Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, this article investigates the under-researched demand-side of locally-financed Payments for Environmental Services (PES). It assesses downstream users' willingness to pay (WTP) for improved tap water quality in a setting where upstream...

During the last two decades the concept of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) has gained ever-increasing attention among a wide public of scholars as well as conservation and development practitioners. The main premises of this innovative conservation approach are appealing: private...

The concept of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) has gained increasing popularity in the conservation literature as it offers the potential to reconcile opposing social and ecological objectives by paying land owners for the positive environmental externalities they generate on their...

A key issue in the context of increasing large-scale land acquisitions in developing countries is how poor populations can prevent their land rights being encroached upon by more powerful actors. To date, the majority of policy recommendations have been directed towards the legal recognition and...

</titre> In ?progressive circles?, microfinance is often denounced as a neoliberal project against the poor?s interests. The recent crises and rebellions led by the customers are seen in a positive light and would announce the end of the ?microfinance paradigm?. This study of the Nicaraguan crisis...

</titre> This article aims to reflect the debates sparked by Latin America?s New Left?s criticisms of microfinance, which experienced a dramatic boom during the last decades of neoliberal policies. It reports on an international conference held in November 2012 in Antwerp, where about fifty...

Land property issues remain firmly on the agenda in Nicaragua. Revolutionary land reform, followed by additional land redistribution and overnight liberalisation of land markets, are assumed to have caused severe insecurity of land tenure. Dominant received wisdom is that only significant state...

At a time when technological innovations are making our world increasingly smaller and our production systems are becoming increasingly more efficient, the benefits of economic growth and development as a whole have not been able to reach all of society. Indeed, many poor countries,...