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Biodiversity needs our attention because humans receive a wide range of direct and indirect benefits. Valuation of biodiversity is important to establish the importance of use and non-use values of biological resources and cost of ignoring them.Against this backdrop, the aim of this study is to capture the recreational value of the national park biodiversity while employing travel cost method. To this end, the value of the economic benefits generated by sustainable management of Dachigam National Park in Jammu and Kashmir (India) is estimated using data from 301 visitors from different parts of the country. Data are analysed using count data models, and results reveal that travel cost method is suitable for valuation of various use values generated by environmental resources such as national parks. Estimated results show that consumer surplus per visitor per visit in present study is equal to Rs. 12,470 (US $197), which translates into an annual monetary recreational value of about Rs. 247,614,828 (approximately US $3,930,395). Demand for tourism services is also found to be fairly insensitive to travel cost/price. Therefore, an increase in entry fee and redistribution of proceeds --This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

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Vietnam is a key player in India's Act East Policy and is distressed due to China's overarching position in the South China Sea. China's expanding infrastructural investments in India's periphery have led to a regional security dilemma in Indian Ocean Region. India is steered to pursue opportunities to counter China in the latter's periphery, to which Vietnam fits as an apt ally. Hence, this paper examines the heightened need for realigning India's Vietnam policy in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and explains how bilateral cooperation through sustainable trade, renewable energy production, and green investments can offer a "counter" to Chinese expansion in Indo-Pacific and its Belt and Road Initiative. This paper uses the theoretical framework of Balance of Power to enumerate how geostrategic policy decisions in India-Vietnam bilateral relations can create a "counterbalance" to the Chinese investments in India's neighborhood, especially in Pakistan.