Latin America

Latin America is the region of the world with greatest development to PES initiatives, including two of the largest national programmes- in Costa Rica and in Mexico, with others emerging in other countries in Central and South America.

A financial mechanism for the recuperation and conservation of forest cover in Costa Rica " has contributed to reverse forest loss by paying forest owners for four bundled environmental services (watershed protection, carbon sequestration, landscape beauty and biodiversity protection) their forests provide. While the scheme relies heavily on state funds derived from a fuel tax, it also counts with contributions from the private sector (hydropower producers and water bottling companies).

In nine years, it covered over 500,000ha of forest, mainly under protection, corresponding to over 6,000 contracts with landowners and invested over US$110 million into the protection of the country's forests and its environmental services.

Mexico began a national PES programme in 2003, focusing on forest and watershed protection(the PSAH- National Programme for Hydrological Environmental Services, later joined by the PSA-CABSA- Program to Develop Environmental Services Markets for Carbon Capture and Biodiversity and to Establish and Improve Agroforestry Systems). By 2005 it covered an area of over 500,000ha (surpassing Costa Rica's 9-year programme at that time) and had invested US$ 88 million, of which about US$ 20 million a year, are channelled from water use fees charged to domestic and industrial water users (Mexican Forestry Commission-Conafor).

The programme provides incentives for landowners to protect their forests, especially cloud forests, reforest or adopt agroforestry. It builds on previously ongoing individual watershed management PES projects (such as the example in Fondo Procuenca Valle de Bravo) and aims to supports their replication to other municipalities. It also supports carbon sequestration or avoided deforestation, and biodiversity conservation projects though its CABSA programme.

Farmers in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, for example, have benefited from the support of this national programme in generating carbon credits being sold through the voluntary market.

The Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion (CONDESAN) is developing a sustainable land management project ongoing in fifteen watersheds in the Andean region of Colombia , Ecuador and Peru - Cuencas Andianas, which includes Payment for Environmental Services (PES) schemes as one of the incentive mechanisms. Three sites had already begun implementing PES at the end of this project. Work is continuing with the local teams.

Fair deals for watershed services in Bolivia. Vargas, M. T and Asquith, N. 2007. IIED Natural Resource Issues No. 10. International Institute for Environment and Development. London, UK.
Fresh tracks in the forest: assessing incipient payments for environmental services initiatives in Bolivia. Robertson, N. & Wunder, S. 2005. Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia

Asia

In the Sumber Jaya site, Sumatra, RUPES has been supporting local communities in accessing the Indonesian national social forestry programme (Hutan Kamasyarakatan- HKm), which grants use rights to state forests to groups willing to adopt sustainable land management options for watershed environmental services, such as agroforestry.

One of the largest national PES, the Chinese Sloping Lands Conversion Programme (SLCP) had US$ 43 million assigned to it, each year to compensate tens of millions of rural households for converting erosion-prone farm land into forest to reduce flood risk in the Yangtze and Yellow rivers.

Various examples of adoption of soil and water conservation measures to increase local water availability and reduce siltation in rivers downstream. In the 1970s, integrated management of the hills around Sukhomajri village dramatically increased water availability for irrigation and led to considerable improvements in the village's standard of living, while reducing siltation of the Sukhna Lake, the main water source for the downstream city of Chandigarh .
For more see: Agarwal, A. and S. Narain. 1999. Making Water Management Everybody's Business: Water Harvesting and Rural Development in India . no. 87 London , International Institute for Environment and Development. Gatekeeper Series.
Down to Earth Magazine-DTE. 2007. Saga of two villages in Vol 16, no 12   Thursday, November 08, 2007 . Down to Earth Magazine, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi.

The Bhoj wetlands, a Ramsar site, in the Bhopal-Sehore districts of Madhya Pradesh State , are under pressure from inflow of urban waste and agriculture fertilizer runoff. The decline in water quality is threatening its ecology and the urban drinking water supply. Madhya Pradesh Lake Conservation Authority and Winrock International India are working to connect farmers and downstream lake users through an incentive-based scheme to support organic agriculture.
For more see: Agarwal et al. 2007. Fair deals for watershed services in India . Natural Resource Issues No. 10. International Institute for Environment and Development. London , UK.

