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Mr. Alexander Girvan University of the West Indies & The Cropper
Foundation
Overview Are forests really Valuable ?
If they are valuable how do we value them?
Using valuation to influence change
Forest Ecosystem services Provisoning
Food Medicine -25% of western pharmaceuticalsTimber
Regulating Water supply/purification- 2/3 T&T water supply Pollination Flood prevention Soil regulation Lungs of our Planet –Amazon 20% of worlds oxygen
Yet…..Global coverage of rainforest has dropped
from 14% to 6%
90% of West Africans costal Rainforest
88% of South Asia's rainforest
Projected -> 2030 10% intact forest 10% degraded and 80% lost
Why?-If nature is so valuable why is it disappearing
Value of nature not included in decisions
Pavdan Sukdev – “Economic Invisibility of nature”
Economics – Drives policy
Costs of Forest loss and degradation ignored
Valuation- A tool for making costs of Forest loss explicit Speak the language of Policymakers/populationConvert the wealth of biophysical knowledge on forest into
economic values Draw attention to the value of forest
Valuation methods Damage Cost avoided – Flood prevention
How much flood damage is avoided by maintaining forest?
Hedonic pricing – Clean air What is difference in property values due to
clean air supply?Production Function – Water supply
If we change volume supplied of water how do production costs change ?
Valuation methods Travel cost method – Ecotourism/Cultural
values How much do people pay to travel to enjoy free
ecotourism values? Contingent valuation – Cultural values
How much are you willing to pay to ensure this resource exist?
Replacement cost – Topsoil How much does it cost to purchase and replace
a tonne of topsoil?
ProEcoServ-Using valuation to Influence changeTwo Tiers of economic tools :
Environmentally adjusted national accounts
Value maps
GIS- Ecosystem Value maps Sum the values of various services
1 km2 Forest( Y$) = X$ Flood control+ X$ Soil conservation+ X$ Carbon storage
‘Optimized’ Trade off decisions
Environmentally Adjusted National Accounts
Environmentally Adjusted National Accounts • Work Pioneered by UN Statistics division
System of Environmental and Economic Accounts -2012
GDP and GNP are the most familiar and widely used Aggregates by policymakers
National accounts may be adjusted to reflect ; Delivery of Ecosystem Services Environmental Damages Expenditure on the Environment
Why EANAEnables Monitoring and Evaluation Facilitates targeted spending
Where are we losing environmental wealth (well being)
How much environmental wealth is lostHow best can we spend limited funds –
Environmental Improvement
Public Awareness
Tools for Communicating the value of Forests Estimates not pin-points
Trojan Horsing –what issues capture the minds of policymakers/population
Different tools for different audiences
Conclusions Ecosystems will recover
Global Local
Question: will we endure ?Large scale long term
solutions Medium Term ‘Smart’
solutions Low cost Facilitate development
by protecting ‘development assets’ aka Ecosystem services
•Masdar City - Abu Dahbi•$22bn USD•50,000 people
http://www.highsnobiety.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/earth-fly-over-time-lapse-video.jpg
