This article pioneers new thinking on learning by organizations created by international environmental agreements, especially the boundaries within which learning can take place. It hypothesizes that there are ideological, institutional and technical boundaries to learning, which negatively impact the effectiveness of international environmental programming. This theory is rigorously tested by applying it to a group of new programmes, the forest-focused payment for environmental services programmes, which find their origin in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The article systematically researches unintended effects of these programmes and clusters them into four categories. The uncovering of these unintended effects leads to the main research question: do international organizations actually succeed in adapting to these unintended effects? By combining three methods (a structured literature review, a systemic internal programme document analysis and expert interviews), the research finds that organizations struggle to adapt to these unintended effects. Whereas some of the limits to learning can be overcome by enhancing technical capacities, other limits, notably those that are induced by ideological thinking and institutional imperatives, are hard to overcome.

中文翻译：

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学习的局限：努力适应国际环境服务项目支付的意外影响

本文开创了由国际环境协议创建的组织进行学习的新思维，尤其是学习可以发生的界限。它假设学习存在意识形态、制度和技术界限，这会对国际环境规划的有效性产生负面影响。该理论通过将其应用于一组新计划（以森林为重点的环境服务付费计划）进行了严格测试，这些计划起源于《联合国气候变化框架公约》。文章系统地研究了这些计划的意外影响，并将它们分为四类。发现这些意想不到的影响导致了主要的研究问题：国际组织是否真的成功地适应了这些意想不到的影响？通过结合三种方法（结构化的文献回顾、系统的内部计划文件分析和专家访谈），研究发现组织很难适应这些意想不到的影响。虽然学习的某些限制可以通过提高技术能力来克服，但其他限制，特别是那些由意识形态思维和制度要求引起的限制，则很难克服。