Supporting country action on the CBD programme of work on protected areas

PoWPA Activity 3.1.2

Conduct national-level assessments of the contributions of protected areas, considering as appropriate environmental services, to the country's economy and culture, and to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals at the national level; and integrate the use of economic valuation and natural resource accounting tools into national planning processes in order to identify the hidden and non-hidden economic benefits provided by protected areas and who appropriates these benefits.

Although, protected areas have many economic and cultural values, these are often poorly understood and under-valued by markets, politicians and the general public. This under-valuation of biodiversity can result in a view that establishing protected areas incurs huge opportunity costs, particularly for developing countries. The PoWPA therefore recommends that Parties conduct national-level assessments of the “hidden and non-hidden economic benefits” of protected areas to allow these values to be more fully recognized and respected in planning and resource use decisions, while recognizing that some values are not easily or appropriately quantified, for example spiritual values. Even where the market economic values of protected areas can be credibly quantified, it is important to place such market values in their particular local context. Moreover, aggregate economic values, by themselves, can disguise serious inequities in the current or proposed future distribution of protected area costs and benefits. It is therefore always important—as Activity 3.1.2 stresses—to assess “who appropriates these benefits.” That a protected area provides valuable watershed services to downstream users, for example, is unlikely to be relevant for upstream communities unless a mechanism is put in place that transfers resources from the downstream users to the upstream users, who are asked to forgo opportunities that alternate uses of the protected watershed would provide for them.

Numerous methods have been employed to quantify the benefits of protected areas. Generally, those that are most easy to apply tend to focus on marketable benefits and require the least amount of data collection, but are prone to under-valuation. More complex methods that include valuation of non-marketable values tend to require more investment in data collection, usually rely on a number of assumptions that may be more or less valid, and may fall prey to the objections discussed above concerning economic valuation of non-material benefits. A guide to the different types of methodological approaches available is given in the CBD document Biodiversity Issues for Consideration in the Planning, Establishment and Management of Protected Area Sites and Networks (http://www.biodiv.org/doc/publications/cbd-ts-15.pdf). Further, there is a collection of biodiversity valuation tools at http://www.biodiv.org/incentives/tools.shtml as well as at http://www.biodiv.org/doc/publications/cbd-ts-28.pdf

Many countries carried out country wide or regional ecosystem valuation exercises. For example the study of the contribution of the Bulgaria Rhodope mountains ecosystems to the country’s wealth blended common international knowledge of valuation techniques with national statistical data. The study:

1. Used one of the commonly established ecosystem classifications (in that case the CORINE Landcover classification) to group all ecosystems into 32 classes (broadleaved forests, mixed forests, natural grasslands, transitional woodland shrubs, inland marshes, etc).
2. For each class, it described in detail four types of services – (1) provisioning, (2) regulation, (3) cultural services, and (4) supporting services.
3. A justified menu of tools (direct valuation, contingent valuation, choice modeling) was then used to monetize/valuate each ecosystem service in each class.
4. The exercise ended with the calculation of monetary contribution of the biodiversity of the Rhodope region, followed by double-checking and fine-tuning.

In another example, UNDP and the Samoan Government assessed the economic value of Samoa’s marine resources. The authorities asked WWF to assist with carrying out an economic valuation study to highlight how much the country’s biodiversity was worth in monetary terms – specifically within the forestry and marine sectors. This exercise was intended to raise awareness of the importance of wise management of the country’s scarce natural resources and to recommend different regulatory and/or economic mechanisms that could be introduced to maximize the returns from these values and ensure the sustainable use of resources.

The UNDP, the Samoan Government and the WWF funded a consultant from Universiti Putra Malaysia to estimate the economic value of Samoa’s marine and terrestrial resources, which was carried out in collaboration with WWF staff. The results had to be generated in less than three months on a tight budget, and therefore not all of the values of the environment could be estimated. The study focused on the larger ones, such as rents for timber and fisheries, the recreation values of environmental resources, the flood protection function of mangroves and carbon sequestration. Techniques used included surveys to determine how much people were willing to pay to enter recreation areas and simple modeling techniques to calculate appropriate rents for use of the country’s forests and fisheries. For some of the more complex values of nature, such as carbon sequestration properties of forests, estimates from other countries had to be used.

The study found that Samoa’s agriculture and fisheries sectors contributed 8.2% and 7.8% of GDP respectively, while tourism earnings were estimated to contribute 18.8% of GDP. Once the study was completed, a workshop for different government departments of Samoa was held to discuss the results and to advance possible policy implications. The study and subsequent workshop were successful in raising the awareness within government departments and civil society of the critical economic importance of the country’s scarce resources. The findings from the study were incorporated into the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, and actions have been identified over the short and long term to integrate them into national development planning. Key proposed interventions, most of which have been acted upon, included:

• The need to charge entrance fees to protected areas;
• Increasing fisheries charges to larger vessels to generate greater government revenues and decrease the incentives for over-exploitation of the fishery;
• The introduction of mechanisms to ensure that local landowners receive greater returns from forestry;
• The integration of economic valuation in key government decision-making processes; and
• The establishment of a National Trust Fund, funded in part by the new fees, and partly by international donors.

Following the study, the Samoan authorities hired a full-time environmental economist to carry out further valuations in additional areas. Interest in the valuation of natural resources within the Pacific Rim has increased, and has resulted in similar studies carried out in other Pacific Island nations.

This case study clearly showed the power of talking in terms of money. Once people saw the huge value of biodiversity in dollar terms they quickly understood its importance. By talking in economic language it was possible to engage ministries who traditionally did not work on environmental issues, for example the Finance Ministry. The involvement of external donors, in this case the UNDP, can be very important in ensuring the interest of the national government at an early stage. (For further information please contact Richard McNally, Head of Policy, WWF-Vietnam, richard@wwfvn.org.vn. The case-study can be found at: www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/econ_samoa.pdf)

The valuation exercises in themselves are an important first step for decision makers to realize the real value of biodiversity found within protected areas. In addition to the valuation exercise, Activity 3.1.2 encourages countries to undertake efforts to integrate the outcomes of the valuation exercise into national planning and national accounting. The project encourages governments to engage partnerships between ministries of environment and ministries of economy/statistics to undertake this effort. In addition to the case study from Samoa, publications with examples from projects showcasing integration of the valuation outcomes into planning can be found at http://www.biodiversityeconomics.org/library/basics/index.html.

The UN guidance for integrated environmental and economic national accounting (SEEA, http://unstats.un.org/unsd/envAccounting/seea2003.pdf) provides guidance on how biodiversity components can be integrated into basic or satellite accounts. The SEEA allows to integrate into the national accounting system primarily the qualitative, i.e. non-monetary valuation of biodiversity components.