Mt Kenya is one of the five water towers in Kenya whose water yield contributes close to 49% of the flow of River Tana. The river supports hydro power generated in Kenya, irrigated agriculture, fisheries, livestock production and biodiversity conservation in the lower Tana area, which is strategic to Kenya’s economic development. The life supporting functions are systematically being lost due to degradation of the upper and middle catchment of the river through destruction of forest cover and poor land use practices in surrounding farmlands. These in turn have triggered increased soil erosion that contributes to the high sediment load in River Tana, its tributaries and the hydroelectric dams along the river. Due to increased soil erosion, land productivity has declined leading to a prevalence of poverty to the inhabitants of the area, who largely depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Water retention by the land has been reduced causing fluctuation in water regime in river during the wet season and low base flows in the dry season thereby impairing water supply.

Kapingazi River. PHOTO: B. Ireri

The Kapingazi River located in the Upper Tana catchment area, originates from Mt Kenya forest and enjoins with River Rupingazi at the confluence in the lower part of the river catchment. It has faced the various water degradation concerns due to deforestation, overgrazing, poor agronomic practices, and uncontrolled upstream water abstraction along the riparian areas, leading to high sediment loads in the river. The Kapingazi river catchment is densely populated and covers an area of 61.23sq km (MKEPP, 2009). (more…)

Implementation of tree-planting field trial in Kenya

The direct approach of PES has the potential to promote conservation and sustainable use of ecosystem services and biodiversity and at the same time offers spectacular cost-savings relative to less direct approaches – thus making a more efficient use of available conservation finance (OECD, 2010; Ferraro & Simpson, 2000). A significant proportion of the PES schemes implemented worldwide, however, fail to realise their potential cost-effectiveness gains (Ferraro 2008; OECD 2010), which crucially depend on programme design and implementation. Information asymmetries where landholders know more on their opportunity costs of supplying the contracted environmental services than the conservation agent, and inefficient way of managing related to moral hazard problem of action-based conservation contract types are argued to be among the main barriers to potential high cost-effectiveness gains of the PES programmes (Ferraro, 2008, Schilizzi et al. 2011, Matzdorf & Lorenz, 2010).

The information asymmetry can be to much extent mitigated by the use of conservation auctions, which in contrast to fixed payments induce landholders to reveal their opportunity costs and as result reduce overbidding (OECD, 2010; Ferraro, 2008). The moral hazard problem related to payments for compliance with set of conservation prescriptions can be then addressed by the use of outcome-based payments – that offer more flexibility to enhance innovations (Matzdorf & Lorenz, 2010) as well as “do harness the self-interest” of landholders to comply with the conservation goals “by optimizing their stewardship effort” (Schilizzi et al., 2011). However, there is uncertainty problem, which limits the use of outcome-based PES schemes in practice (Schilizzi et al., 2011). Apart from production risks, there is also uncertainty about the possible distortion in the performance indicators (Zabel & Roe, 2009). These additional layers of uncertainty may result in low participation and/or in demand of high risk premiums in return for bearing the risk (Schilizzi et al., 2011), which would unintentionally decrease the cost-effectiveness of the conservation scheme. (more…)

Turasha Watershed in Naivasha. PHOTO: E. Obwocha

As economic growth and human population increases the higher the demand for water services, and increased pressure on the ecosystems that provide watershed services (Porras et. al, 2008). This therefore implies that, hydrological watershed services are ‘ideally’ suited to PES markets because there are direct and obvious users of water in a watershed (Robinson & Venema, 2006).

Lake Naivasha is an inland freshwater lake of great economic importance in Kenya but it has been faced with many challenges which include: poor land use practices within the watershed, unregulated and excessive water abstraction for domestic and agricultural/ horticultural use, weak policy enforcement, population increase, water pollution and climate variability.

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By Nyongesa M Josephat (edited by Judith Nzyoka)

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Kenya Country office) in partnership with CARE – Kenya has been implementing the phased Equitable Payment for Watershed Services (EPWS) scheme in within Naivasha where the third payment was done on June 21, 2012.

