Nature and Prosperity

Payments for Environmental Services

Payments for environmental services (PES) is the name given to a variety of arrangements through which the beneficiaries of environmental services, from watershed protection and forest conservation to carbon sequestration and landscape beauty, pay back the providers of those services.

Across the world, environmental conservation is critical to secure the quantity and quality of ecosystem services that are essential for people and nature. With funding for natural resource management dwindling, a variety of payments for environmental services (PES) schemes have emerged as potential sources of sustainable financing for conservation.

In the case of Europe, recent and ongoing changes (e.g. Water Framework Directive; Common Agricultural Policy; Rural and Regional development policy; plus the Eastern enlargement of the EU as well as the European Neighborhood Program) may have opened a window of opportunity to mainstream PES as a major conservation tool.

Against this background, and working in close cooperation with the WWF-Macroeconomic Policy Office in Washington, the WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme is investigating options for developing payments schemes to support biodiversity conservation in the region. Activities to date include:

Capacity building and awareness raising
The WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme serves as focal point for Europe, Middle East and the Newly Independent States for a global capacity building and support programme on PES for the WWF network. (See links to further information on side bar to the right).

Development and Implementation
We have been developing a number of practical initiatives involving payments for environmental services, including a major project in the Danube Basin as well as smaller initiatives in the Maramures area of northern Romania. In 2006-07, WWF-DCPO is also working with the Institute of European Environmental Policy and country partners on an EU-supported project to investigate the potential for innovative funding sources such as payments for environmental services for nature conservation in Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey. (See links to further information on side bar to the right).