Valuing Environmental Benefit Streams in the Dryland Ecosystems of Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Policy-makers and practitioners often struggle or fail to define and quantify the economic impacts that can be achieved through ecologically sustainable investments in dryland ecosystems. This paper reviews the current state of the art in the characterization and valuation of environmental benefits in drought-prone areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Benefit streams from ecosystem services associated with the production of food, energy and water are characterized, as well as those from supporting and regulating hydrological systems. For each value type, valuation approaches and examples of their application in Sub-Saharan African contexts are presented. The review is drawn from a series of recent methodological discussions, working papers and field research reports focusing on the benefits of locally determined and ecosystem-based adaptations under dryland climate extremes. The focus is on the challenges faced by practitioners and researchers tasked with developing benefit-cost assessments for investments in the adaptive management and conservation of dryland ecosystems, particularly in marginalized dry and drought-prone areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Recommendations could also interest a wider global community of dryland researchers and development practitioners.

Environmental Services: A New Approach Toward Addressing Sustainable Development Goals in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Environmental resources can be defined as any properties or attributes of the physical environment, including its climate, that provide direct or indirect services of different types to local communities. Environmental resources can therefore be considered as related to, but broader than, ideas of ecosystem services (van Jaarsveld et al, 2005;King-Okumu, 2018). For this reason, the concept of environmental resources and the services that they provide (termed environmental services) is a more useful and integrated approach that is founded on ideas of Earth System Science that describe the interlinkage of changes that take place in the physical environment (Clifford and Richards, 2005).…”