The market-based incentive mechanism of payments for forest environmental services (PFES) seeks to capture part of the benefits derived from forest environmental services and channels them to forest resource owners/managers who generate these services, thus increases their incentives to conserve and manage forest resources. This paper examines some of the most important ethical issues entailed by PFES mechanism. The analysis shows that PFES may not always benefit the poor due to the comparative disadvantages of the poor and the complicated characteristics of forest ecosystem services. It is important and urgent to take ethical dimensions into account in the PFES approaches and design and develop the pro- poor payment mechanism in order to achieve the two objectives of forest conservation and economic development. The market-based incentive mechanism of payments for forest environmental services (PFES) seeks to capture part of the benefits derived from forest environmental services and channels them to forest resource owners / managers who generate these services, thereby increasing their incentives to conserve and manage forest resources. This paper examines some of the most important ethical issues entailed by PFES mechanism. The analysis shows that PFES may not always benefit the poor due to the significant disadvantages of the poor and the complicated characteristics of forest ecosystem services. It is important and urgent to take ethical dimensions into account in the PFES approaches and design and develop the pro- poor payment mechanism in order to achieve the two objectives of forest conservation and economic development.