From March 12th to 17th 2007, 24 individuals from 13 countries met at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center at Lake Como (Italy) to discuss lessons learned from recent global experiences with payments for watershed services (PWS). The selection of participants reflected a desire to bring together a mix of:
• Practitioners—managers who are actually implementing PWS schemes;
• Investigators—researchers who have been directly involved in studying the design and implementation of PWS schemes; and
• Investors—intermediaries who have the potential to invest in PWS initiatives.
Between them, these practitioners, investigators and investors had experience of nine payments for watershed services schemes and detailed knowledge of 15 more. The goal of the Bellagio meeting was to consider how these experiences and knowledge could be used to improve the efficiency of watershed management. We believe that the resulting “Bellagio Conversations” can help shed light on some of the most important, pressing, complex and under-discussed PWS issues. Our hope is that these conversations will encourage others to tackle the opportunities and challenges of payments for watershed services.
