Payment for Ecosystems Services: A Pathway for Environmental Conservation in Uganda

Ecosystem services are components of nature, directly enjoyed, consumed, or used to yield human well-being. They occur wherever plants, animals and people have interdependent relationships within the context of their physical environment. Payment for ecosystem services (PES) is a developing system which refers to payment for economic value of ecosystems. It is a scheme designed to provide incentives to individual landowners and local communities to conserve the environment. PES schemes seek to formulate a certain value to environmental services and establish appropriate pricing, institutional and redistribution systems that will lead to sustainable and socially optimal land use practices. These schemes tend to work best when the value of environmental services is high for beneficiaries and the cost of providing the services is low. The scheme provides opportunities for wildlife conservation partnerships around multiple zoning for food, medicines, firewood, handicrafts prototype carbon fund (PCF) operations for projects on emission reductions watershed management; ecotourism and supporting services especially soil formation and nutrient recycling. By making environmental conservation a livelihood opportunity, the scheme provides social and economic benefits as well as meeting environmental aims.There is an increasing interest in PES schemes because they reward individuals, communities and projects for conserving ecosystem services. Uganda is gifted by nature, its geographical location has endowed it with a range of geographical features which range from glacier topped mountains, tropical rain forests, and dry deciduous acacia bush lands, to vast lakes and rivers, wetlands as well as fertile agricultural landscapes. PES in Uganda is a relatively new practice and there is still much to learn about how the concepts and principles can be applied to benefit environmental conservation. There are pilot project schemes regarding wildlife conservation and forests partnerships, regulatory functions include PCF operations for projects on emission reductions and CDM and watershed management, cultural and touristic including ecotourism; and supporting services especially soil formation and nutrient recycling. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of the payment for ecosystems in environmental conservation in Uganda. The paper examines the PES schemes that are being implemented; the legal and institutional framework for their implementation, the benefits and challenges of payments for ecosystem services; and suggestions for implementing them