On April 22nd and 23rd, 2002, the CCICED Western China Forest Grasslands Task Force co-sponsored a workshop on payment schemes for environmental services… The workshop was prepared in response to findings of case studies of the Cropland Conversion and Natural Forest Protection Programs conducted by the Task Force in 2001. These studies identified a number of design and implementation issues that merited further attention, including the targeting and level of payments, monitoring and evaluation of impact, as well as the sustainability of financing. The studies also raised the question of the relationship between these programs and the pilot "Forest Ecological Compensation Fund" under implementation by the State Forestry Administration (SFA). The purposes then of the workshop were to: (1) inform the SFA leadership and related researchers of experiences of other country governments in designing and implementing public payment schemes; (2) introduce them to optional public and private approaches to achieve conservation goals, such as carbon trading, and to generate recommendations for improving public payment schemes in China.
