The importance of forest protected areas to drinking water RunningPure A research report by the World Bank / WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use Running Pure Running Pure: The importance of forest protected areas to drinking water A research report for the World Bank / WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use Written and edited by Nigel Dudley and Sue Stolton With major research and contributions by Rachel Asante Owusu, Ahmet Birsel, David Cassells, José Courrau, Lawrence Hamilton, Sedat Kalem, Wang Luan Keng, Leonardo Lacerda, Yıldıray Lise, Stefano Pagiola, Sara Scherr and Claudio Sericchio Published August 2003 ISBN 2-88085-262-5 © World Bank/WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use Cover design HMD, UK 1 Running Pure Preface Three years ago, WWF and IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas organised a conference on management effectiveness of protected areas in Bangkok. One of its major conclusions was that, if protected areas are to be maintained in the long term, their essential roles and broader services, beyond biodiversity conservation, need to be emphasised. Many governments are finding it increasingly difficult to justify the maintenance of protected areas, if the wider benefits for local communities and the society at large cannot be demonstrated. This report represents an early attempt to develop wider arguments for protection, focusing on one narrow but important issue − the potential role of protected areas in helping to maintain water supply to major cities. It is a good time to look at the links between water and protected areas. The United Nations has proclaimed 2003 as the International Year of Freshwater, to help promote new and existing water resource initiatives. IUCN’s World Parks Congress (WPC) in September 2003 provides a once-in-a- decade global focus on protected areas and their importance. The role, definitions, boundaries and management of protected areas are receiving particular attention from governments and non- governmental organisations, corporate bodies and development agencies. Two key issues have been prominent in the discussions leading up to the WPC: the need to stress the arguments for protected areas away from a narrow focus on biodiversity into other values (the congress is named Benefits beyond Boundaries) and the importance of securing enough resources to manage protected areas effectively. The links between protected areas and drinking water thus touches some of the most central natural resource management issues in the world today. Water, as we shall show, provides a powerful argument for protection. Through payment for environmental services it can also help to defray the costs of managing protected areas if, as is increasingly the case, governments introduce charges for pure water coming from forests protected by the state. Dr Claude Martin Director General WWF International 2 Running Pure Contents Preface 2 Contents 3 Executive summary 4 Rationale for project 5 Part 1: The importance of forest protected areas to drinking water Introduction: what do city dwellers need? 7 Options for providing water 9 What forests can provide 11 Management options in watersheds 16 Social consequences 22 Economic consequences 24 Environmental consequences 26 Some preliminary conclusions 28 Part 2: The world’s biggest cities, drinking water and protected areas The study 29 The 105 cities 34 Part 3: A wider perspective on water and protection Hydrology overview 58 Economics overview 63 Social overview 70 Part 4: Country case studies Melbourne, Australia; Istanbul, Turkey; Singapore; New York, 74 United States of America; Caracas, Venezuela; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Part 5: Conclusions and policy recommendations Conclusions and policy recommendations 101 Acknowledgements 102 References and endnotes 103 3 Running Pure Executive summary Well managed natural forests provide benefits to urban populations in terms of high quality drinking water: Well managed natural forests almost always provide higher quality water, with less sediment and fewer pollutants, than water from other catchments Some natural forests (particularly tropical montane cloud forests and some older forests) also increase total water flow, although in other cases this is not true and under young forests and some exotic plantations net water flow can decrease Impacts of forests on security of supply or mitigating flooding are less certain although forests can reduce floods at a local headwater scale As a result of these various benefits, natural forests are being protected to maintain high quality water supplies to cities Protection within watersheds also provides benefits in terms of biodiversity conservation, recreational, social and economic values However, care is needed to ensure that the rural populations living in watersheds are not disadvantaged in the process of protection or management for water quality Maintaining high quality water supply is an additional argument for protection: Many important national parks and reserves also have value in protecting watersheds that provide drinking water to towns and cities Sometimes this is recognised and watershed protection was a major reason for establishing the protected area – here watershed protection has sometimes bought critical time for biodiversity, by protecting natural areas around cities that would otherwise have disappeared In other cases, the watershed values of protected areas have remained largely unrecognised and the downstream benefits are accidental Where forests or other natural vegetation have benefits for both biodiversity and water supply, arguments for protection are strengthened with a wider group of stakeholders In some cases, full protection may not be possible and here a range of other forest management options are also available including best practice management (for example through a forest management certification system) and restoration The watershed benefits of forest protected areas could help to pay for protection: The economic value of watersheds is almost always under-estimated or unrecognised It is possible to collect user fees from people and companies benefiting from drinking water to help pay for the catchment protection benefits provided by protected area management – although only in certain circumstances Payment for water services can also be one important way of helping negotiations with people living in or using watersheds to develop land-use mosaics that are conducive to maintaining high quality drinking water supplies Many of the world’s largest cities rely on drinking water from protected areas: Around a third (33 out of 105) of the world’s largest cities obtain a significant proportion of their drinking water directly from protected areas At least five other cities obtain water from sources that originate in distant watersheds that also include protected areas In addition, at least eight more obtain water from forests that are managed in a way that gives priority to their functions in providing water Several other cities are currently suffering problems in water supply because of problems in watersheds, or draw water from forests that are being considered for protection because of their values to water supply 4 Running Pure Rationale for the project Forests and freshwater systems interact in many different ways: through soil stability and sediment load; fisheries and fish hatching; the impacts of different tree species on acidification of water; mitigation of incidence and severity of flooding from headwater catchments; management of downstream water logging and salinity; influencing the availability of water for irrigation systems; maintaining the quality of water for industrial purposes; and so on. Issues relate to the presence of forests, forest type, management systems and choices relating to afforestation and reforestation. Many of these interactions are complex and their precise nature and significance remains the subject of debate between hydrologists, natural resource economists and ecologists. In the following report we focus on one specific interaction: the role of forests, and particularly protected forests, in maintaining quality of drinking water for large cities. There are many reasons for this focus: many city dwellers already face a crisis of water quality, and contaminated water spreads a vast and largely unnecessary burden in terms of short and long-term health impacts including infant mortality, with knock-on effects on ability to work, industrial productivity and on already over-stretched health services. The poorest members of society, unable to afford sterilised or bottled water, suffer the greatest impacts. Similar problems affect the rural poor as well of course, and sometimes these can be even more severe. However, in a rapidly urbanising world the scale of the problem facing cities is particularly acute1. The issue also seems one of particular relevance to the World Bank-WWF Alliance and its targets on increasing extent and effectiveness of forest protected areas and extent of well-managed forests outside protected areas*. Given that both organisations also have extensive freshwater programmes, and the World Bank has a large portfolio of projects looking specifically at drinking water, linking the forest targets with water catchments is a logical next step in developing cooperation between the two institutions. In addition, the third element in the WWF Forests for Life programme is forest landscape restoration, an issue currently not