This chapter describes various wellknown conventional and market-based instruments for nature conservation. Regulatory approaches have increasingly been combined with economic incentives to harness the advantages of each approach, building a bridge between command and control and economic approaches to conservation. In the light of the recent attention to payments for environmental services (PES) as a tool to both promote conservation and alleviate poverty, the chapter pays special attention to this instrument. PES has many advantages, and their voluntary nature makes them more socially palatable. They can be applied at the local level between private parties, as well as at the global level, even if this involves public parties as well as private ones. For example, via reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD)+schemes PES may come to play a significant role in global efforts to mitigate the adverse consequences of the greenhouse effect. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.