Compensation and Rewards for Ecosystem Services in the tropics: Interface between conservation, poverty reduction and social

justice

Presentation to international symposium on

Defying Nature’s End: the African Context,

Antananarivo, Madagascar, 22 June 2006

Brent Swallow,

Theme Leader for Environmental Services

World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Nairobi, Kenya

Background

Increasing interest in “payments for ecosystem services:” • Costa Rica forestry programme for bundled ecosystem services

(replicated in other national programmes, especially in Meso America)

• Catskills and New York City watershed / water quality case (replicated in several sites in Latin America and now moving to Africa)

• Biodiversity / wetland offsets in the United States (wide interest among environment management agencies, eg Uganda)

• Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol (interest in voluntary carbon sequestration; other MEAs)

• Community-based ecotourism in Zimbabwe(replication in many communities in Namibia, Kenya etc.)

Background

Increasing interest on the interface between “payments for ecosystem services,” poverty reduction and social justice:

• Government programmes designed around dual goals of conservation and development (eg Mexico, South Africa)

• Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) 2005 notes tradeoffs between conservation and poverty and encourages innovative approaches (and Sachs response)

• Impact assessment studies (eg IIED reviews; Cornell study of Costa Rica forestry programme; CIFOR in Bolivia; ICRAF et al. on conditional property rights in Indonesia) – Bottom line:

forest conservation – uncertain, due to leakage & scale effectsecosystem services – uncertain, due to variation, scale & temporal effects (even in US)pro-poor – can be, depending upon design – recognition, rights, non-monetary rewards, and livelihood options are key.

Background

• IISD Development Dividend Task Force; UNDP’s MDG Carbon

• IFAD support for ICRAF-led project on “Rewarding the poor of Asia for environmental services (RUPES)” – and extension to Africa

• UNEP high-level workshop on Pro-poor markets for ecosystem services, plus followup work on MDG / MEA interface (Nov 2005)

• IDRC -- scoping study of Compensation for Ecosystem Services

• Katoomba Group meeting for East and Southern Africa (Oct 2005)

Pan-Tropical Scoping Study of Compensation and Reward for

Ecosystem Services -- 2006• Commissioned by IDRC’s Rural Poverty and Environment Programme

• developing research agenda esp. re links to poverty & social justice

• Intensive short project (Jan – June 2006; remainder of 2006)

• Regional workshops in Latin America (Quito, Ecuador), Africa (Nairobi, Kenya) & Asia (Bangalore, India)

• 6 issue papers, report to IDRC, about 40 papers at regional workshops

• 20-person core group + 100 “volunteers”

• Led by ICRAF, with 6 core collaborators

Coordination;Leading Conc framework, IP2 and IP3; Inputs into all regional workshops

Leading regional workshops, regional policy reviews, inputs into IP1 (gender), IP3 (case studies), IP4 (governance)

Leading IP1, IP4 & IP5; input into IP2 (valuation), contributions to LA reg wrkshp

Partners

EcoagriculturePartners

Rights &ResourcesInitiative

RUPES Katoomba Group& Ecosystem Marketplace

EcosystemService

Beneficiaries

EcosystemServiceConservers& Modifiers

Ecosystem Service

Intermediaries

EcosystemStructure &Function

Ecosystem Services

Production

Regulating

Cultural

Pressure and threats

Investment & management

Conservation

Conceptual Foundations

1. Components and actors

Product

ion

funct

ion

EcosystemService

Beneficiaries

Ecosystem Service

Intermediaries

EcosystemStructure &Function

Ecosystem Services

2. Generic types of compensation and reward for ecosystem services

RES1: reward for threat reduction

RES2: reward forconservn or investment

CES1: compensation for damage (eg pollution, biodiversity offsets)

CES3: compensation for foregone use (eg. tradable harvest rights)

EcosystemServiceConservers& Modifiers

Pressure and threats

Investment & management

Conservation

Conceptual Framework

CES2: compensation for foregone damage(eg. tradable pollution permits)

