CPES

CPES partners work with a common goal: to improve water quality of lakes, rivers and groundwaters, by implementing sustainable payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes in six case-study catchments in Southern England and Northern France. The emphasis of the schemes will be to encourage farmers to adopt practices that are more sympathetic to catchment water quality.

Among the innovative financial mechanisms, payments for ecosystem services (PES) are voluntary approaches in which the beneficiaries of ecosystem services pay land managers to change practices. Previous projects have demonstrated the viability of PES to reduce diffuse pollution from agriculture but have not tested their environmental effectiveness and their financial sustainability at a larger scale. The ultimate goal of the CPES project is to demonstrate that PES is a costeffective tool for solving diffuse pollution problems. It also examines the consistency of PES schemes with the range of environmental policies and regulations

currently in place, as well as their legal viability and monitoring and control mechanisms.