(GradFest introduction by Keith Gilless)
“Upstream water, downstream wealth: The politics of payment for ecosystem services in a California watershed”
Payment-for-ecosystem-services is popularly portrayed as a win-win tool to incentivize ecosystem conservation. But valuating nature demands an economic logic that is not politically neutral. This case study examines the operation of a payment-for-ecosystem-services policy frame as a political strategy by evaluating its deployment in a rural California watershed. The Feather River watershed is an important source of California’s water supply and hydroelectricity production, but historic resource extraction practices have degraded its ecosystems and hydrology. Moreover, historically structured relations of resource control have tended to export the watershed’s wealth while perpetuating economic insecurity among watershed residents. By drawing on a payment for ecosystem services policy frame, watershed residents have sought to entice downstream water retailers and hydropower producers to “reinvest” in the watershed by funding headwaters restoration. My research identifies the key components of this policy framing strategy and analyzes it in broader social, political, and historical context. Findings suggest that, on one hand, the reframing strategy has helped to make the headwaters role in producing California’s water more visible in water supply policies and has helped direct attention and resources there. But on the other hand, the idea of payment for ecosystem services renders a complex relationship between upstream and downstream into a technical accounting between resource producers and consumers. And this technical accounting is made difficult by scientific uncertainty, which provides an easy escape hatch to reluctant buyers and ultimately limits the extent of policy change. I discuss how the market logic of payment for ecosystem services privileges knowledge that upholds the status quo while obscuring forms of knowledge that could challenge it.