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

Abstract

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) has been widely promoted as a market-based mechanism in which conservation is achieved through conditional, monetary transactions between service providers and beneficiaries. However, this framing often overlooks the relational, cultural, and moral dimensions through which many Indigenous communities engage with ecosystems. This paper examines an alternative understanding of “payment” among the Batak people in Tapanuli, Indonesia. Drawing on qualitative methods, including participant observation, oral histories, in-depth interviews and group discussions, we analyse how governance arrangements such as the Jago Bondar system and Parpatihan organize contributions that sustain human–nature relationships beyond market-based exchange. We develop the concept of relational payment to describe contributions embedded in socially recognized institutional and normative systems, tied to rights of access, participation, or belonging, and necessary for the reproduction of ecosystem governance over time. In this context, contributions in rice, benzoin resin, labor, and ritual practice function not as market transactions or generalized reciprocity, but as structured obligations that sustain both social relations and ecological systems. By situating these findings within debates on ecosystem services and value pluralism, the paper complicates the universality of transaction-based PES frameworks and highlights the limits of approaches that conceptualize conservation primarily through market transactions. Rather than extending PES, we argue for a reconsideration of what constitutes “payment” in contexts where value is produced through enduring social–ecological relationships.