New conceptual framework for cost-effectiveness analysis of woodlands for water · Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES).

Although improvements to agricultural practices could help reduce pollutants, this alone is considered not sufficient to achieve good water quality status. There is growing support to forest planting as one approach to foster water quality. However, implementing such approach involves economic costs for landowners. Hence, providing sufficient incentives for landowners could aid in adjusting land-use and restoring water quality.

PES are mechanisms that can be used for this purpose. However, analysis of their cost-effectiveness is troublesome due to insufficient quantitative data to obtain robust evidence. Also, demonstrating their environmental effectiveness is troublesome because quantifying environmental and economic performance is challenging. On one hand, there are hydrological processes operating at multiple scales in forest and agroforestry systems. On the other hand, there are multiple ecosystem services involved along with their potential associated trade-offs. This article sets out a conceptual framework on the standardization of approaches for the cost-effectiveness analysis of forests for water PES mechanisms, which can even be applied under different generalizable contextual settings worldwide.

• Valatin G, Ovando P, Abildtrup J, Accastello C, Andreucci M-A, Chikalanov A, El Mokaddem A, Garcia S, Gonzalez-Sanchis M, Gordillo F, Kayacan B, Little D, Lyubenova M, Nisbet TR, Paletto A, Petucco C, Termansen M, Vasylyshyn K, Vedel SE, Yousefpour R (2022) Approaches to cost-effectiveness of payments for tree planting and forest management for water quality services. Ecosyst Services 53:101373, DOI:10.1016/j.ecoser.2021.101373
• Project:
  Payments for Environmental Services (PES) - LaForeT