Payment for environmental services in Brazil: A systematic scoping review of policy design, governance, and territorial patterns

Brazil established its National Policy of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) to promote the maintenance, recovery, and enhancement of ecosystems. Yet the diversity, spatial distribution, and effectiveness of existing initiatives remain poorly understood. This study provides the first nationwide synthesis of all PES programs implemented in Brazil since 2000, based on a systematic scoping review of 80 peer-reviewed papers documenting 138 distinct programs. We apply an analytical framework with 11 dimensions to classify and compare programs by ecosystem type, service category, funding source, objectives, and governance mechanisms. Results show initiatives concentrate in the Atlantic Forest (49.3%) and Cerrado (23.2%) biomes, largely targeting regulation services (93.2%) via forest conservation (65.2%) and restoration (61.6%) actions. Watershed (73.9%) and Forest & Carbon (14.8%) programs predominate; 59.4% of initiatives are in Southeast and 17.4% in North. Most programs rely on public funding (94%), while private and market-based mechanisms remain rare. Despite frequent social objectives (65%) and non-monetary benefits (35%), fiscal dependence and regional imbalance constrain scalability and policy sustainability. By comparing Brazil’s experience with international trends in PES governance, we identify structural challenges to design more adaptive, inclusive, and financially diversified mechanisms that strengthen ecosystem protection and social equity across biomes. Explicitly contrasting Brazil with Latin – American benchmarks, we show that – unlike Costa Rica’s centralized national PES and Mexico’s federally coordinated watershed schemes – Brazil’s policy has fostered a decentralized mosaic of municipal and state programs, closely linked to Forest Code compliance and frequent mixed (cash and in-kind) payments, outlining a distinct regional governance model.