Institutional durability of payments for watershed ecosystem services: Lessons from two case studies from Colombia and Germany

Payment for Watershed Ecosystem Services (PWES) have been widely implemented in both, developing and developed countries as an instrument to resolve upstream - downstream conflicts with effective results. Despite the growing interest in PWES only a few attempts have been made to assess the necessary conditions for designing and operating enduring schemes. This paper addresses the issue of PWES durability from an institutional perspective, drawing on research on the sustainability of common pool resource institutions. This framework is applicable for PWES analysis because of the difficulty of exclusion and rivalness characteristics of watershed ecosystems. Based on this framework, this paper presents an institutional analysis of two different PWES cases: the Bolo River water user association, Colombia; and the organic farming in the catchment area of Mangfalltal, Germany. The results from the analysis showed that despite the context differences, the cases presented more similarities than differences in all the set of conditions analysed, shedding light on relevant conditions for the design and operation of enduring PWES. In addition, the results suggest that lessons learned from common pool resources can be extended to the analysis of resource regimes other than common property, and emphasize the potential applicability of the framework used for assessing lessons about institutional durability from ongoing PWES.