Case Study: Biodiversity- and wildlifetourism-based Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) in Kenya

Wildlife and the wild habitats on which it depends make the Kenya rangelands a prime destination for tourism and recreation. The populations of large-mammal wildlife in Kenyan rangelands have, however, declined. Wildlife numbers decreased on average by 68% between 1977 and 20161 . Land-use change is thought to be a key driver of this process2 . This change affects two distinct ecosystem services: habitat services, and cultural and amenity services3. Outside protected areas, incentive mechanisms, including biodiversity and wildlife-tourism based Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) have been developed to encourage land users to voluntarily practice forms of land use that maintain the integrity of wildlife habitats, thereby enhancing populations of large mammals. A variety of PES programs are being implemented through various partnership and institutional models4,5 . In this chapter, we describe PES models that involve contracts between pastoral landholders and public organisations or commercial tourism companies and that involve direct cash payments to landholders in return for maintaining land uses that support wildlife conservation on their land

P.M Osano, 'Case Study: Biodiversity- and wildlifetourism-based Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) in Kenya', In: Namirembe S, Leimona B, van Noordwijk M, Minang P, eds. Co -investment in ecosystem services: global lessons from payment and incentive schemes, pp.1-7, 2017