Abstract:

This is a report on the usefulness of a critical legal pluralist methodology in understanding the mechanics of Payments for Environmental Service (PES) schemes in legal pluralist settings. The complex relations between natural resources, law, and how the different stakeholders manage these components through their resultant actions,can be misunderstood, or even ignored, if the social scientific, and indeed, legal pluralist frameworks are not considered during the implementation of PES schemes. This can
also apply to any other project involving similar dimensions where there is a contractual obligation created between multiple actors resulting in changes in management of natural resources. Without understanding the realities of a legal pluralist setting (and more on the different definitions of legal pluralism to come), it can be argued that a scheme may fail,as the social, cultural and political meshwork has not been considered with the same importance as the hard science that brought the scheme there. It is a consideration of whether it is good for the people, as well as for the environment, that propels this report, thus pushing for the ethical importance of the success of schemes over those that fail. Within those that fail, there may be elements of inapplicability and unfairness to the projects, and this is to be avoided at all costs. Furthermore, there are relations of land tenure and property rights that are not easily defined through more Western ‘categorical’ understandings, and are ‘concretised’ relations that a methodological framework of legal pluralism, and even moreso, a critical legal pluralism, can dissect and unravel more satisfactorily.