The project in the Lake Naivasha basin has been in operation in Kenya since 2006 with the implementation phase commencing in 2008. Its goal is to improve the livelihoods of Targeted households in the Malewa Catchment area by introducing Payment for Watershed Service. The PES design involves two Water Resource Users Associations (WRUAs) representing sellers located in the Turasha and Wanjohi sub-catchments of the Malewa River at the western foothills of the Aberdare Mountains in Kenya. (more…)

Unsustainable land use decisions and agricultural practices by landholders are responsible for watershed degradation. However, landholders have little or no incentive to change their ways by adopting sustainable land use practices.

PRESA researchers at Kapingazi during the survey.

That much is already known.

Little is known about landholder attitudes and preferences related to alternative land management schemes. Which practices do landholders prefer, and why? How much of their land can they set aside in a payments for environmental services (PES) scheme?

A recently published journal paper describes how researchers have adopted market research techniques to answer these questions and more.

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Payments for environmental services target communities whose economic activities have a direct impact on environmental resources and aims at providing them with incentives for protecting the ecosystem.
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Policy makers, private sector stakeholders, and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are in Nairobi, Kenya, for two training workshops by PRESA and its partners.

The first workshop, which will be on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and Reducing Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD+), runs from 8 to 9 August 2011. Participants include policy makers, private sector stakeholders and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Cameroon, Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.  The content will focus on providing participants with:
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By Nyongesa Josephat

504 Kenyan farmers have received 799,724 Kenya Shillings (US$ 8,886) this year from industrialists and conservation groups around Lake Naivasha, for land use practices that ensure adequate flow of clean water into the lake through the Malewa River.

Water Resources Director, Mr John Nyaoro (left) receives a cheque from LANAWRUA chairman Mr. Richard Fox (right) before handing it over to the Upper Turasha WRUA members (seen behind). PHOTO: WWF-Naivasha staff

The payments are the second for an environmental services scheme at the upper catchment area of the Malewa River. The first payment in May 2010 was of US$10,000 from the Lake Naivasha Water Resource Users Association (LANAWRUA) to 470 farmers in the catchment.

LANAWRUA, which represents 23 member commercial farms around Lake Naivasha, is composed of the Lake Naivasha Growers Group (LNGG) and the Lake Naivasha Riparian Association (LNRA).

At this year’s event, LANAWRUA presented two cheques to the Upper Turasha-Kinja and the Wanjohi Water Resource User Associations (WRUAs). The two WRUAs represent the 504 farmers.

Wanjohi WRUA received 438, 815 Kenya Shillings (US$4,903) while Upper Turasha WRUA received 360,909 Kenya Shillings (US$4,033). The upstream WRUAs are located in the Wanjohi  and Turasha sub-catchments of the Malewa River, which flows into Lake Naivasha from the western foothills of the Aberdare Mountains.

Lake Naivasha is crucial for Kenya’s horticulture and flower production, for geothermal power generation and for tourism around the lake and Nakuru town.
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Can payments for ecosystem services (PES) – including revenues from projects focused on reducing emissions from degradation and deforestation (REDD+) – create new incentives for sustainable land use management in Africa? What are the opportunities? And what risks exist, for whom?

A view of the city of Nairobi.

These questions, and more, will be at the core of a workshop, jointly offered by the World Agroforestry Center and the international Katoomba Group with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The workshop on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and Reducing Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD+) runs from 8 to 9 August 2011. Participants will include policy makers, private sector stakeholders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Cameroon, Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.  The content will focus on providing participants with an introduction to PES and REDD+, a set of guidelines for selecting the most promising PES and REDD+ sites, and an overview of how PES can be implemented.

The second workshop, scheduled for 10 to 12 August 2011, and also jointly offered by the World Agroforestry Center and the international Katoomba Group, will train project implementers (mainly NGOs) from Kenya and Uganda on social impact assessment in the design and implementation of PES projects.

We will be posting regular updates on the PRESA website as the event draws closer.

UPDATE – 22 August 2011: Presentations from the workshop are now online.

Please click here for presentations from the PES and REDD workshop.

Click here for presentations from the social impact assessment workshop.

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PRESA, 2011. This publication describes PRESA’s work in seven sites across Africa since 2008.