PRESA– Pro-Poor Rewards for

Environmental Services in Africa

Thomas Yatich and Miika Makela,

PRESA Overview for outcome mapping March 1, 2010,

Brackenhurst, Limuru-Kenya

Overview of ICRAF’s work on rewards for environmental services

1. Introduction to key concepts and research questions

2. Overview of the RUPES project and pan-tropical scoping study

3. Overview of PRESA including the pentagon of hypothesis

Key concepts of PRESA

Definition of rewards for environmental services: • realistic, voluntary, and conditional mechanisms for

rewarding ecosystem stewards for legitimate actions foregone or positive actions undertaken beyond social expectations

Including: biodiversity offsets, eco-tourism, eco-labelling, self-organized deals between beneficiaries and stewards, tradeable emission permits

Governance and policy:• decentralization• policies supportive of community & private-sector

involvement in NRM (esp. water, forestry, wildlife)• limits of pure regulatory approaches • more interest in economic instruments for environment• interest in REDD and carbon market•Legal pluralism and implications for ecosystems

Trends in the East and West African highlands

Resources:• water scarcity • water quality declines• forest loss• increase in trees on farm• land degradation & soil

fertility loss

Business interests in ecosystems:• community ecotourism •biodiversity • ecolabelled products • biofuels• carbon market• water / hydro-power interest in

watershed services

Challenges:

1. Increasing market demand for food, fuel and fiber (provisioning ES)

2.Regulating and support services in general decline with increased latent demand

3.Desire for simple policy solutions leads to simplistic understanding of cause-effect (eg deforestation as major cause of floods)

Opportunities:1.Devolution of authority

for NRM

2.Greater penetration of markets and private sector into utility sectors

3.Global trend toward flexible environmental policies

4. Interest in REDD for mitigating climate change, while maintaining resilience and options

RUPES / PRESA time line1998 2002 2009 20112007 20082006 2010

First discussionswith IFAD

RUPES 1began

RUPES 1implemented

RUPES 1Reporting;Development ofRUPES II

RUPES II implemented

PRESAdeveloped

PRESA implemented

Pan-tropical Scopingstudy

ScopingStudy paperspublished

Incentives, compensation and reward typologies for sustaining ecosystem

services (source: Pan-tropical scoping study)

Supported by IFAD

Coordinated by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

Implemented with local, national and international partners

RUPES aims to enhance the livelihoods and reduce the poverty of upland poor in Asia while supporting environmental conservation at the global and local

levels

Action Research Mode

• In a range of settings– Identification/confirmation and monitoring of environmental services– and use options, benefits and costs

• An array of mechanisms developed and tested with poor communities

• Transparent enabling institutional environment• Awareness raised among government officials, producers and

consumers of these services• Effective partnerships formed among consortium members:

regional, national and local

RUPES Action Research SitesAreas of Interest

Kulekhani, Nepal

Kalahan

Manila

Kalahan

SumberjayaLampung

BungoJambi

SingkarakWest Sumatra

Bakhun

Bakun

RUPES II:

• Extensions of lessons and methods to a larger number of partners and sites, especially local NGOs

• More emphasis on engaging the private sector

• More emphasis on policy• Greater emphasis on avoided deforestation

consistent with REDD debate

Key concepts of PRESADefinition of Rewards for Environmental Services: • realistic, voluntary, and conditional mechanisms for rewarding

ecosystem stewards for legitimate actions foregone or positive actions undertaken beyond social expectations

Three levels of pro-poor rewards:1.don’t harm the

poor; 2. include the poor3.positively biased

towards the poor

PRESA Goal and ObjectivesGoal: smallholder farmers and residents living in the highlands of East and West Africa benefit from fair and effective agreements between stewards and beneficiaries of ecosystem services.

Objectives: 1. Foster workable environmental

service agreements. 2. Catalyze policy support and

private-sector participation in environmental service agreements

3. Build a community of practice to provide support to researchers, NGOs and government agencies interested in pro-poor rewards for environmental services in Africa

Site-level activities• Develop and adapt assessment methods and approaches used in the

Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services (RUPES) programme from ICRAF Southeast Asia

• Appraise causal links between RES, incentives, resource use, institutions and environmental services.

• Determine appropriate targets for enhancing environmental services and livelihoods.

• Develop institutions to support reward mechanisms that are effective, equitable and sensitive to the needs of marginalized groups.

• Develop and test prototype reward mechanisms.• Establish, implement and facilitate operational reward mechanisms. • Monitor, evaluate and assess impacts.

