Organizers: 1) The Regional Environmental Center for Central Asia (CAREC) ? leading organizer; 2) The World Agroforestry Centre ? ICRAF ? the key organizing partner.

Thematic partners: 1) Forest Trends; 2) CARE International; 3) McGill University, Canada

Donors: 1) Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) within the APFED Showcase Program; 2) Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway;

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) is increasingly recognized as a tool for sustainable management of natural resources. Although PES was initially intended to achieve conservation goals, the dependence of the majority of rural populations upon local ecosystems have brought about a consideration of PES being designed to be both pro-poor and community-based.This can be achieved by integrating pro-development objectives into thedesign of PES schemes .ICRAF and the consortium WWF/CARE International, for example, proposed an approach of ?pro-poor rewards for environmental services? and ?equitable payments for watershed services? ,with the objective to deliver sustainable natural resource management and improve livelihoods for the rural poor.



The use of PES to address both environmental improvement and poverty reduction objectives represents debatable issue for a wider reception of the PES approach.

Confirmed Speakers:
1. Talaibek Makeyev, Mariya Genina, Simon Charré, The Regional Environmental Center for Central Asia ? CAREC;
2. Meine van Noorwijk, Leimona Beria, The World Agroforestry Centre ? ICRAF;
3. Dosteus Lopa, CARE International Tanzania;
4. Nicolas Kosoy, McGill School of Environment & Department of Natural Resources Sciences, McGill University;
5. Carlos Munoz, Forest Trends.

Potential Speakers:
1. Roldan Muradian, Tilburg University;
2. Leo Peskett, Overseas Development Institute.

Thematic focus:
In order to compile the existing experience on the issue and to develop practical conclusions, this side event is proposed to establish aglobal knowledge networking of existing practitioners on PES and their contribution to poverty alleviation.

Existing experiences with PES schemes lead to certain recommendations for the design of PES projects to be successful in the context of pro-poor mechanism :

Access ?starting the formulating a PES design with the objective of targeting towards poor and marginalized ones;
Process? participation of multi-stakeholder in every stage of PES: scoping the ES problems, identifying partners, negotiating the contractual agreement, implementing and monitoring the schemes;
Decision making?balanced power and dialogue should be ensured among all stakeholders.
Outcomes ? benefits from PES should reach the poor stakeholder or at least do not make the worst off.

Side event objective: To build a global network to share the knowledge on PES in the context of poverty alleviation needs.

Potential contribution to UNCSD/Rio+20:
One of the central themes of Rio +20 is ?Green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication?. According to the Zero Draft of the Outcome Document of UNCSD 2012, poverty eradication, food security and sound water management are included in the list of the priority objectives of the green economy theme. The concept of PES can undoubtedly contribute to the achievement of those three targets. In addition, the above document states the importance to reward local communities for the services they provide through ecosystem protection, including mountain communities which are often poor and marginalized.Finally, PES is an instrument that often encourages business and industry to co-invest into the improvement of ecosystems and local population livelihoods, which is also stated as one of the expected outcomes of the Rio+20.

Target groups:
? International programs and networks on PES;
? Non-governmental organizations;
? Experts, researchers, practitioners and think tanks;
? Policy-makers;
? Business community.

Proposed Agenda:
The side-event is proposed to be conducted in the form of short presentations on the lessons learnt and an open-floor discussion on various approaches to PES design and implementation process.

The key issues that would be discussed include:

1) Form of pro-poor PES schemes:
? What are the opportunities, constraints, and risks that PES might bring to the poor?
? How can PES schemes contribute to the building of the financial, human, social/political, natural, and physical assets available to the poor?
? How should the interventions be designed to benefit the poor, the environment, and buyers of environmental services alike?
? What are the roles of the key stakeholders in addressing poverty through PES?

2) Cases of pro-poor PES projects worldwide (possibly covering the examples from South-East Asia, Central Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, the U.S.) and enabling policy and governance supporting such cases.