Congratulations to Santiago Izquierdo Tort who has won the Papiya Ghosh Thesis Prize for the best MPhil thesis in 2014.

Santiago’s research interests centre on understanding the relations and interconnections between natural resource conservation and development.

His thesis, entitled “Payments for Environmental Services in Marqués de Comillas, Lacandona Rainforest: Impact and Implications on Human Well-Being and the Environment.” used a mixed methods approach and developed a typology to analyse the impact and implications of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) programmes on human well-being and environmental outcomes in a small community in southeast Mexico.

He found that, among other factors, land tenure and the role of technical advisors were crucial for explaining outcomes and he concluded that, while PES programmes can certainly lead to ‘win-win’ outcomes (positive impacts on both human well-being and the environment), these may only take place under particular settings, for particular individuals or groups and in particular time periods.

Evidence from his case study suggested that PES can also lead to a series of unintended consequences, with potential negative effects on human well-being and the environment. Thus, he found that achieving win-win outcomes may not be possible through PES and it is important to recognise the complexity and trade-offs that often appear at the boundaries between conservation and development. He makes the case that developing a broader understanding of how PES interacts in practice with other rural development programmes could serve as a valuable input for integrated policy design.

Santiago plans to read for the DPhil in International Development at ODID and build on the findings and methodology from his MPhil thesis to analyse the interconnections between PES and Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes in theory and practice. In particular, he will analyse the impact and implications on environmental conservation and human well-being of the Mexican PES scheme ‘Programa de Pagos por Servicios Ambientales’ and the CCT programme ‘Oportunidades’ in Marqués de Comillas, Lacandona rainforest.