Rubber and Carbon: Opportunity Costs, Incentives and Ecosystem Services in Acre, Brazil

Abstract

ABSTRACT The concept of ‘opportunity costs’ has been important in theoretical discussions of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). It focuses attention on economic trade‐offs of individual landholders and can make providing ecosystem services, such as tropical forest carbon sequestration, appear to be a cost‐effective way to reduce near‐term carbon emissions. Yet in practice, the concept may be less useful. This article examines how a programme in the Amazonian state of Acre, Brazil, has moved away from the concept of opportunity costs, challenging its theoretical importance. Instead of payments, the Acre programme offers ‘incentives’ intended to make rural people produce more whilst deforesting less. It resonates with the neoliberal commodification of carbon and the dominant valorization of intensive agriculture. Yet it also enlists lessons from Acre's history of rubber production and its rubber tapper‐led social movement, namely that the living forest can be monetarily valuable and that its use can facilitate its protection. This article shows how local history and culture can be used to reshape PES.