About 70 participants gathered at the Pavillon de l'Eau in Paris on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 17th to attend the presentation of the case studies of the Interreg CPES project and discuss the innovative financial mechanism that are the payments for environmental services.
The event was coordinated by Sara Hernandez, responsible of "Policy Framework" for the CPES project, and benefited from the presence of the French and English partners, throught the lead partner, the University of Chichester, with Dave Cooper, Director of the Business School. The aim was to share the CPES project to the institutions, companies, public communities, agencies that think and tend towards PES. The seminar created a time for discussions with key stakeholders in France in a spirit of cooperation.
After the presentations of the 6 case studies and the concrete works of the project, 5 speakers of various organisations were invited to express their approaches to PES and dialogue with the room on the issues and questions that PES bring, in terms of objectives, evaluation, time, funding, sustainability ... This round table on "The challenges of the evaluation of the payment and the financial sustainability of the PES" brought together :
- Yann Kervinio, General Commissariat for Sustainable Development, Member of the EFESE project
- Dave Cooper, Chichester University, Interreg Project Leader
- Guillaume Pajot, Center for Research and Scientific Studies on Water in Brittany, Animator
- Hervé Sevenou, Alli'Hommes Association, President
- Marc Barre, CDC Biodiversity, Rurality and Biodiversity Expert
The very fruitful exchanges have brought out the following elements necessary to integrate in the future construction of the PES of the project:
- The incentive and remunerative nature of PES
- Evaluation of services
- Search for additional tools and approaches
- Interest and collective membership
- Administrative burden and control
The event ended with a press conference to share the project and the conclusions of the day with the project partners present, as well as the Brittany Chamber of Agriculture recalling the close link of the project with the agricultural world.
All elements of the seminar can be downloaded from the event page.