An Integrated Perspective for Urban Water Management 45
Box 2.2
Watershed Management and Water Supply: Payment for Ecosystem Services in Heredia, Costa Rica The province of Heredia in Costa Rica is naturally endowed with rich water resources. The Virilla River Watershed has an approximate surface area of 10,000 hectares and approximately 34 percent of the region is covered by forest. Surface and groundwater sources are abundant in the catchment, with 18 wells and 14 natural springs supplying more than 15 million cubic meters per year to the province. Despite a lack of treatment infrastructure, the province of Heredia is the only one in Costa Rica to have 100 percent access to water supply for its 200,000 inhabitants. In 2000, the local water supply company (Empresa de Servicios Públicos de Heredia) designed a plan for payments for environmental services aimed at providing access to safe drinking water by protecting strategic forest areas for the recharge of surface and groundwater sources in the catchment. In this plan, forest conservation was seen as an investment and regulation against changes in land use patterns was approved to protect the sources of water supply for the province. The water company put in place new economic instruments in the form of added fees to the water bill (around 3 percent of the monthly water bill) so that end users could directly contribute to the protection of designated strategic water resource areas. The funds collected through this scheme are used to compensate landowners in the designated areas for the control of changes in land use. Over the last 10 years, the program has protected more than 1,100 hectares of forest within the catchment. Source: Barrantes and Gamez, 2007.
through the quality and quantity of the water discharged from sewers and treatment plants.
Water Should Be Managed across Institutions Institutionally, in most countries the political responsibility for water resource management is held by national governments, while local institutions or dedicated national supply companies are tasked with water supply and sanitation services. This distinction between national resource management and regional and local service delivery has brought a neces-