National policy dialogue on environmental services supply through regulation, voluntary agreements and markets

Reward for environmental service (RES) schemes cannot stand alone as an incentive-based mechanism. Enabling policy environments also need to exist to ensure that these schemes are operational, and that there are opportunities for RES to scale up and scale out and be sustainable. In addition, policy makers should be able to set policies at local, regional and national levels that spell out an optimal level of acceptable environmental quality standards. RUPES recognizes the concept of compensation and reward for environmental services (ES) as a kind of ‘traffic light’ system in which the relationship between regulations and voluntary actions differs according to the threshold determined by the regulation and level of environmental maintenance practiced. At the national level, there are three focal areas of RES policy advocacy to ensure that appropriate institutional and financing mechanisms are available for RES: (1) process and implementation of land rehabilitation; (2) allocation of rehabilitation funds; and (3) financing institutions for conservation. Finally, any RES projects should build a networking platform to share experiences and information and to improve coordination among stakeholders engaged in RES

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