Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA.
Enterprise and Logistics Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA.
Ecol Appl. 2023 Jun;33(4):e2829. doi: 10.1002/eap.2829. Epub 2023 Mar 13.
Conservation programs around the world aim to balance social equity, economic efficiency, and conservation outcomes. Tradeoffs among these three objectives necessarily exist but have been quantified in only a handful of systems. Here, we use a multi-objective mathematical optimization model in a large, water-limited river basin to quantify these tradeoffs in a freshwater payment for ecosystem services (PES) program aimed at establishing environmental flows (e-flows). Across a range of budgetary and future climate scenarios, we find that tradeoffs between social equity and conservation outcomes are small. We also show that payment schemes in which incentives are allocated to a single water use sector are much less cost-effective than schemes in which incentives are allocated among multiple sectors. Thus, allocating payments equally among agricultural, municipal, and industrial sectors can be both more equitable and more cost-effective. Overall, our results illustrate how some carefully designed conservation programs may be able to achieve a triple bottom line of social equity, economic efficiency, and conservation effectiveness.
世界各地的保护项目旨在平衡社会公平、经济效率和保护成果。这三个目标之间必然存在权衡，但只有少数几个系统对其进行了量化。在这里，我们在一个水资源有限的大型河流流域中使用多目标数学优化模型，量化了旨在建立环境流量（e-flow）的淡水生态系统服务支付（PES）计划中的这些权衡。在一系列预算和未来气候情景下，我们发现社会公平和保护成果之间的权衡很小。我们还表明，激励措施分配给单个用水部门的支付计划比激励措施在多个部门之间分配的计划的成本效益要低得多。因此，在农业、市政和工业部门之间平均分配付款既更加公平，也更具成本效益。总的来说，我们的结果说明了一些精心设计的保护项目如何能够实现社会公平、经济效率和保护效果的三重底线。
