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

Main message: Working with local networks and community groups can help establish diverse and strong support for holistic watershed management. Rupa Lake Restoration and Fishery Cooperative has actively targeted multiple ecosystem service offerings, and a wide variety of service providers. The resulting services are used by watershed inhabitants and lake visitors alike. This case proves that often overlooked ecosystem services, if managed and marketed well, can enhance resilience and health of the ecosystem, and even produce more services that can be pivotal in sustainably managing the ecosystem. Case 4: Clean water and recreation – Rupa Lake watershed, Nepal

Setting: Rupa Lake is located approximately 16km from the touristic city of Pokhara, in the Lekhnath municipality of Kaski district at 600 metres above sea level. The watershed, extending over 30 km2 of steep slope comprising forest and arable land (Chaudhary et al., 2015), includes approximately 15,000 inhabitants and a total of 17 CFUGs (Kugel and Huseynli, 2013). Rupa Lake, its adjacent marshes area and the overall watershed are a hotspot for biodiversity, including

wetland plants, reptiles, indigenous fish, and more than 150 species of birds and ducks (Regmi et al., 2009; Kafle et al., 2008). The lake was traditionally an open-access resource used by only a small population of Jalahari (fisher folk) households. By the 1990s, sediment loads increased due to unregulated stone mining, road construction, overgrazing and deforestation resulting in landslides

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Incentives for Ecosystem Services (IES) in the Himalayas