ENV 509 Ecosystem services Assignment
What are the main benefits of assigning a value to ecosystem services?
Ans: Ecosystem and human activity are mutually related to each other from the early human race and Ecosystem services (ES) is acting as a link between these two. Nowadays, it used as a common language for better understanding, planning and providing regulations for both natural scientist and social science specially economist (Chaikaew et al., 2017; Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 1981). Ecosystem Service Value (ESV) is a transdisciplinary approach to reduce gaps between scholars from different discipline as well as general people. In addition, better understanding of climate regulations including carbon management, role of biodiversity, controlling nutrient, increasing agro based productivity and other non-tradable goods (Chaikaew et al., 2017; Wei et al., 2018).
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Ecosystem is a non-tradable goods (de Groot et al., 2012) but its value only understands when it expressed in monetary unit. Monetary value ensures both policy makers and beneficiary from ecosystem services to raise awareness on degradation of ecosystem and provide effective measures to protect our ecosystem. Science-stakeholder partnership helps to reduce short term economic benefits for long term sustainability (Daily, 1997; Reyers et al., 2009).
What are the main disadvantages of assigning a value to ecosystem services?
Ans.: Although giving a ‘price tag’ helps to understand ecosystem services value for policy maker but sometimes it diverts the original intension of valuing ecosystem services. This trade off value minimise its true intension which is sustainability of our ecosystem (Hanley & Shogren, 2002; Randall, 2002). As a result, policy makers focus on its practical approach rather than its accuracy (Bao et al., 2007). Which means it transform from qualitative approach to quantitative (Martínez-Harms et al., 2012). Monetary value sometimes reflects human preferences rather than ecosystem itself (Brown, 1984), leading to poor decision making. Components in ecosystem acts independently, so valuation might be incomplete or overestimated for a single ecosystem. It is very hard to estimate all the values of ecosystem services.
What are the practical difficulties in establishing values of ecosystem services?
Ans.: Transformation of natural capital into monetary term is a complex process. Sometimes it is very hard to assign accurate value of ecosystem services due to lack of academic limitations. Traditional value is not comparable to those services. For instance, air quality or role of mangrove forest cannot transform into economic term (Costanza et al., 1997). In some cases, cultural value and/or aesthetic value of ES is yet to standardize and challenging to measure (Hernández-Morcill et al., 2013). That’s why ES sometimes limited to tourism.
In addition, by creating ‘market’ for ES sometimes leading to degradation of environment of that ecosystem (Vatn, 2010). For example, reserve forest or sanctuary are ‘crowded’ by people rather than preservation. Moreover, current financing method is dubious. There are uncertainties how to link valuation with outcome, at what condition financing should be applied and for how long it should continue (De Groot et al., 2010). Economic driver needs to be synchronized into institutional scale. So that, ecological and economic drivers can integrate. ENV 509 Ecosystem services Assignment
Finally, transdisciplinary knowledge gap often creates difficulties to share knowledge. Especially some technical term defines each discipline separately, which create a communication gap among experts.
References
Bao, Y., Wu, W., Wang, M., & Liu, W. (2007). Disadvantages and future research directions in valuation of ecosystem services in China. The International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 14(4), 372-381.
Braat, L. C., & De Groot, R. (2012). The ecosystem services agenda: bridging the worlds of natural science and economics, conservation and development, and public and private policy. Ecosystem Services, 1(1), 4-15.
Brown, T. C. 1984. The concept of value in resource allocation. Land Economics, 60(3), 231-246.
Chaikaew, P., Hodges, A. W., & Grunwald, S. (2017). Estimating the value of ecosystem services in a mixed-use watershed: A choice experiment approach. Ecosystem services, 23, 228-237.
Costanza, R., d’Arge, R., De Groot, R., Farber, S., Grasso, M., Hannon, B., … & Raskin, R. G. (1997). The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature, 387(6630), 253.
Daily, G. C. (1997). Introduction: what are ecosystem services. Nature’s services: Societal dependence on natural ecosystems, 1(1).
ENV 509 Ecosystem services Assignment
De Groot, R. S., Alkemade, R., Braat, L., Hein, L., & Willemen, L. (2010). Challenges in integrating the concept of ecosystem services and values in landscape planning, management and decision making. Ecological complexity, 7(3), 260-272.
De Groot, R., Brander, L., Van Der Ploeg, S., Costanza, R., Bernard, F., Braat, L., … & Hussain, S. (2012). Global estimates of the value of ecosystems and their services in monetary units. Ecosystem Services, 1(1), 50-61.
Ehrlich, P., & Ehrlich, A. (1981). Extinction: the causes and consequences of the disappearance of species.
Hanley, N., & Shogren, J. F. (2002). Awkward choices: Economics and nature conservation. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.
Hernández-Morcillo, M., Plieninger, T., & Bieling, C. (2013). An empirical review of cultural ecosystem service indicators. Ecological indicators, 29, 434-444.
Liu, S., Costanza, R., Farber, S., & Troy, A. (2010). Valuing ecosystem services. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1185(1), 54-78.
Martínez-Harms, María José, and Patricia Balvanera. “Methods for mapping ecosystem service supply: a review.” International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services & Management 8.1-2 (2012): 17-25.
Randall, A. (2002). Valuing the outputs of multifunctional agriculture. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 29(3), 289-307.
Reyers, B., O’Farrell, P. J., Cowling, R. M., Egoh, B. N., Le Maitre, D. C., & Vlok, J. H. J. (2009). Ecosystem Services, Land-Cover Change, and Stakeholders: Finding a Sustainable Foothold for a Semiarid Biodiversity Hotspot. Ecology and Society, 14(1). doi:10.5751/es-02867-140138
Vatn, A. (2010). An institutional analysis of payments for environmental services. Ecological economics, 69(6), 1245-1252.
Wei, F., Costanza, R., Dai, Q., Stoeckl, N., Gu, X., Farber, S., … & Yang, X. (2018). The value of ecosystem services from giant panda reserves. Current biology, 28(13), 2174-2180.
ENV 509 Ecosystem services Assignment