Valuing Cultural Services of the Kailash Sacred Landscape for Sustainable Management

Abstract

Hindu Kush Himalaya is home to many cultural and religious sites. The literature on the valuation of cultural sites in the mountain terrains is thin. Hence, their development and sustainability are often ignored. Using primary survey data from three different sites in the Kailash Sacred Landscape of India and Nepal, the cultural value of religious sites to the visitors and households living in the surrounding areas was estimated using a modified travel cost method. As visitors travel by foot and offer donations at the religious sites, the estimations account for these aspects in travel cost calculations. For the sample sites, the per year average use value of cultural services was estimated to be USD 2.9 million. Excluding the use value to the outside visitors, the annual estimated use value of cultural services to the approximately 200,000 households of the entire KSL area, which covers 31,252 km2, is over USD 22.6 million, which is over 7% and 15% of the per capita income of Indian and Nepali households, respectively, indicating the importance of the natural-cultural environments in rural livelihoods. The estimated values will help planners manage these cultural sites sustainably for improving the livelihoods of the people living in the area.

A Model for the Economic Evaluation of Cultural Ecosystem Services: The Recreational Hunting Function in the Agroforestry Territories of Tuscany (Italy)

“…Ungulate game hunting, migratory game hunting and sedentary game hunting (i.e., hares, pheasants and partridges), typical of the entire national territory, are practised in these places. It was decided to focus the investigation on a purely agroforest area to fill a gap in sectoral research, namely the fact that "the literature on the valuation of cultural ecosystem services is disproportionately located in urban areas" [11] with particular reference to the themes of urban parks [2,10,52,53]. This may be due to the fact that CESs in urban areas are characterised by a form of more direct experience and a more immediate visibility than those experienced in recreational practices in agroforestry contexts [11].…”

“…Additionally, CESs have also been defined as all spaces in the environment and all cultural practices that generate benefits for people [9]. Even though different names have been used to define CESs [10], most authors agree that they are an interdependent function between people and environment [11,12].…”

“…Instead, the economic evaluation methodology used in the present research was the travel-cost method (TCM). First of all, it is the most widely used method in the literature for the assessment of CESs in general [11,12,[36][37][38][39][40][41]. Moreover, there are many studies in the literature that use TCM to estimate the value of recreational activities such as hunting [37][38][39][40]42], in which travel, even of considerable length, is necessary to enjoy an activity practiced exclusively in rural areas far from urban contexts.…”

Economic Valuation of Earth’s Critical Zone: A Pilot Study of the Zhangxi Catchment, China

“…The economic valuation of Earth's critical zone services in the Zhangxi catchment was based on partial equilibrium theory, which determines the total economic value of Earth's critical zone as the sum of values for all identified critical zone services. A number of previously published studies have adopted this methodology to provide the economic value of ecosystem services derived from a specific ecosystem of particular interest [16,17]. We defined the economic valuation of Earth's critical zone services in the Zhangxi catchment through the following formula:…”

Biodiversity Conservation and Management in the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region: Are Transboundary Landscapes a Promising Solution?

“…al 2018), understanding cultural heritage(Pandey et al 2016), sustainable utilization of non-timber forest products(Uprety et al 2016), assessment of forest composition(Kunwar et al 2019), valuation of ecosystem services(Nepal et al 2017(Nepal et al , 2018, identification of invasive alien species(Thapa et al 2018), management of agrobiodiversity(Aryal et al 2017), incorporation of traditional agricultural and medicinal practices(Atreya et al 2017;Chaudhary et al 2017), and creation of a science-policy interface focusing on access and benefit sharing (UBD 2017).…”