Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) Contract Clauses
In general, drafting a contract consists of adapting and modifying an existing contract, rather than beginning from scratch. Few examples exist, however, of payments for ecosystem services contracts. Those that do exist are often kept confidential to protect proprietary project information. The lack of contract precedents in contracting for PES makes negotiating and drafting agreements much more costly and time-consuming. It is also likely to put sellers, who may have little commercial experience and limited resources, at a disadvantage relative to commercially-savvy PES buyers or brokers.
The linked pages in the contract outline below are meant to address this gap by providing basic information about contract clauses, as well as contractual examples. Initially, explanations and examples focus exclusively on forest carbon and are drawn from the Forest Trends-Katoomba Group publication Contracting for Forest Carbon: Elements of a Model Forest Carbon Purchase Agreement. It is hoped that additional contractual examples from forest carbon and other PES projects and programs will be added as they become available.
For reference, click on these links for background information on PES contracting and to view a PES contract glossary. Please contact Slayde Hawkins - shawkins (at) forest-trends.org - to comment or to share contract clauses for inclusion on this site.
Funding for the creation of this resource was generously provided by the Global Environment Fund of the United Nations Development Programme.
Disclaimer: Template contracts, documents, and links on this site are offered to highlight issues that should be considered in PES transactions, not to provide a substitute for experienced, local legal counsel. As this field is evolving rapidly, it will be essential to engage legal counsel in conjunction with any PES transaction to ensure that any agreements reflect the latest developments in the field and comply with current local and national legislation.
This website is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID), under the terms of the TransLinks Cooperative Agreement
No.EPP-A-00-06-00014-00 to The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). TransLinks is a partnership of WCS, The Earth
Institute, Enterprise Works/VITA, Forest Trends and The Land Tenure Center. The contents are the responsibility of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
PES Contract Toolkit
