What Do We Know about Gender and Other Social Impacts of IWS Projects?: A Literature Review

The approach of this short literature review is to look firstly at what the literature has to say about wider social impacts of "investing in watershed services" (IWS) projects or programs and, secondly, to examine more specifically the gender issues. The term IWS is used in this paper as a convenient shorthand while realizing that this is a controversial term and that there is a case for using other terms such as "payments for watershed services", "reciprocal arrangements in watershed service provision" or "compensation for provision of watershed services." In the interest of brevity, this discussion is not entered into except to say that the term IWS is used here in a broad and inclusive way similar to "IWS-like schemes" as used in the Bellagio Conversations (Asquith & Wunder 2008)

Payment for Watershed Services: Opportunities and Realities

Many nations have found that regulatory approaches to land and water management have a limited impact. An alternative is to create incentives for sound management - under mechanisms known as payments for ecosystem services. It is a simple idea: people who look after ecosystems that benefit others should be recognised and rewarded. In the case of watersheds, downstream beneficiaries of wise upstream land and water use should compensate the stewards. To be effective, these 'payments for watershed services' must cover the costs of watershed management. In developing countries, they might also aid local development and reduce poverty. But new research shows that the problems in watersheds are complex and not easily solved. Payments for watershed services do not guarantee poverty reduction and cannot replace the best aspects of regulation

All that Glitters: A Review of Payments for Watershed Services in Developing Countries

This report reviews the current status of payments for watershed services in developing countries. It highlights the main trends in the evolution of these schemes, synthesising the available evidence on their environmental and social impacts, and drawing lessons for the design of future initiatives. The interest in payments for watershed services (PWS) as a tool for watershed management in developing countries is growing, despite major setbacks. This review identified 50 ongoing schemes, 8 advanced proposals and 37 preliminary proposals for PWS. A previous review published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) on markets and payments for environmental services (Silver Bullet or Fools' Gold? (Landell-Mills and Porras 2002)) identified just 41 proposed and ongoing PWS schemes in developing countries, which suggests a considerable growth in interest in this approach

Monitoring Payments for Watershed Services Schemes in Developing Countries

Payments for watershed services (PWS) are schemes that use funds from water users (including governments) as an incentive for landholders to improve their land management practices. They are increasingly seen as a viable policy alternative to watershed management issues, and a means of addressing chronic problems such as declining water flows, deteriorating water quality and flooding. In some places, local governments, donor agencies and NGOs are actively trying to upscale and replicate PWS schemes across the area. While their apparent success and progress in launching new initiatives is encouraging, there is still much to be learned from formative experiences in this field, especially with regard to monitoring and evaluation.In this paper we discuss the monitoring and evaluation criteria behind compliance or transactional monitoring, which ensures that contracts are followed, and effectiveness conditionality, which looks at how schemes manage to achieve their environmental objectives regardless of the degree of compliance. Although the two are usually linked, a high degree of compliance does not necessarily ensure that a scheme is effective. This is because a poorly designed scheme may target the wrong land managers and land that is at least risk, meaning that payments do not generate the desired hydro-ecological or conservation benefits. As the levering capacity to demand payments for better watershed management increases, so does the need to understand the dynamics of such activities and demonstrate their impacts. While the growing interest in such schemes shows that participants believe in the principle of land management, evidence of their impact is needed to determine which initiatives genuinely add value and are worth pursuing

Paying for Watershed Services: an Effective Tool in the Developing World?

Payments for watershed services (PWS) are an increasingly popular conservation and water management tool in developing countries. Some schemes are thriving, and are pro-poor. Others are stalling or have only mixed success. Most rely on public or donor finance; and other sources of funding are unlikely to play a significant role any time soon. In part, financing PWS schemes remains a challenge because the actual evidence for their effectiveness is still scanty -- it is hard to prove that they actually work to benefit both livelihoods and environments. Getting more direct and concrete data on costs and benefits will be crucial to securing the long-term future of PWS schemes

Priority areas for watershed service conservation in the Guapi-Macacu region of Rio de Janeiro, Atlantic Forest, Brazil.