Brent Swallow and Leimona Beria

Key issues

3. Level and basis of agreement: outcomes, actions, co-management plans, objectives

5. Government roles and governance context (social justice)

7. Past and future trends

4. Spatial and temporal scales in mechanism design, m&e

1. Links between CRES mechanisms, ecosystem services and human well-being (integrating MA, SL, 5 capitals frameworks)

2. Compensation and reward relative to rights, duties & regulations

6. Private sector: regulation, CSR, sustainability, paying twice

8. Managing ecosystem service tradeoffs (eg C x BD, C x W)

Brent Swallow and Leimona Beria

Regional perspectives

Africa context (esp. East and Southern Africa): • Substantial community ecotourism experience in East and Southern Africa

• Some experience with carbon sequestration and biofuel projects (at least 20 across the continent)

• Growing interest in CRES for water quality (eg Nairobi)

• Some innovative national programmes providing local incentives for ecosystem management, eg South Africa’s Working for Water programme, and biodiversity offsets in Uganda

• Fairly conducive statutory policy environment for CRES due to decentralization and reform of environment, water & land policies

• General lack of awareness of rewards and compensation at all levels: policy, researcher, community

Some Africa experience:

• Vanilla / jetropha experience in Kenya – shows difficulty of meeting CDM requirements, with SD increasing risks

• Agroforestry for carbon sequestration in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania for VERs – low to good farmer returns, tradeoffs with water, invasiveness concerns, technical challenges

• Kitengela / Nairobi Park wildlife lease programme to reward Maasai pastoralists to retain collective and wildlife use in buffer and corridor zone. Shows value of research input; challenge to sustain finance and interest.

Asia context:

• Major differences within and between South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China

• Significant state involvement in management of common pool resources and direction of the economy

• India has largest experience with smallscale CDM projects, mostly in energy efficiency and energy substitution

• Concerns about joint forest management as an unfinished project – need to focus on greater tenure security and local management

• India: Public interest litigation, backed by science, as a tool for improved environmental management

• Pollution from textile industry in the Noyyal river basin, Tamil Nadu – use of valuation to assess damage; inequities in allocation to landless people

• Watershed management projects under RUPES (Philippines, Nepal, Indonesia): building up the case for rewards for watershed protection through science, legal and institutional arrangements, and appeals to sustainability and corporate social responsibility of companies

Some Asia experience:

Latin America context:

• Programmes at different scales

• Sub-regional differences between Meso-America (replicating Costa Rica?), Andes (many small cases in a general context of in-governability), and the Brazilian Amazon (strong and large govt pgms)

• Substantial experience with forest projects (afforestation, forest conservation, agroforestry) for watershed protection and biodiversity conservation

• Some evidence of benefits for the poor, especially in Bolivia; national programmes in Mexico and Costa Rica are starting to focus more attention on the poor

• Controversy over concepts and practice of payments for ecosystem services

Latin America experience:

Reciprocity fund for watershed services in El Angel, Ecuador – financing protection of the paramo through voluntary contributions by downstream irrigation communities, managed through the Carchi Consortium

COINBIO project of the Mexico National Forestry Commission – financing forest management in the indigenous and campesino communities of southern Mexico, with cash payments on the basis of degree of forest conservation

ProAmbiente Programme of the Brazilian Amazon – supporting sustainable land / forest management in 10 sites around Amazon, with 500 hhs per site, through a combination of cash, public services, and agricultural extension.

- “We reject all the initiatives that involve the sale of Environmental Services in the territories of indigenous peoples, peasant and Afro-Ecuadorian communities...”

-“We reject the use of the Kyoto Protocol's so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) ..

- “We reject the signing of further contracts in our communities for the sale of Environmental Services with national or international NGOs, municipalities or individuals…”

Statement from an international meeting on “Environmental Services: Nature as a Merchandise”, held on 19 and 20 May in Puyo in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The meeting was attended by representatives of all the country's indigenous nationalities, other traditional peoples and national and international NGOs.

http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/106/viewpoint.html#Issue

“PES schemes, as their name indicates, were created to protect or improve ecosystems and thus have a strong emphasis on conservation themes.

This means that the poor are not necessarily the starting point in the design and implementation.

However, the case study presentations in the workshop demonstrate that the poorest sectors have not been negatively affected.

On the contrary, certain positive tendencies for the poor were seen, some monetary and others not, resulting from improvements in ecosystems and secondary effects (cases from Bolivia, México, FONAG, Pimampiro, Colombia).”

Final statement from organizers of the Latin America regional workshop in Quito, April 2006 (RISAS)

www.worldagroforestry.org/es

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