Assessing the implementation of Payments for Hydrological Ecosystem Services in Peru through a bottom‐up stakeholder analysis: Case study of Lima, Peru

• Date: 01 May 2019
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Author: Oscar Angulo Núñez,Ester Galende Sánchez
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wwp2.12003

World Water Policy. 2019;5:15–35. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/wwp2

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© 2019 Policy Studies Organization.

Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

DOI: 10.1002/wwp2.12003

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Assessing the implementation of Payments for

Hydrological Ecosystem Services in Peru through a

bottom‐up stakeholder analysis: Case study of Lima,

Peru

EsterGalende Sánchez1,2

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OscarAngulo Núñez3,4

This paper continues and deepens the research conducted in 2016 and published on the Digital Archive of the UPM as

Estrategia para la mejor gestión de los mecanismos de retribución por servicios ecosistémicos hídricos en Lima (Perú) a

través del análisis de actores.

1Consorcio para el Desarrollo Sostenible

de la Ecorregión Andina ‐ CONDESAN,

Lima, Peru

2Universidad Politécnica de Madrid ‐ UPM,

Madrid, Spain

3Superintendencia Nacional de Servicios

de Saneamiento ‐ SUNASS, Lima, Peru

4Departamento Académico de Ciencias

Sociales,Pontificia Universidad Católica

del Peru, Lima, Peru

Correspondence

Email: ester.galende.sanchez@gmail.com

Abstract

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) represent a revo-

lutionary conservation paradigm aimed at providing a sus-

tainable financing for conservation, assuring the continued

supply of ecosystem services (ES) for different beneficiar-

ies while having the opportunity to improve sustainable

livelihoods of rural communities providing these services.

Whereas PES schemes are increasingly being developed all

over the world, Peru has created a national legislative frame-

work to operationalize them, called Rewarding Mechanisms

for Ecosystem Services (MRSE), with an especial develop-

ment on Hydrological Ecosystem Services (MRSEH) to

sustain good quality and quantity of drinking potable water

for urban areas. However, a lack of coordination, miscom-

munications, and unintegrated decision making process

among the wide variety of stakeholders involved, especially

urban (downstream water users) and rural stakeholders (ES

upstream providers) has caused several challenges for the

government to be implemented. This paper proposes an in-

novative methodology tool aimed to overcome these chal-

lenges, based on an in‐depth bottom‐up stakeholder analysis

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GALENDE SÁNCHEZ AND ANGULO NÚÑEZ

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INTRODUCTION

Human beings are an integral part of the planet's ecosystems, totally relying on them and their proper

functioning. Ecosystems are responsible for providing some goods and services essential for us, called

Ecosystem Services (ES), such as fresh water and food (provisioning); regulation of water, climate,

flood, and diseases (regulating); soil formation and nutrient cycling (supporting); as well as cultural

services. Alterations caused by human activities, particularly over the past 60years, have degraded

these ecosystems, limiting their capacity for providing us the ES mentioned above and, therefore, pos-

ing a serious threat to our well‐being (Daily, 1997; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). Many

measures have been proposed to try to reverse this problem and manage ecosystems in a more sus-

tainable way, including market instruments, such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) (MEA,

2005).

Payments for Ecosystem Services have generated growing interest in order to translate external and

nonmarket values of the environment into real financial incentives (Engel, Pagiola, & Wunder, 2008).

This revolutionary approach recognizes the need to bridge the interests of landholders and outsiders

(Wunder, 2005). Traditionally, landholders are not receiving any compensation or reward for ES they

provide for others. Additionally, these ES considered as “free services” usually do not receive any

incentive to maintain their provision. The core idea of PES is that those who provide ES and secure

environmental conservation should be rewarded for doing so, and, at the same time, those who receive

the services should pay for their provision (Pagiola, Arcenas, & Platais, 2005; Wunder, 2005). There

has been a lot of effort from different authors in trying to find a formal definition for PES, but the most

extended definition is the one proposed by Wunder (2005):

A PES is:

1. a voluntary transaction where

2. a well‐defined ES (or a land‐use likely to secure that service)

3. is being “bought” by a (minimum one) ES buyer

4. from a (minimum one) ES provider

5. if and only if the ES provider secures ES provision (conditionality).

able to identify and understand those problems, and proposes

sustainable win‐win upstream–downstream interventions to

carry out in the future. A detailed review of the available

literature on bottom‐up stakeholder participation methodol-

ogy and a deep understanding of the MRSEH socio context

were completed. We conclude that this methodology has the

potential to be applied in any MRSEH of Peru at the design

stage and also recommend that more research related with

MRSEH stakeholder engagement should be conducted.

KEYWORDS

conservation, hydrological ecosystem services, Peru, PES, stakeholder

analysis, sustainable management