Does an agroforestry scheme with payment for ecosystem services (PES) economically empower women in sub-Saharan Africa? Emmanuel O. Benjamin a,⇑ , Oreoluwa Ola b,1 , Gertrud Buchenrieder c,1 a Technische Universität München, Department of Agriculture and Food Economics, Alte Akademie 12, 85354 Freising, Germany b Technische Universität München, Department of Governance in International Agribusiness, Alte Akademie 12, 85354 Freising, Germany c Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Theodor-Lieser-Str. 2, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany article info Article history: Received 4 October 2016 Received in revised form 4 March 2018 Accepted 12 March 2018 Keywords: Agroforestry Ecosystem services Gender equity Empowerment Kenya Sub-Saharan Africa abstract In rural sub-Saharan Africa, poor women often face socioeconomic constraints that limit their participa- tion in agroforestry. Agroforestry schemes with payment for ecosystem services (PES) endeavor to strike a gender balance making female smallholder farmers’ operations as profitable and sustainable as those of their male counterparts. Yet, few studies to date have investigated the theoretical and empirical links between the economic as well as gender balance objectives of agroforestry with PES and women empow- erment. Our study proposes an equity and economic efficiency evaluation of agroforestry schemes with PES to test whether this approach can truly promote economic empowerment among women. The results suggest that women participation in agroforestry schemes with PES reduces their profit inefficiency and thus contributes to their economic empowerment. In addition, women with larger farms derive even more benefits from participating in agroforestry with PES as compared to smaller farms. For non- participants, an additional year of formal education and experience could reduce profit inefficiency. Thus, these schemes should target poor female smallholders if they want to get the most economic empowerment out of their program. If the poorest women are targeted, the marginal effect might be smaller as compared to poor women, but still positive. Ó 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In recent years, agroforestry in the form of tree cultivation on farmland has received substantial attention, as this form of inter- cropping entails economic and ecosystem services benefits (Benjamin, 2015). The first round effects of agroforestry primarily consist of economic benefits in the form of additional income (Foster and Neufeldt, 2014). Second round effects comprise ecosys- tem services benefits, particularly climate regulation services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). The climate regulation services provided by agroforestry schemes include carbon seques- tration (capture and storage) which is remunerated by payment for ecosystem services (PES). Wunder (2014, p. 8) defines PES as ‘‘voluntary transactions between service users and service providers that are conditional on agreed rules of natural resource management for generating offsite services” Meanwhile, smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are realizing that agroforestry PES schemes (henceforth referred to as agroforestry PES schemes) contribute to more viable livelihoods and serve as a climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy (Benjamin et al., 2016; Masiga et al., 2012). However agroforestry, as a form of conservation and climate- smart-agriculture, is perceived not to be gender neutral in terms of economic empowerment (Farnworth et al., 2016, United Nations, 2014). Despite the active involvement of women in agri- culture and agroforestry in sub-Saharan Africa, the low number of trees on their farmland, among other factors, reflects limited participation in agroforestry (Kiptot and Franzel, 2012). Buchenrieder (2004), Ogunlela and Mukhtar (2009) and Kiptot and Franzel (2012) argue that, while women contribute signifi- cantly to food security, most farm-level decisions and control over productive resources such as land are taken by men, with women only benefiting from the by-products of men’s trees for subsistence purposes. Vardhan and Catacutan (2017) suggest that women may be excluded from agroforestry PES schemes in parts of sub-Saharan Africa because the structure of traditional land tenure systems was naively neglected when agroforestry PES schemes were established. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2018.03.004 2212-0416/Ó 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Technische Universität München, Department of Agriculture and Food Economics, Alte Akademie 12, 85354 Freising, Germany. Fax: + 49 (0) 8161 71 3030. E-mail addresses: emmanuel.benjamin@tum.de (E.O. Benjamin), oreoluwa. ola@tum.de (O. Ola), buchenrieder@yahoo.de (G. Buchenrieder). 1 Fax: + 49 (0) 8161 71 3030. Ecosystem Services 31 (2018) 1–11 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecosystem Services journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoser