PES in Bunyoro: Payments lead to Conservation-Research Findings show
Sometime ago, around 2008 in the heart of Bunyoro land, an idea was conceived. Does paying local communities really pay off to conserve forests? Different views were held by different people but ultimately, it needed a full scale study to show that Payments pay or they do not! This took the Global Environment Facility (GEF) together with United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to grant some money to Uganda's National Environment Management Authority(NEMA) .Actual implementation was sub-granted and implemented by The Chimpanzee Trust . The 4 year project (2010-2014) in Hoima and Kibaale has been able to generate key findings for policymakers and the common person. Based on the findings, the PES programme reduced self-reported forest-clearing behavior by private forest owners. Remote sensing analysis showed that there was an increase in forest cover caused by the programme. Also, private forest owners patrolled their land more and restricted others from accessing their land;