The development of payments for ecosystem services in China: cutting through the cloud of confusion over China's eco-compensation

Though Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) was initially designed as a voluntary market-oriented mechanism, PES development in China became a top-down, governmentdriven process that is gradually evolving from centralized large-scale projects to decentralized smaller scale ones. Aside from the main objective of ecosystem conservation, poverty alleviation is often an additional important objective of PES. To improve the PES scheme in China, government needs to enhance administrative efficiency and promote multijurisdictional/ sectoral cooperation and coordination; promote and develop more decentralized local initiatives and small-scale PES; cultivate a more favorable investment environment to attract greater participation of private actors; and encourage and support initiatives and legislation to ensure access to information and public participation leading to more rational, transparent, and informed PES decisionmaking.