Incentives for Ecosystem Services (IES) in the Himalayas: A ‘Cookbook’ for Emerging IES Practitioners in the Region

The scoping step is the time to look all around for potential opportunities, resources, partners and obstacles. Step 2. Scoping

This step must identify one or more ‘saleable’ ecosystem services, many ecosystem service attributes and the affected parties. For an ecosystem service to be ‘saleable’, the demand for it must be higher than its supply. Furthermore, a more specific and comprehensive estimation of what the system will look like once the IES is in place is needed. For example, if an IES for water supply is to be developed, an understanding of water supply and demand is essential. This could include the number of households consuming water from the possible schemes, their existing payment mechanism or tariff, and current and alternative sources of water.

This step also scopes out the possible management interventions and ecological responses that could occur. For example, if there are any alternative innovations to conserve water, increase water availability or more efficiently distribute water, or if there are any specific interventions that are needed upstream (outside the payment or incentive proposal), this should also be covered in the scoping phase. Since IES is designed to improve livelihoods, it is natural to focus on the ‘producers or managers’ of the ecosystem service. However, it is recommended that this phase focus more time and resources on

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Incentives for Ecosystem Services (IES) in the Himalayas