Mapping the potential for payments for ecosystem services schemes to improve water quality in agricultural catchments: a multi-criteria approach based on the supply and demand concept

2021 ◽  
pp. 117693
Author(s):  
William M Roberts ◽  
Laurence B Couldrick ◽  
Gareth Williams ◽  
Dawn Robins ◽  
Dave Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Agricultural Catchments ◽  
Improve Water Quality

scholarly journals Quantifying the Payments for Ecosystem Services among hydrologic units in Zhujiang River Basin, China based on the indicator of Optional Capacity Value

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haile Yang ◽  
Bin Zhao ◽  
Jiakuan Chen
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Pearl River Basin ◽  
Quantitative Indicator ◽  
Ecological Conservation ◽  
Zhujiang River ◽  
Water Provision ◽  
Hydrologic Unit

AbstractEcosystem services (ES) are fundamental to human being’s livelihoods, production and survival. However, the spatial mismatch between ES supply and demand is a common phenomenon. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) provide a way to promote the complementary advantages and benefits equilibrium between ES supplier and beneficiary. At present, PES is mainly based on the tradeoff between the profit and loss of ecological conservation. The quantifying of PES mainly uses the opportunity cost of ES supplier and follows the principle of additionality, which neglects the benefits that arise from the basic (contrast to additional) ES experienced by ES beneficiary and ignores the rights and interests of ES supplier who supplies the basic ES. To resolve this problem, we proposed that we should set the value of ES experienced by ES beneficiary as the quantitative indicator of PES. Here, we introduced a new indicator (optional capacity value, OCV) to implement this idea. The ES OCV indicates the optional capacity of supporting the total value produced by human being’s economic and social activities provided by the total volume of an ES. In this paper, we calculated the ES OCV of water provision in Zhujiang River Basin (Pearl River Basin), China. Then, we discussed three scenarios of quantifying PES, based on the principles of (1) interests sharing and responsibilities bearing and (2) equal pay for equal work. The results showed that the ES OCV could describe the conditions that water resources in a hydrologic unit not only provide benefits to the hydrologic unit itself, but also provide benefits to downstream hydrologic units, and then could be a quantitative indicator for PES. This research provides a new PES scheme which would promote the coordinated development and ecological conservation among the regions with mismatch between ES supply and demand.

scholarly journals Payments for Ecosystem Services

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-228
Author(s):  
James Salzman ◽  
Genevieve Bennett ◽  
Nathaniel Carroll ◽  
Allie Goldstein ◽  
Michael Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Pest Control ◽  
Flood Control ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Climate Stability ◽  
Positive Externalities ◽  
Living Organisms

While we don’t tend to think about it, healthy ecosystems provide a variety of critical benefits. Ecosystem goods, the physical items an ecosystem provides, are obvious. Forests provide timber; coastal marshes provide shellfish. While less visible and generally taken for granted, the services underpinning these goods are equally important. Created by the interactions of living organisms with their environment, ecosystem services provide the conditions and processes that sustain human life.1 If you doubt this, consider how to grow an apple without pollination, pest control, or soil fertility. Once one realizes the importance of ecosystem services, three points quickly emerge: (1) landscapes provide a stream of services ranging from water quality and flood control to climate stability—the economic value of which can be significant; (2) the vast majority of these services are public goods and not exchanged in markets, so landowners have little incentive to provide these positive externalities; and (3) we, therefore, need to think creatively about creating markets for these services so they are not under-provided. This is the basis of the policy approach known as Payments for Ecosystem Services (“PES”).

scholarly journals The effectiveness of Payments for Ecosystem Services at delivering improvements in water quality: lessons for experiments at the landscape scale

PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e5753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin L. Pynegar ◽  
Julia P.G. Jones ◽  
James M. Gibbons ◽  
Nigel M. Asquith
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Environmental Management ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Randomised Trial ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Management Interventions

BackgroundRandomised Control Trials (RCTs) are used in impact evaluation in a range of fields. However, despite calls for their greater use in environmental management, their use to evaluate landscape scale interventions remains rare. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) incentivise land users to manage land to provide environmental benefits. We present the first RCT evaluation of a PES program aiming to improve water quality.Watersharedis a program which incentivises landowners to avoid deforestation and exclude cattle from riparian forests. Using this unusual landscape-scale experiment we explore the efficacy ofWatersharedat improving water quality, and draw lessons for future RCT evaluations of landscape-scale environmental management interventions.MethodsOne hundred and twenty-nine communities in the Bolivian Andes were randomly allocated to treatment (offeredWatersharedagreements) or control (not offered agreements) following baseline data collection (includingEscherichia colicontamination in most communities) in 2010. We collected end-line data in 2015. Using our end-line data, we explored the extent to which variables associated with the intervention (e.g. cattle exclusion, absence of faeces) predict water quality locally. We then investigated the efficacy of the intervention at improving water quality at the landscape scale using the RCT. This analysis was done in two ways; for the subset of communities for which we have both baseline and end-line data from identical locations we used difference-in-differences (matching on baseline water quality), for all sites we compared control and treatment at end-line controlling for selected predictors of water quality.ResultsThe presence of cattle faeces in water adversely affected water quality suggesting excluding cattle has a positive impact on water quality locally. However, both the matched difference-in-differences analysis and the comparison between treatment and control communities at end-line suggestedWatersharedwas not effective at reducingE. colicontamination at the landscape scale. Uptake ofWatersharedagreements was very low and the most important land from a water quality perspective (land around water intakes) was seldom enrolled.DiscussionAlthough excluding cattle may have a positive local impact on water quality, higher uptake and better targeting would be required to achieve a significant impact on the quality of water consumed in the communities. Although RCTs potentially have an important role to play in building the evidence base for approaches such as PES, they are far from straightforward to implement. In this case, the randomised trial was not central to concluding thatWatersharedhad not produced a landscape scale impact. We suggest that this RCT provides valuable lessons for future use of randomised experiments to evaluate landscape-scale environmental management interventions.

scholarly journals Supply–Demand Coupling Mechanisms for Policy Design

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 5760 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Jiang ◽  
Yuanyuan Chen ◽  
Yang Bai ◽  
Xibao Xu
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Ecosystem Service ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Payments For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
Services Science ◽  
Coupling Mechanisms

Ecosystem services are important for sustaining human survival and sustainable socio-economic development. For the past two decades, ecosystem services studies have greatly promoted the application of ecosystem services science in conservation. As a scientific method to integrate multi-regional and multi-scale ecosystem service providers and beneficiaries, ecosystem service supply and demand coupling mechanisms and payments for ecosystem services programs are closely linked. In this paper, we first provide an overview of the payments for ecosystem services concept and an evaluation of its effectiveness in implementation. We then analyze the correlation between payments for ecosystem services and supply–demand coupling mechanisms and propose a framework to link these two ideas. China’s practice in implementing ecological redline policy and institutional reforms for protected area management will provide a good experimental platform for comprehensive payments for ecosystem service design and effectiveness evaluation within China and beyond.

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