Designing and implementing payments for ecosystem services programs: Lessons learned from China's cropland restoration experience

•The question of how to design and execute a PES program is elucidated.•Analysis builds on the social–ecological systems framework and China's experience.•Many ecological, socioeconomic, and institutional lessons are drawn.•These lessons will contribute to advancing the science and practice of PES.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) have attracted broad international attention as a novel approach of using economic incentives to address the loss of valuable ecosystem services. However, there has been inadequate work investigating the basic question of how to design and execute a PES program, and the limited inquiries have rarely been pursued in the diagnostic framework for studying social–ecological systems (SES). This paper aims to fill these critical knowledge gaps. We first introduce the SES framework into the context of PES in general and ecological restoration in particular and then highlight the progress and challenges of China's large initiative of converting degraded cropland. Next, we deliberate the essential lessons that can be learned from China, as reflected in the multi-faceted, complex processes of interactions and outcomes of the initiative from the ecological, socioeconomic, and institutional perspectives. We hope that these efforts will convey some important and timely policy messages, which will contribute to advancing the science and practice of PES-based ecological restoration and nature conservation.