Africa

In South Africa, the Working for Water Programme has been ongoing for over 10 years, for the removal of alien invasive plants, which use up more water than native species- about 1 million ha of invasive alien plants was cleared over the past seven years, which has yielded an estimated release of 48 -56 million cubic metres of additional water per annum. This programme has also a very strong poverty alleviation component- the work is carried out by teams hired from groups most affected by poverty and unemployment, focusing on women, youth and disabled individuals. A largest part of the programme's funding actually comes Poverty Relief Programme.

For more see the website of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and WeedBuster Week 2007- Media release by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry

Some of the PRESA sites are associate sites, being developed by other NGOs such as CARE International in Tanzania, working on a sustainable land management scheme in the Uluguru mountains, to improve the quality of the water supply reaching Dar es Salaam- for more see workshop materials, as part of a WWF-CARE-IIED programme on PES, with sites in Latin America and Asia

The East and Southern Africa branch of the Katoomba Group focuses on providing a forum to develop a shared understanding of PES in the region and produces monthly newsletter bringing together regional PES development news. The group has also produced a series of R egional PES Assessments and Case Studies 2005-2006, and more recently a s ummary of their findings: The State of Play: Payments for Ecosystem Services in East and Southern Africa and associated inventories.
Katoomba Group

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Europe and North America

The EU Agri-environmental Measures are incentives offered under the reformed EU Common Agriculture Policy, to farmers willing to adopt additional good farming practices to protect and enhance the environment on their farmland and help maintain the countryside.

Measure adopted can include:
•  environmentally favourable extensification of farming;
•  management of low-intensity pasture systems;
•  integrated farm management and organic agriculture;
•  preservation of landscape and historical features such as hedgerows, ditches and woods;
•  conservation of high-value habitats and their associated biodiversity.

For more see: European Commission > Agriculture and Rural Development > Agriculture and Environment

In France, a private water bottling company- Vittel (Nestle Waters) has invested 980 euros ha/yr to protect the quality of its water by paying farmers to adoption of land-management practices to reduce nitrates in the water source.
Practices adopted include adopting extensive cattle ranching, and pasture management (switching from maize to hay and alfafa), compost animal waste and give up agrochemicals. Farmers receive on average, about 200 euros/ha/year over five years. Of the 24.25 million invested in the first seven years: 9.14 million euros were spent on land acquisition, 3.81 million on investments in farm equipment, and 11.3 million in farm financial compensation (INRA-SAD-VDM 1996).

The WWF Danube Carpathian Programme Office is developing a PES regional programme with sites in Bulgaria and Romania and replication activities in all 6 lower Danube countries, to reward the maintenance, improvement or adoption of conservation friendly land uses in several locations along the Lower Danube and Danube Delta.
For more see: WWF PES page and Danube- Carpathian Programme office page

The US Conservation Reserve Program is probably the largest ongoing PES programme, with annual payments exceeding US$1.4 billion for activities on over 13 million hectares. Ongoing since 1985, its goals are to reduce soil erosion, improve water quality and enhance wildlife habitat and farmers receive up to 50% in cost share of implementation of conservation practices plus an annual payment. Eligible practices include building riparian buffer strips, wetland restoration, grass waterways, shelterbelts and contour grass strips.

For more see the programme's page at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) website Natural resources conservation service and at the CRP page of the USDA Farm Service Agency

Since the nineties, the Catskill Mountains that provide 90% of the water to New York city, have been under a PES scheme to preserve drinking water quality. When it began, instead of investing US$6-8 billion in a water filtration plant, the city's authorities considered that investing in improving land use in the watershed was more cost-effective, requiring an investment of US$1.5 billion instead. Farms that opt to participate in the Watershed Agricultural Program receive technical assistance in designing a strategy for controlling potential sources of pollution on the farm, with New York City covering all costs associated with the implementation, and become eligible for other elements of the compensation package for specific environmental services, including from the CRP programme described above.

For more visit the NYC Watershed Council website. See also Appleton, A. F. 2002. How New York City Used an Ecosystem Services Strategy Carried out Through an Urban-Rural Partnership to Preserve the Pristine Quality of Its Drinking Water and Save Billions of Dollars. A Paper for Forest Trends -Tokyo, November 2002

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