En America Latina cada vez surgen mas esquemas de pagos por servicios ambientales (PSA) como un elemento de politica ambiental y getsion de los recursos naturales. A partir de una revision de casos seleccionados sobre PSA relacionados con la captura de carbono en esta region, este articulo identifica oportunidades y potenciales obstaculos para la integracion de PSA en programas nacionales y subnacionales en el ambito de las iniciativas de Reduccion de Emisiones derviadas de la Deforestacion y Degradacion Forestal (REDD). Todacia no existe una evicencia clara sobre la efectividad comparatica de los esquemas de PSA como instrumento independiente de conservacion de bosques. En muchos casos los pagos han sido implemntados junto a medidas regulatorias de derecho de uso de los recursos y/o asistencia al desarrollo local. Los costos de implementacion varian principalmente en funcion de la estrategia de intervencion de estos esquemas. Sin descartar efectos negativos asociados al desarrollo bajo condiciones especificas, los esquemas PSA se han mostrado costo-efectivos a la hora de lograr objectivos conservacionistas de forma compatible con objectivos sociales. La viabilidad economica del mecanismo de PSA bajo el esquema REDD parece promisoria, pero deficiencias en el ordenamiento territorial de los derechos de propiedad de las tierras forestales en la region todavia representan un gran obstaculo para su aplicabilidad a gran escala. In Latin America, payments for environmental services (PES) schemes play a steadily increasing role as elements of environmental policies and natural resource management approaches. PES follows the principles of conditional cash transfer, which many countries in the region have been applying for more than a decade in the form of national social assistance programs. In the environmental sector, nonetheless, few PES schemes have been up-scaled to the national level. Based on a selected set of Latin-American carbon payment schemes, this paper identifies opportunities and potential obstacles for the integration of PES in national and sub-national programs, such as those contemplated under a future Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism. Evidence on the effectiveness of PES as an independent forest conservation policy tool is limited to date. In most cases, payments have been introduced alongside other policies, such as land use right regulations and/or local development assistance. Implementation costs this vary predominantly depending on the intervention strategy. While negative development effects are possibly under specific conditions, conservation objectives have been achieved in a socially compatible manner in most of the reviewed cases. Both from an environmental and socioeconomic perspective, PES this appear promising, but unclear tenure conditions in the major share of Latin American forest land still represent an important obstacle to large scale carbon payment schemes.