Résumé
Payments for Environmental Services (PES) are an incentive tool for the conservation of environmental services (ES) which are the benefits from the natural ecosystems multifunctionality. The adaptation and formalization of PES to the context of common pastures are of great interest in the developing countries. However, this depends heavily on the political, economic and socio-cultural context and its capability to integrate the necessary adjustments. This paper proposes a reflection on ways of formalizing a PES scheme adapted to the context of common pastures in Morocco. The interest of PES is discussed first in light of a rapid assessment of two Moroccan incentive based experiences for pasturelands enclosure. The main lessons raise theoretical questions we tried to analyze by examining the role of economic rationality, organization and preferences of people in the common pastures with special regard to the decision formulation and the adoption of new management rules in the presence of an incentive. Moroccan experiences are analyzed on the basis of information from twenty semi-structured interviews with government actors and national experts. The results of our analyzes show a potential benefit of PES to promote the conservation of common pastures via enhanced and socially appropriate compliance and the need for a political vision accompanied by a redefinition of governance and suitable territorial scale able to sustain conservation.