Abstract
The EU Water Framework Directive aims to ensure restoration of Europe’s water bodies to “good ecological status” by 2027. Many Member States will struggle to meet this target, with around half of EU river catchments currently reporting below standard water quality. Diffuse pollution from agriculture represents a major pressure, affecting over 90% of river basins. Accumulating evidence shows that recent improvements to agricultural practices are benefiting water quality but in many cases will be insufficient to achieve WFD objectives. There is growing support for land use change to help bridge the gap, with a particular focus on targeted tree planting to intercept and reduce the delivery of diffuse pollutants to water. This form of integrated catchment management offers multiple benefits to society but a significant cost to landowners and managers. New economic instruments, in combination with spatial targeting, need to be developed to ensure cost effective solutions – including tree planting for water benefits - are realised. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are flexible, incentive-based mechanisms that could play an important role in promoting land use change to deliver water quality targets. The PESFOR-W COST Action will consolidate learning from existing woodlands for water PES schemes in Europe and help standardize approaches to evaluating the environmental effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of woodland measures. It will also create a European network through which PES schemes can be facilitated, extended and improved, for example by incorporating other ecosystem services linking with aims of the wider forests-carbon policy nexus.
Highlights
The PESFOR-W Action will synthesise current knowledge on these schemes and help develop standard approaches and tools to improve quantification of the ability and cost effectiveness of woodland planting to reduce a range of diffuse pollutants, as well as potential trade-offs for water quantity
PESFOR-W’s overall research aim is to combine practical, expert knowledge from the forestry, agriculture, water and financial sectors, to improve the design and environmental effectiveness of W-for-W Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), as a means of tackling the major problem of diffuse water pollution impacting on Europe and beyond
Working Group 4 (WG4)’s main aim is to communicate, disseminate and market project activities and results: by developing a European PES Case Study repository which is shared with practitioners, policy makers and stakeholders, to promote best practice; by publishing the ‘User Manual: Smarter Guidance on woodlands-for-water PES schemes’; and by an STSM exploring how to market PES schemes
Summary
The PESFOR-W Action will synthesise current knowledge on these schemes and help develop standard approaches and tools to improve quantification of the ability and cost effectiveness of woodland planting to reduce a range of diffuse pollutants, as well as potential trade-offs for water quantity.
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