Policy and private-sector activities

1. Conduct a survey of private and parastatal firms to determine factors motivating and constraining their participation in RES

2. Evaluate the business case for rewards from perspectives of private sector, parastatals and beneficiaries of watershed services.

3. Review and synthesize site-level results for policy.

4. Identify policy factors that constrain the business case for rewards and convene consultations among stakeholders.

5. Present results at international fora.

Community of Practice• Disseminate and adapt RUPES Technical Advisory Notes

• Support application of tools, methodologies and mechanisms among a community of practice

• Establish relations with international, regional and national organizations interested in RES

• Convene side events at Katoomba Africa or other relevant international meetings

Criteria for site selection

• High probability of a workable reward scheme for environmental services;

• Geographical priorities of IFAD or regions of its investment projects;

• Geographical interests of partners;• Environmental services of interest to

agroforestry and IFAD • ICRAF’s ongoing or active research programs

Sites

PRESA – building on RUPES:Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services

Strengths:• Network of sites• Nested scale approach• Tools and approaches• Recognition of smallholder farmers in sites• Understanding key dimensions of rewards: realistic, conditional, voluntary, pro-poor • Country-level uptake and ownership• Prototype mechanisms • Boundary spanning

Weaknesses:• over-emphasis on core sites • site choice driven by intermediaries• too long to get to working mechanisms • insufficient links to:

• similar initiatives• private sector• IFAD loan projects

Questions / Hypotheses

Realistic

Efficiency

Acceptability

Sustainability

Poverty

Pentagon of Defining Research Questions

Q1. What are the critical spaces in watersheds and mixed-use landscapes where on-farm land use has greatest off-farm effects (eg riverine areas)?

Q2. What are likely time paths of landscape degradation and restoration (lags, hysteresis effects)?

Q3. What elements of agroforestry and other land use systems are most important for landscape function (eg anchoring and binding for landslide risk)?

Realistic / effective

Sasumua, central Kenya

Ulugurus, Tanzania

Western Usambaras, Tanzania

Q1. Are there strong negative incentives for farmers to practice good environmental stewardship or the private sector to invest in ecosystem services (eg rural taxation, monopoly on power supply)? Q2. What are the strongest elements of the business case for investment in ecosystem management (compliance, reputation, market niche, cost)?

Q3. What is the possibility of using reverse auction approaches for countering problems of asymmetric information?

Efficiency

Q1. How does the form of conditional payment affect their acceptance in local communities (eg. property rights, monetary payments, public services)

Q2. What are the tradeoffs between fairness and efficiency in geographic and social targeting of positive incentives / payments (eg case of REDD in Indonesia)?

Q3. Do mechanisms with positive incentives undermine social norms of responsible behavior?

Acceptability / Fairness

Q1. Under what conditions will payments for environmental services lead to sustainable improvements in ecosystem stewardship? • new norms of acceptable behavior • Increased uptake of new technologies• equity investment by beneficiaries• new forms of livelihood that reduce pressure• growth in markets for products consistent with

sustainability

Sustainability

Q1. What combination of actions on negative and positive incentives are most likely to meet one of four levels of pro-poor: 1. Doesn’t harm the poor; 2. More than offsets harm to the poor;3. Fairly includes the poor; or 4. Differentially benefits the poor.

Q2. Does the exclusion of socially-marginalized people undermine the effectiveness and sustainability of mechanisms?

Q3. Are mechanisms that involve voluntary engagement in labour-intensive enterprises most likely to differentially benefit the poor (eg reverse auctions for conservation investment)?

Poverty

Opportunities for students and faculty to help us implement, assess and design our activities

Fields: • Geography and land use systems• Links between land use and ecosystem services• valuation of ecosystem services• economics of alternative land uses and interventions• governance of natural resources and property rights• analysis of policy options and constraints• ex ante and ex post impact assessments• social, gender and equity effects of rewards for environmental services• business case for investment in environmental services

Follow-up

Other ICRAF work on Compensation and Rewards for Environmental Serviceswww.worldagroforestry.org/cres Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services www.worldagroforestry.org/sea/networks/rupes

Please contact us to receive further information•Thomas Yatich T.B. – Project Ag. Coordinator: t.yatich@cgiar.org•Vanessa Meadu – Communications Officer: v.meadu@cgiar.org •Miika Makela-Spatial Analyst: m.makela@cgiar.org•Catherine Kimengu-Administrative Assistant-c.kimengu@cgiar.org•Godfrey Mwaloma-Communication assistant-g.mwaloma@cgiar.org

PRESA project: http://www.presa.worldagroforestry.org