CGIAR SEMINAR SERIES
Payments for Ecosystem Services: Win-Win Solutions?
Co-organized by IFPRI, the CGIAR, and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Session at Tropentag 2023
SEP 21, 2023 - 7:45 TO 9:15AM EDT

Globally, five out of six farms are operated by smallholder farmers who produce around one-third of the world’s food. These farms provide a wide range of additional ecosystem services, such as carbon storage, pollination, and cultural and supporting services. However, smallholder households face continued and often growing challenges to making a living from their farms. They also tend to be the poorest and most food-insecure populations in low-and middle-income countries.

Evidence suggests that payments for ecosystem services can diversify smallholder earnings and incentivize more sustainable farming and land management practices. While a number of such smallholder-focused schemes have been implemented around the world, they have not gained enough traction to improve farm incomes or environmental outcomes.

This second seminar of the CGIAR Policy Seminar Series on Strengthening Food Systems examines past and current ecosystem service payment schemes targeted at smallholders, evaluates their effectiveness, and impacts, and explores how such schemes could be taken forward in order to help build greater resilience within food systems.

Welcome Remarks
Johan Swinnen, Managing Director, Systems Transformation, CGIAR; Director General, IFPRI

Payments for Ecosystem Services: What, Where & How?
Marcela Quintero, Associate Director General, Research Strategy, and Innovation for the Alliance of Bioversity and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT); Senior Director, Food Systems Transformation Science Group

BMZ Interest in Ecosystem Service Payments
Felicitas Röhrig, Senior Policy Officer, Sustainable agricultural supply chains, international agricultural policy, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)

Understanding Socio-Ecological Context when Designing PES and Carbon Market Interventions
Steven Lawry, Senior Associate, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Experiences from Linking Farmers with Carbon Markets in Africa
Amos Wekesa, Carbon Specialist, Global EverGreening Alliance (GEA)

The Promise of Commons as a Unique PES Scheme
Pranab Choudhury, Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), Founder, Centre for Land Governance

Moderator

Claudia Ringler, Director, Natural Resources and Resilience (NRR), IFPRI

More about this seminar: https://www.ifpri.org/event/payments-ecosystem-services-win-win-solutions
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LINKS
CGIAR Policy Seminar Series: Strengthening Food Systems For Increased Resilience To Future Shocks: https://www.ifpri.org/spotlight/cgiar-seminar-series-food-systems-resilience

Payments for Ecosystem Services: Win-Win Solutions?

Introductory Remarks by Geraldo B. Martha Jr., Coordinator, Embrapa, Labex-USA
 
Successful agricultural transformations around the world provide critical lessons and offer insights into opportunities for other countries seeking to take this step forward.

 
At this special event, we will learn about Brazil’s agricultural transformation from Embrapa’s President, Maurício Lopes. IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan will share insights from Asian countries, ERS Administrator Mary Bohman will review the experience of the United States, and Asia-Brazil Agro Alliance President Marcos Jank will discuss the role of the food industry in agricultural transformation.

IFPRI Special Event:  Transforming Agriculture - 5/15/2018 - GMartha

Speaker: Marcos Sawaya Jank, President, Asia-Brazil Agro Alliance and IFPRI Board member
 
Successful agricultural transformations around the world provide critical lessons and offer insights into opportunities for other countries seeking to take this step forward.
 
At this special event, we will learn about Brazil’s agricultural transformation from Embrapa’s President, Maurício Lopes. IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan will share insights from Asian countries, ERS Administrator Mary Bohman will review the experience of the United States, and Asia-Brazil Agro Alliance President Marcos Jank will discuss the role of the food industry in agricultural transformation.

IFPRI Special Event:  Transforming Agriculture - 5/15/2018  - M.Jank

What happens when a child is malnourished? Can such a child ever “catch up” later in life? Why does urbanization and obesity seem to go hand in hand—and what does this mean for food production? We’ll explore big picture food system questions today on the Leading Voices in Food with our guest Dr. Shenggen Fan.

The Leading Voices in Food

Shenggen Fan on Hunger, Climate Change and the Hope of Innovation

Speaker: William A. Masters, Professor, Tufts University

Interventions and innovation can lower the price of individual foods, but healthy eating depends on access to a mix of foods from diverse sources. How has the overall cost of meeting dietary needs changed over time worldwide, and in Africa and South Asia specifically? What determines the cost of a healthy diet? And how does affordability affect dietary intake and health status in different locales?

To answer these questions, Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA) (https://sites.tufts.edu/candasa) has been using new food price indexes that account for food substitutions to meet nutritional needs to evaluate food systems all over the world, including in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, and Tanzania.

This seminar will present the outcomes of CANDASA’s work to date, with a panel discussion featuring field researchers from each country to discuss the local and global implications of their results.

Research by Tufts and IFPRI on this topic is supported by UKAid and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

IFPRI Policy Seminar:  What is the Cost of a Healthy Diet? - 5/29/2019 - WMasters

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Established in 1975, IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 50 countries. It is a research center of CGIAR, a worldwide partnership engaged in agricultural research for development.

Payments for Ecosystem Services: Win-Win Solutions?

International Food Policy Research Institute

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