risk and more marginalized areas has improved substantially between 2004 and 2010 due to changes in the program rules and the eligible zones resulting in the selection of higher risk and more poor recipients from within the applicant pool.
One potential means of improving the ecological impact of the program would be to select properties with even higher risk of deforestation, as the average risk of deforestation among enrolled properties remains somewhat below the national average across all forested lands.
Two possible ways to do this would be to target further on the basis of multiple characteristics which determine avoided deforestation (in addition to INE’s risk numbers) or to raise the payment amounts.