Introduction: Land use intensification and urbanisation processes are degrading hydrological ecosystem services in the Guapi-Macacu watershed of Rio de Janeiro. A proposal to pay farmers to restore natural watershed services might be an alternative to securing the water supply in the long-term for the around 2.5 million urban water users in the study region. This study quantifies the costs of changing current land use patterns to enhance watershed services and compares these costs to the avoided costs associated with water treatment for public supply. Methods: We use farm-household data to estimate the opportunity costs of abandoning current land uses for the recovery of natural vegetation; a process that is very likely to improve water quality in terms of turbidity due to reduced inputs from erosion. Opportunity cost estimates are extrapolated to the watershed scale based on remote sensing land use classifications and vulnerability analysis to identify priority zones for watershed management interventions. To assess the potential demand for watershed services, we analyse water quality and treatment cost data from the main local water treatment plant. Results: Changing agricultural land uses for watershed services provision generally comes at high opportunity costs in our study area near to the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro. Alternative low cost watershed conservation options do exist in the livestock production sector. These options have the potential to directly reduce the amount of sediments and nutrients reaching the water bodies, and in turn decrease the costs of treatment needed for drinking water. Land cover changes at the scale needed to improve water quality will, nonetheless, likely exceed the cost of additional investments in water treatment. Conclusions: The state water utility company?s willingness to pay for watershed services alone will not be enough to induce provision of additional watershed services. We conclude that monetary incentives conditioned on specific adjustments to existing production systems could still have a complementary role to play in improving watershed services. However, we note that our willingness to pay analysis focusses on only one of the potentially wide range of ecosystem services provided by natural vegetation in the Guapi-Macacu watershed. Factoring these ecosystem services into the willingness to pay equation is likely to change our assessment in favour of additional conservation action, be it through PES or other policy instruments

Fair Deals for Watershed Services: Lessons from a Multi-country Action-learning Project

Payments for ecosystem services make good sense. In the case of watershed ecosystems, downstream beneficiaries of wise upstream land and water stewardship should compensate these upstream stewards. These 'payments for watershed services' (PWS) should contribute to the costs of watershed management and, if upstream communities are also characterised by poverty, these payments should contribute to local development and poverty reduction as well. Debates about both conservation and development have seen a wave of excitement about payments for watershed services in recent years. But on the ground an equivalent surge of action is harder to see. IIED and its partners have been building on earlier international case study work to set up new PWS schemes - to 'learn by doing' and to improve our understanding of the opportunities and the challenges.This report is about the complex business of trying to put a simple conservation and development idea into practice. The idea is that watershed degradation in developing countries might be better tackled than it currently is if downstream beneficiaries of wise land use in watershed areas paid for these benefits. There are some examples around the world of this idea being put into practice - this report reviews these and describes what happened when teams in six developing countries set about exploring how the idea works on the ground

State of Watershed Payments: An Emerging Marketplace

A global research effort conducted by Ecosystem Marketplace identified a total of approximately 288 payments for watershed services (PWS) and water quality trading (WQT) programs in varying stages of activity over the past 30 years. In 2008, the baseline year, about 127 programs were actively receiving payments or transacting credits. The total transaction value from all programs actively engaged in 2008 is estimated at US$9.3 billion. Over the entire time span of recorded activity, total transaction value is estimated at slightly more than US$50 billion, impacting some 3.24 billion hectares

Estimating the value of watershed services following forest restoration

Declining forest health, climate change, and development threaten the sustainability of water supplies in the western United States. While forest restoration may buffer threats to watershed services, funding shortfalls for landscape-scale restoration efforts limit management action. The hydrologic response and reduction in risk to watersheds following forest restoration treatments could create significant nonmarket benefits for downstream water users. Historic experimental watershed studies indicate a significant and positive response from forest thinning by a reallocation of water from evapotranspiration to surface-water yield. In this study, we estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for improved watershed services for one group of downstream users, irrigators, following forest restoration activities. We find a positive and statistically significant WTP within our sample of $183.50 per household, at an aggregated benefit of more than$400,000 annually for 2181 irrigators. Our benefit estimate provides evidence that downstream irrigators may be willing to invest in landscape-scale forest restoration to maintain watershed services

Market-based Approaches to Environmental Management: A Review of Lessons from Payment for Environmental Services in Asia

Market-based approaches to environmental management, such as payment for environmental services (PES), have attracted unprecedented attention during the past decade. PES policies, in particular, have emerged to realign private and social benefits such as internalizing ecological externalities and diversifying sources of conservation funding as well as making conservation an attractive land-use paradigm. In this paper, we review several case studies from Asia on payment for environmental services to understand how landowners decide to participate in PES schemes. The analysis demonstrates the significance of four major elements facilitating the adoption and implementation of PES schemes: property rights and tenure security, transaction costs, household and community characteristics, communications, and the availability of PES-related information. PES schemes should target win-win options through intervention in these areas, aimed at maintaining the provision of ecological services and improving the conditions for local inhabitants