1. PESFOR-W: Improving the design and environmental effectiveness of woodlands for water Payments for Ecosystem Services
- Author
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Gregory Valatin, Jens Abildtrup, Cristian Accastello, Abdel Rahman Al-Tawaha, Maria-Beatrice Andreucci, Silvia Atanasova, Mersudin Avdibegović, Nikolina Baksic, Kazimierz Banasik, Jose Barquin, Johan Barstad, Viera Bastakova, Dzenan Becirovic, Santiago Begueria, Uldis Bethers, Maria Bihunova, Bosko Blagojevic, Matthias Bösch, Thomas Bournaris, Yiying Cao, Claudia Carvalho-Santos, Alexander Chikalanov, Maria Cunha e Sá, Krzysztof Czyżyk, Hamed Daly, Helen Davies, Antonio Del Campo, Rudolf de Groot, Rik De Vreese, Tomáš Dostál, Abdelmohssin El Mokaddem, Leena Finér, Rhys Evans, Julien Fiquepron, Magdalena Frac, Martyn Futter, Serge Garcia, Paola Gatto, Davide Geneletti, Veronika Gezik, Carlo Giupponi, María González-Sanchís, Fernando Gordillo, Elena Gorriz, Yulia Grigorova, Katrin Heinsoo, Eduard Hochbichler, Lars Högbom, Mike Image, Jette Jacobsen, Anže Japelj, Sreten Jelic, Jürgen Junk, Csaba Juhasz, Ifigenia Kagalou, Mary Kelly-Quinn, Anna Klamerus-Iwan, Tatiana Kluvankova, Roland Koeck, Iskra Konovska, Silvija Ostoic, Janez Krc, Vasyl Lavnyy, Alessandro Leonardi, Zane Libiete, Declan Little, Antonio Lo Porto, Athanasios Loukas, Mariyana Lyubenova, Bruno Maric, Javier Martínez-López, Inazio Martinez, Alexandru Maxim, Marek Metslaid, Alison Melvin, Mihai Costică, Ivan Mincev, Zymantas Morkvenas, Radovan Nevenic, Tom Nisbet, Daire O'hUallachain, Roland Olschewski, Johan Östberg, Karolina Oszust, Paola Ovando, Alessandro Paletto, Taras Parpan, Davide Pettenella, Špela Malovrh, Špela Planinšek, Radka Podlipná, Stjepan Posavec, Kristina Potočki, Irina Prokofieva, Paula Quinteiro, Laszlo Radocz, Ratko Ristic, Nicolas Robert, Benedetto Rugani, Jelena Sabanovic, Zuzana Sarvasova, Snezana Savoska, Patrick Schleppi, Gebhard Schueler, Margaret Shannon, Martyn Silgram, Bojan Srdjevic, Gavril Stefan, Aleksandar Stijovic, Niels Strange, Sirkka Tattari, Aco Teofilovski, Mette Termansen, Bo Thorsen, Attila Toth, Ivonne Trebs, Novica Tmušić, Lampros Vasiliades, Suzanne Vedel, Kateřina Ventrubová, Dijana Vuletic, Georg Winkel, Richard Yao, Sarah Young, Rasoul Yousefpour, Lyudmyla Zahvoyska, Daowei Zhang, Jianhua Zhou, and Eva Žižková
- Subjects
Payments for Ecosystem Services ,Woodlands ,Wat ,Science - 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.
- Published
- 2017
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