9 June 2015: The African Development Bank (AfDB) has released the first report, titled ‘Payment for Environmental Services: A promising tool for natural resources management in Africa,’ of an AfDB-Climate Investment Funds (CIF) knowledge series that will gather and share initial lessons in implementing and financing green and inclusive growth projects in Africa.
During the launch event of the report, Kurt Lonsway, Manager of the Environment and Climate Change Division of the AfDB, stated that, while payments for environmental services (PES) is still in its infancy on the continent, “it is crucial to gather and share the lessons learned and build an agenda for PES development in Africa.” The report discusses some early AfDB experiences in promoting the use of PES as an implementation mechanism for carbon sequestration projects in the context of the Forest Investment Program and the Congo Basin Forest Fund.
Drawing on three East African case studies – the Trees for Global Benefit project in Uganda, the Land Leases Program in the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya, and Equitable Payments for Watershed Services in the East Usambara Mountains of Tanzania – the report stresses that PES must be adapted to the African context in order to mitigate the associated risks, especially those linked to increased conflict over natural resources as well as “asymmetric contracts resulting in unfair arrangements, elite capture, mismanagement and perverse incentives.”
The report notes that managing such risks will require enabling institutional frameworks to, inter alia: clarify land tenure arrangements; support the organizational capacities of local communities; and generate new public and private funding for conservation. In this context, the authors emphasize that it will take time to build understanding, awareness, trust and capacity among stakeholders during the development of such mechanisms.
Among their recommendations, the report’s authors highlight the need to encourage project developers to delegate PES activities to local communities wherever possible, noting it helps lower transaction costs and strengthens the sustainability of the mechanism. They also stress the need to ensure that PES schemes contribute to Africa’s sustainable development agenda by being “explicitly designed to bring benefits to the poor” and making the “necessary investments to make local livelihood systems compatible in the long term with conservation objectives.” [AfDB News Release] [Publication: Payment for Environment Services: A Promising Tool for Natural Resources Management in Africa]