Batak Communities Redefine Payment for Ecosystem Services Through Relational Values

In the highland forests of Tapanuli, Indonesia, the Batak people maintain a system of environmental stewardship that challenges one of the most widely adopted tools in modern conservation: the payment for ecosystem services, or PES. A new study published in Environmental Management by Hamid Arrum Harahap of Universitas Andalas and colleagues examines how this Indigenous community sustains its forests not through market transactions but through what the researchers call relational payment, a concept that reframes compensation as an embedded social obligation rather than an economic exchange.

PES programs have become a cornerstone of global conservation policy, operating on the principle that those who benefit from ecosystem services such as clean water, carbon storage, or biodiversity should pay those who provide them. The model assumes that monetary incentives, delivered through conditional contracts, will motivate landholders to conserve natural resources. Billions of dollars have flowed through such schemes worldwide, from Costa Rica’s forest stewardship programs to watershed protection initiatives across Latin America and Southeast Asia. Yet the approach has long been criticized for imposing a narrow economic logic on relationships between people and nature that many communities understand in fundamentally different terms.

The Batak people of Tapanuli, who live in and around the Batang Toru forest ecosystem, offer a striking counterexample. This region is home to the Tapanuli orangutan, one of the world’s most endangered great ape species, and the forest faces mounting pressure from infrastructure development, including a controversial hydropower project. The research team conducted extensive fieldwork using participant observation, oral histories, in-depth interviews, and group discussions to understand how Batak communities conceptualize their obligations to the forest and to each other.

What the researchers found is a governance system in which contributions to conservation are structured through customary institutions rather than market contracts. Two arrangements in particular organize these obligations: the Jago Bondar system and Parpatihan. These are not payment schemes in the conventional sense but socially recognized institutional frameworks that tie individual contributions to rights of access, participation, and belonging within the community. Contributions take the form of rice, benzoin resin, labor, and ritual practice, and they function not as transactions or even as generalized reciprocity but as structured obligations necessary for the reproduction of ecosystem governance over time.

The concept of relational payment that the authors develop describes contributions that are embedded in normative systems, tied to social identity, and sustained by enduring relationships between people and their environment. Unlike a market transaction, which is complete once money changes hands, a relational payment creates and maintains an ongoing bond. The person who contributes labor to maintain a sacred grove or offers rice during a ceremonial cycle is not purchasing a service; they are fulfilling an obligation that affirms their membership in a community and their responsibility to the living systems that community depends upon.

This distinction matters because it challenges the universality of transaction-based PES frameworks. When conservation programs arrive in Indigenous territories with pre-designed payment structures, they often fail to recognize that the community may already have functioning systems of obligation and reward that operate on entirely different logic. The Batak case demonstrates that the question is not simply whether Indigenous peoples participate in PES programs but whether those programs can accommodate or even perceive the relational values that already govern human-nature interactions in these settings.

The findings connect to a broader scholarly debate about value pluralism in ecosystem services research. Scholars such as Kai Chan and colleagues have argued that relational values, which emphasize the importance of relationships between people and nature rather than instrumental benefits or intrinsic worth alone, deserve greater attention in environmental policy. The IPBES assessment framework has similarly moved toward recognizing diverse value systems beyond economic valuation. The Batak study provides concrete ethnographic evidence for how these abstract debates play out on the ground, showing that relational values are not merely philosophical categories but are actively embedded in governance institutions with real ecological consequences.

The authors argue that rather than extending PES into every context, conservation policy should reconsider what constitutes payment in settings where value is produced through enduring social-ecological relationships. This does not mean rejecting PES entirely but recognizing its limits and creating space for alternative frameworks that acknowledge the full range of ways communities organize their responsibilities toward ecosystems. The researchers suggest that conservation practitioners working in Indigenous territories should begin by understanding existing governance arrangements rather than assuming that external payment mechanisms are needed to motivate stewardship.

The implications extend beyond Tapanuli. As PES programs continue to expand globally, particularly through carbon markets and biodiversity offset schemes, the Batak case serves as a reminder that the market-based model rests on assumptions about human motivation and social organization that do not hold universally. Communities around the world have developed sophisticated systems for governing common resources through obligation, ritual, and relational ties, and these systems have often sustained ecosystems for centuries. Recognizing and working with these existing structures, rather than replacing them with monetary contracts, may prove essential for conservation that is both effective and just.

The study, published in Environmental Management, draws on qualitative methods including participant observation, oral histories, in-depth interviews, and group discussions conducted with Batak communities in the Simaretong and Simardangiang areas. The research was supported by collaborations with CIRAD in France and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the authors acknowledge the communities who shared their knowledge and governance practices as the foundation of this work.

Subject of Research: Relational payment systems and Indigenous governance of ecosystem services among the Batak people of Tapanuli, Indonesia

Article Title: Relationships Not Transactions: Relational Payment for Ecosystem Services Among the Batak People of Tapanuli, Indonesia

Article References: Relationships Not Transactions: Relational Payment for Ecosystem Services Among the Batak People of Tapanuli, Indonesia. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-026-02592-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00267-026-02592-0

Keywords: Payment for Ecosystem Services, Batak people, Indigenous governance, relational values, Tapanuli, Indonesia, environmental management, value pluralism, conservation policy, social-ecological systems, Batang Toru forest, ecosystem services