Incentives

Negotiating pro-poor policies and incentives for enhancing tree-based environmental services

If the role of trees in providing environmental services can be realistically assessed, then appropriate incentives and regulatory approaches can be negotiated among stakeholders.

The difficulty with establishing fair policies and incentives is in ensuring efficiency and fairness to the poor, women and untitled landholders as well as in sustaining management and policy approaches.

Our goal is for successful environmental service mechanisms to be implemented in a range of sites across Africa, Asia and Latin America. This will work towards maintaining critical ecosystem services and enhancing farmer welfare.

Key projects

Pro-poor rewards for environmental services in Africa (PRESA)
PRESA promotes healthy landscapes and sustainable rural livelihoods through innovative market-based reward mechanisms. Through working with stakeholders in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Guinea, the aim is to catalyze policy support and private sector participation for fair and effective environmental service agreements between ecosystem stewards and beneficiaries.

Rewarding the upland poor in Asia for the environmental services they provide (RUPES)
RUPES aims to enhance livelihoods and reduce poverty while supporting environmental conservation on biodiversity protection, watershed management, carbon sequestration and landscape beauty at local and global levels. There are RUPES study sites in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Nepal and India.

Compensation and Rewards for Environmental Services
From January 2006 to March 2007, the Centre led a consortium of seven organizations from around the world in a pan-tropical study of compensation and rewards for environmental services. Several multi-authored issue papers and regional workshops resulted in a synthesis of relevant developments and the future challenges in Africa, Asia and Latin America.