RUPES - Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services

Action research is occurring at sites throughout Asia to identify
ways of Rewarding Upland Poor for the Environmental Services they
provide (RUPES).

Communities living in hilly and mountainous
areas of Asia are among the poorest and most marginalized people. They
receive few of the benefits from national and local investments in
economic development. Yet, many of these communities manage landscapes
that provide environmental services to outside beneficiaries.

The
services they provide include clean and abundant water supplies from
watersheds, biodiversity protection, stocks of carbon that may
alleviate global warming, and landscape beauty for recreation and
tourism.

The RUPES project is testing mechanisms that can enable
upland communities to share in the local and global benefits that these
services provide, thereby enhancing their livelihoods and reducing
poverty.

RUPES operates in six sites; in the Philippines (Kalahan
Reserve & Ancestral Domain and Bakun), Nepal (Kulekhani) and
Indonesia (Bungo, Sumberjaya and Singkarak).

Through a
partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development
(IFAD) as a major donor, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) is
coordinating a wide-ranging consortium of research organizations,
non-government organizations and national partners interested in
contributing and being a part of RUPES.

The RUPES project is
building working models of best practices for successful environmental
transfer agreements adapted to the Asian context. Targeted action
research is identifying the environmental services and how can they be
measured. It is looking at who the rewards should go to, who will pay
the rewards, how and in what form they would be collected, and what
amount or form is appropriate.

The action research is defining
appropriate methods with the beneficiaries of these services for best
practice in environmental transfer payments. RUPES provides simple,
practical examples of how innovative, institutional arrangements and
reward mechanisms can be applied to foster local development, while at
the same time preserving and restoring the environment.

The emphasis is on easily understood, sound and financially and institutionally sustainable approaches.

There
is a strong focus on the development and strengthening of local
institutions associated with environmental transfer payments.
Networking at global, regional and national levels is a key element of
the RUPES project.

RUPES is addressing the urgent need to support
a process of self-empowerment so that poor upland people can take the
necessary decisions to build a sustainable future based on their
resources, on improved technology and centuries of accumulated wisdom.

World Agroforestry Centre
ICRAF Southeast Asia Regional Office
Jl. CIFOR, Situ Gede
Sindang Barang, Bogor 16115
PO Box 161 Bogor 16001, Indonesia
Ph: +62 251 8625415, fax: +62 251 8625416
Email: icraf-indonesia@cgiar.org