Farmers’ Value Assessment of Sociocultural and Ecological Ecosystem Services in Agricultural Landscapes

Abstract

Biophysical and economic values of ecosystem services (ESs) are commonly used to define areas for land use and management planning. To date, there has been limited research conducted in Ethiopia regarding farmers' evaluations of ESs. This article addresses farmers' evaluations and perceptions of 16 ESs that are provided by five major land uses within two catchments, using a combined method of data generation and synthesis. Most farmers perceived the majority of land use/land cover (LUC) types as multifunctional; however, they showed distinctly diverse opinions of the benefits and services that the land uses provide. The farmers also distinguished pristine ESs as different importantance depending on their location in up-or downstream regions. Accordingly, shade and shelter values in the upstream region and fodder sources in the downstream regions were among the services perceived as the most important, followed by erosion control. Conversely, water treatment and tenure security were attributed poor value. Farmers' also identified various threats to the studied ESs that were believed to be the consequences of overpopulation coupled with climate change. Routine anthropogenic activities, woodlots extraction, agribusiness investment, and drought and rainfall variability appeared to be the main drivers of these threats. The farmers' perceptions recorded in this study generally parallel empirical research, wherein anthropogenic and environmental challenges affect the ecosystems. This general consensus represents an important basis for the establishment of collaborative land management activities.

Uncovering Ecosystem Services of Expropriated Land: The Case of Urban Expansion in Bahir Dar, Northwest Ethiopia

“…This may be because agroforestry is an ecosystem that makes possible to have trees and crops together which can help to diversify and increase revenue and production while protecting ES. This result is consistent with a study by Temesgen and Wu [48]. Considering individual ES, agroforestry has been recognized for very high usage of timber production, firewood production and climate regulations, while cropland has received very high usage of food (including crops, vegetables, livestock products) and fodder.…”

“…These include food, fodder, timber, firewood, fresh water, wild fruit, biomass, and compost. As compared to others, in aggregate terms, the highest perceived use value of ES were given to the provisioning services which is similar to the results of previous studies conducted on the participatory assessment of agricultural ES [48,66] and other studies [67,68]. Our results also show that there are some ES within regulating services category such as climate regulation, water regulation, erosion prevention and water purification and treatment that received high or very high perceived use values.…”

“…It is even worse in terms of ES assessment studies in relation to land expropriations for urban expansion. Likewise, in Ethiopia, there are few ES assessments [47][48][49], but their focus were on a particular land use such as forest, wetlands, etc. In addition, there is research conducted on land expropriation, compensation, etc., but not in relation to ES.…”

Evaluation of tropical coastal land cover and land use changes and their impacts on ecosystem service values

“…These changes have significantly affected almost all terrestrial biomes (Baumgartner and Cherlet 2016;Borrelli et al 2017;Zhou et al 2017). To underpin this, Baumgartner and Cherlet (2016), Scull et al (2017), Temesgen and Wei (2018) confirmed that these impacts are pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa. Besides, numerous anthropogenic disturbances have amplified the problem by affecting the ecosystem functions and services (Cork and Shelton 2000;FAO 2011;.…”

“…In addition, there is higher community dependence on bioenergy at the expense of forest disturbances and degradation. Likewise, bioenergy dependence is prominent along the coastal zone because different households cannot afford to use gas or electricity for domestic cooking, heating, and lighting (Temesgen and Wei 2018).…”