Understanding and Managing Watershed Services in Andean and Amazonian Catchments

安第斯国家在满足不同部门对水的需求，同时向低收入群体提供水和满足保护需要方面面临重大挑战。在秘鲁、厄瓜多尔、哥伦比亚和玻利维亚，对支持生态系统和人类的流域服务的认识、管理和评估一直很薄弱。然而，通过改善流域管理来确保满足这些需求的水供应已变得越来越重要，特别是在气候变化和农业综合企业和采矿业增长的背景下。环境服务付款计划已成为确保安第斯国家供水的一项流行的政策战略。它们往往得到支持，因为它们使生活在上游地区的低收入社区能够通过向下游用户（如供水公司和工业）“出售”健康的流域服务来增加收入。例如，在厄瓜多尔，水务公司向小农支付饮用水水源附近土地的费用，让他们不要使用化肥或农药，或者让他们的土地休耕，以免污染河流。PES方案基于关于生态系统和人类行为及其相互作用的重要假设。例如，人们普遍认为，防止上游的森林砍伐将保护下游的水流，许多PES方案都是基于这种关系。然而，这并不适用于所有情况，因为有时砍伐森林会增加水流量。安第斯山脉国家面临的另一个问题是，人们对它们的原生生态系统知之甚少，而且几乎没有可用的数据来提高我们对它们的了解。这些关于生态过程和人类活动之间关系的假设也常常被过度简化。这种做法是有问题的，因为它很少注意影响地方一级资源使用的更广泛的政治和经济因素。这往往导致低收入人群对环境退化负有责任，而基于这些不准确认识的政策（如在安第斯山脉的上游植树）可能破坏生态系统，危及穷人的生计。更重要的是，PES计划没有考虑农民和土著群体已经制定的规则和制度来管理他们的水源和环境。这些包括当地知识、社区组织形式、习俗和价值观，这些都是这些群体在日常生活中使用的。这些现有的制度和实践不能简单地抹去，因此在设计PES计划时考虑它们而不是试图推翻它们是很重要的。为了分析这些关于安第斯和亚马逊流域流域服务的关键假设，并能够评估PES计划在低收入农民和土著居民居住的地方的适用性，本项目的关键研究问题是：不同行为者（科学家、政策制定者、社区）如何理解和管理安第斯和亚马逊流域流域服务的生态和社会动态？通过提出这个问题，我们试图更好地理解流域过程如何在生态和社会动态共同塑造的景观中发挥作用；深入了解科学和地方对流域过程的理解如何影响传统管理和生态系统方案；并分析这些观点和做法如何有助于安第斯国家的公平流域管理。

Andean countries face major challenges in meeting demand for water among different sectors, while making water available for low-income groups and conservation needs. In Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia, the recognition, management and valuation of the watershed services that support ecosystems and people has been weak. Yet, assuring the supply of water for these demands by improving watershed management has become increasingly important, especially in the context of climate variability and the growth of agribusiness and mining. Payment for Environmental Services (PES) schemes have become a popular policy strategy for assuring the supply of water in Andean countries. They are often supported because they enable low-income communities living in upstream areas to increase their incomes by 'selling' healthy watershed services to downstream users, such as water utilities and industries. For example, in Ecuador, water utilities pay campesinos [peasant smallholders] with land near their drinking water sources to not use fertilizer or pesticide, or to leave their land fallow, so as not to pollute rivers. PES schemes are based on important assumptions about the behaviour of ecosystems and people, and their interactions. For example, it is widely thought that preventing deforestation upstream will protect water flows downstream, and many PES schemes are based on this relationship. However, this does not apply to all conditions, as sometimes deforestation can increase water flow. A further problem in Andean countries is that little is known about their native ecosystems, and there is very little data available to improve our understanding of them. These assumptions about the relationships between ecological processes and human activity are also often over-simplified. This type of approach is problematic because it pays little attention to wider political and economic factors that shape resource use at the local level. This often results in low-income people being held responsible for environmental degradation, and policies that are based on these inaccurate understandings (such as planting trees in headwaters in the high Andes) can damage ecosystems and jeopardise poor people's livelihoods. More importantly, PES schemes fail to consider the rules and institutions that campesino and indigenous groups already have in place to manage their water sources and environments. These comprise local knowledge, forms of community organisation, customs and values, that these groups use in their everyday lives. These existing institutions and practices cannot simply be erased, and so it is important to consider them when designing PES initiatives, rather than looking to override them. In order to analyse these key assumptions about watershed services in Andean and Amazonian catchments, and to be able to assess the appropriateness of PES schemes for places inhabited by low-income campesino and indigenous peoples, the key research question for this project is: How are the ecological and social dynamics of watershed services in Andean and Amazonian catchments understood and managed by different actors (scientists, policymakers, communities)? By asking this question, we seek to better understand how watershed processes function in landscapes that are shaped by both ecological and social dynamics; to get insights into the ways in which understandings of watershed processes - both scientific and local - influence traditional management and PES schemes; and to analyse how these perspectives and practices could contribute to equitable watershed management in Andean countries.