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The Bellagio Conversations:
From
March 12th to 17th 2007, 24 individuals from 13 countries met at the
Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center at Lake Como (Italy) to
discuss lessons learned from recent global experiences with payments
for watershed services (PWS).
"Most
water users would prefer their water to be free of charge, and most
upstream land managers would prefer their activities to be
unrestricted. However, the upper watersheds that should provide
clean water to downstream users often have to support additional and
sometimes conflicting functions, such as agriculture and forestry
activities. Existing regulatory frameworks have often proved unable
to reconcile these conflicting needs. Watershed management may be
improved by providing incentives to upstream land users to adopt
production systems and land use practices that are better aligned
with the importance and value attached by downstream recipients to
the environmental services yielded by those systems. Payments for
watershed services (PWS), a subset of "payments for
environmental services" (PES), appear to have the potential to
improve resource management. The rationale behind PWS is that
downstream service users benefit from the upstream land use
practices that ensure the supply of services such as protection from
erosion and sedimentation, and stream flow stabilization. However,
if upstream service providers are to take appropriate land use
decisions, and provide downstream users with such services, they
likely need to be compensated for their opportunity costs, i.e. the
economic gains they would have made if they had continued with their
first land use plan."
Asquith,
N. and S. Wunder (eds). 2008. Payments for Watershed Services: The
Bellagio Conversations. Fundación Natura Bolivia: Santa Cruz de la
Sierra. Download
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Located
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Profiles
of RUPES Sites
Readers
will find these briefs useful to find more details about the six
RUPES sites, Download Singkarak,
Kalahan,
Bungo,
Kulekhani,
Sumberjaya,
and Bakun.
Brief
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Featured Links
WWF
Payment for Environmental Services Very
popular for its work in environmental conservation, WWF sees payment
for environmental service as an environmental protection tool. The
link provides a glimpse of WWF's philosophy and efforts in payment
of environmental services.
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