This summary reports on a pilot Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) project funded by South West Water in the catchment of the River Fowey in Cornwall. The scheme looks to fund capital investments on farms that will serve to improve water quality in the River Fowey. This report follows and documents the process of designing and implementing the PES scheme as well as providing an evaluation of the successes and failures of that process in order to provide insights into issues that might arise in similar projects across the United Kingdom.
The key objectives of the Fowey PES pilot project were threefold:
- Design and implement a reverse auction for PES in the catchment;
- Compare that auction-based mechanism to an advisor-led mechanism implemented in other catchments; and
- Explore, in the context of the Fowey scheme, the issues that would arise in extending a PES mechanism so as to allow the participation of multiple purchasers.
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