IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

The earth’s ecosystems provide various services which are crucial for human well-being and economic development (e.g., supporting soil formation; providing food, freshwater or fuel; regulating floods, climate or diseases; serving educational, aesthetic or spiritual purposes). As the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has shown, ecosystems have seriously been changed in the past century. Although these changes have led to net gains in human well-being and economic development in some parts of the world, the gains have far too often gone hand in hand with deterioration of the ecosystem services.

Stopping the further degradation of these important services will demand policy changes. The IUCN Environmental Law Programme (ELP), particularly through its Environmental Law Centre and the Commission on Environmental Law (CEL) network, is aiming to support the implementation of the required changes by recommending appropriate legal frameworks.

In a current project, the Environmental Law Centre (ELC) is collaborating with CEL members who analyze four countries from four different continents and their legal approach to ecosystem services. The overall goal of these country studies is to determine existing legal as well as institutional gaps and obstacles, and to give recommendations on future improvements in governing ecosystem services on the national level.

The classical way of deterring environmental degradation is to establish a legal norm coupled with a sanction for non-compliance. Such command and control policy also includes the tool of Protected Areas. The ELP is constantly working towards creating and improving PA law.

A rather new conservation approach is the use of economic mechanisms and incentives. In particular the tool of payments for environmental services (PES) is increasingly being considered a promising approach. Under a PES scheme, those people whose lands provide environmental services may accept voluntary limitation or diversification of their activities in return for an economic benefit that is provided by the beneficiaries of the services. In this way, both “sellers” and “buyers” of ecosystem services can profit while helping to protect ecosystems. The ELC is currently researching the appropriate legal and institutional frameworks that are necessary to ensure the effectiveness of PES schemes. This has already enabled the ELC to draft the legal chapter of the IUCN publication PAY – Establishing payments for watershed services.

A project with the aim of better understanding the legal and institutional frameworks of water and carbon related PES is now being implemented by the ELC and the Katoomba Group (www.katoombagroup.org). The following questionnaire offers guidance on the issues to be considered when conducting a PES country assessment.

Guiding Questionnaire for PES Country Assessments