Payments for Environmental Services (PES) and the Characteristics of Social Ecological Systems: the Case of Lake Naivasha Basin

Daniel Kyalo Willy, Arnim Kuhn and Karin Holm-Müller

No 162880, Discussion Papers from University of Bonn, Institute for Food and Resource Economics

Abstract: After a brief description of the ecological problems faced in the Lake Naivasha basin in Kenya, this paper describes shortcomings of existing environmental policy instruments employed by the Kenyan government. We argue that under certain conditions a bargaining process among commercial resource users at the lake and farmers at the upper catchments could enhance the robustness of this specific social ecological system (SES) by making use of Payments for Environmental Services (PES). The necessary conditions are: lake users’ perception of damages from permanent environmental problems like siltation and eutrophication that can be addressed by actions in the upper catchment, a minimal back up from the government that allows user groups to enforce their own rules, and a sufficient level of trust inside and between the different user groups. At the same time, the analysis identifies substantial obstacles for using PES to reduce water abstractions in the upper catchment and points out that the nature of the ecological problems and the societal situation at the lake interdependently determine the success probabilities of PES.

Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27
Date: 2012-07-13
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/162880/files/dispap12_05.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ubfred:162880

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.162880

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Bonn, Institute for Food and Resource Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().