Peru's National Mechanism for Retribution for Ecosystem Services (MERESE, Ley 30215)

Peru's Ley N° 30215 (Ley de Mecanismos de Retribución por Servicios Ecosistémicos, MERESE), enacted in 2014 and regulated by Decreto Supremo N° 009-2016-MINAM, created the country's national legal framework for ecosystem-service payment agreements between "contributors" (those who protect an ecosystem) and "retributors" (those who benefit from and pay for the service). The Ministerio del Ambiente (MINAM), through its Dirección General de Economía y Financiamiento Ambiental, sets policy and runs the national MERESE registry; for water specifically, Legislative Decree 1280 and SUNASS Resolución N° 039-2019-SUNASS let water utilities (EPS) reserve a share of tariff revenue for upstream watershed conservation, the MRSE Hídrico sub-mechanism.

By 2023, 45 of Peru's 50 water utilities had a MERESE Hídrico mechanism in place, though only 18 were actually disbursing conservation funds, reaching an estimated 8,224 people directly in basin communities in Huancavelica, Ilo, Cusco and Ayacucho. By October 2024, 32 utilities had begun implementation and over S/132 million had been raised nationally for watershed and ecosystem-recovery projects. At the utility level, Arequipa's SEDAPAR executed roughly USD 454,000 in 2022-23 to restore 243.9 hectares of bofedales (high-Andean wetlands), build 19 qochas (rainwater-harvesting ponds) and 38 km of irrigation canals, with USD 1.5 million more committed for 2024-26.

A ten-year retrospective published by the water fund Aquafondo in 2024 rated MERESE's overall impact only 5-7 out of 10, citing weak institutional capacity, slow deployment of raised funds, and risk of funding discontinuity, and calling for institutional reforms to accelerate implementation. Figures on how many mechanisms are actually registered and active vary across sources (12, 17, 32 and 45 all appear in different reports depending on year and whether a mechanism is merely registered or actually disbursing funds), and MINAM's own MERESE registry does not publish a consolidated national dashboard - a transparency gap even for a decade-old flagship law.

Read more: https://www.gob.pe/minam

Read the full analysis: https://www.gob.pe/minam