This report is the second installment in the “State of Watershed Payments” series, an effort to globally track the size, scope, and direction of investments in watershed services (IWS) as well as the ecological infrastructure from which they flow. Throughout this report, we use the term ‘investments in watershed services’ to cover the broad diversity of incentive- or market-based mechanisms being used to protect the natural infrastructure of watersheds – including payments for ecosystem services (PES), payments for watershed services (PWS), water quality trading markets, and reciprocal or in-kind agreements. Data comes from surveys, interviews, and desk research on over 200 programs worldwide in more than 30 countries.
Report Objectives Building on the 2010 State of Watershed Payments report, the primary objective of the current report is to provide an accurate snapshot of the scale, size, shape, and direction of investments in watershed services worldwide.
The second objective of this report is to provide a detailed design and project analysis that informs smart decision-making among policymakers, local communities, conservation organizations, private businesses, and other natural resource managers. The IWS field is growing rapidly; transparency and access to reliable information are critical to ensure that practices and policies are beneficial for both society and nature. Gathering project-level information at a global scale on mechanism design, transaction values, and project outcomes is no small undertaking. Information on projects and programs is often scarce, fragmented, and rapidly changing. This report represents our most comprehensive inventory of programs yet, but it is not the complete picture. In all cases, we have done our best to err on the side of conservatism in our estimates and analyses. In this report, we offer an overview of our findings at global and regional scales. More detailed project-level data is available in our online global project inventory at www.watershedconnect.org/projects.