Assessing the Effectiveness of Payments for Environmental/Ecological Services

Professor Kathleen Callahan, the former EPA Deputy Regional Administrator of Region II, has been advising the group working on Payments for Environmental Services (PES). PES aims to support the positive incorporation of environmental externalities through the transfer of funds from beneficiaries of those environmental services to the service provider. The MPA ESP students evaluated PES efforts in areas that included carbon markets, water accessibility markets and biodiversity markets. Using case studies of ten PES projects and five interviews of environmental experts, this group put together a cross project analysis paper which helped inform Translinks on topics such as carbon sequestration, watershed protection, and biodiversity preservation.