Water is one of the scarcest and most demanded forms of natural capital on the planet. As the ecosystem service approach has entered the arena of water supply, many communities and stakeholder groups have become concerned that this approach will only lead to the privatization of nature and the creation of water markets. Both of these are seen as negative changes because they can restrict access for some people, often the people seen as needing free access to water resources the most. We will present three cases in which water-related ecosystem services have been considered in policy decisions without using water rights, markets or monetization approaches. First, several water funds in Latin America are using biophysical, social and implementation cost (but not market value) information to determine where and how to invest in private watershed management to improve public water supply and quality without changing water access or fees. Second, Colombia’s national government is considering including biophysical estimates of ecosystem service impacts in their permitting process and mitigation requirements. If this approach is accepted, it will actually improve the likelihood that fewer people will receive reductions in water supply or quality as development projects, such as mining or oil and gas expansion, move forward. Finally, local and regional government agencies in Indonesia are using biophysical estimates of multiple ecosystem service change to inform their landuse planning processes and to target projects such as payments for watershed services. These examples reveal the need for, and interest in using non-market and non-monetary approaches to the evaluation of water-related benefits in creating policy change at many scales and in countries around the globe.
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