This report explores the evidence of whether payments for watersheds can be good for ecosystems and for reducing poverty too. It describes what the protagonists in a range of watershed sites around the world have learned in their efforts to set up such payment schemes.
Benefits to people from water ecosystems like rivers, swamps,
floodplains and groundwater systems are central to human
well-being. But ecosystems are in trouble and the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, the Comprehensive Assessment of
Water Management in Agriculture, and the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change have each shown that freshwater
Payments for environmental services (PES) have been distinguished from the more common integrated conservation and development projects on the grounds that PES are direct, more cost-effective, less complex institutionally, and therefore more likely to produce the desired results.
