Valuing the Provisioning Services of Wetlands: Contrasting a Rural Wetland in Lesotho with a Peri-Urban Wetland in South Africa

Abstract

Given that few studies have valued the provisioning services of temperate southern African wetlands, research on this topic was undertaken in a remote rural wetland, Letseng-la-Letsie, in Lesotho and a peri-urban wetland in Mfuleni, Cape Town. The objectives were to quantify incomes from wetland resources, assess the relative dependency of communities on wetland provisioning services, and estimate the total provisioning value of the wetlands. Data were collected from informal interviews and structured household surveys. Despite the different settings, both wetlands were used mainly for grazing livestock. The estimated total value added during 2007 from grazing was U.S. $180,078 for Letseng-la-Letsie and U.S. $540,286 for Mfuleni. Letseng-la-Letsie and Mfuleni were also used for hunting, and Mfuleni was partially cultivated. Even though the local wetlands were easier to access from Mfuleni, only 13% of households used them, compared with 65% in Letseng-la-Letsie. However, the households around Letsengla-Letsie derived less of their income (6%) from the wetlands, compared with 82% in Mfuleni. This reflects the more specialized livelihood strategies in the urban compared with the rural setting, in which riskspreading household production strategies were more prevalent. The loss of the wetland in Letseng-la-Letsie would therefore potentially affect more people but have less of an effect on the finances of individual households than in Mfuleni. It is estimated that U.S. $220/ha and U.S.$1765/ha is derived annually from wetland provisioning services in Letseng-la-Letsie and Mfuleni, respectively. A standard protocol is needed for valuing wetlands in southern Africa.

Inequality and ecosystem services: The value and social distribution of Niger Delta wetland services

“…Wetland use activities provide a significant supplement to other sources of earnings, and often generate the only regular cash income for households. These results are consistent with other studies (Lannas and Turpie 2009;Rebelo et al 2010), but are considerably higher than that of some other African studies. For the Ga-Mampa wetland in South Africa 16% of the total value of the wetland was generated as cash income (Adekola et al 2012); 17% in the Barotse wetland, Zambia, 13% in the Chobe-Caprivi wetlands, and 15% in Malawi's Lower Shire wetlands (Turpie et al 1999).…”

“…Monetary values per unit area ($/ha/year) and per household ($/hh) in our study are generally higher than those reported in these studies (Table 2), which is likely due to the extent of the Niger Delta wetlands, and the level of dependence of the local community upon them compared to the other smaller wetlands. For instance only 13% of households use the Mfuleni wetlands and 65% in Letseng-la-Letsie (Lannas and Turpie 2009) compared with 100% of households in our study. Furthermore, the Niger Delta has one of the highest population densities in the world for an area of comparable size (Ericson et al 2006;Balouga 2009) However, the total value of $12,500/ha/year from our study is consistent with global estimates for different types of wetlands (tidal marsh, mangroves, swamps and floodplains) which ranges from $13,786 -$193,843/ha/year (Costanza et al 2014).…”

“…Our study underscores the importance of estimating the monetary value of wetland ecosystems and can be compared to values from similar studies of African wetlands (see Emerton et al (1999);Seyam et al (2001); Lannas and Turpie (2009);Turpie et al (1999); Rebelo et al (2010); Adekola et al (2012)). Monetary values per unit area ($/ha/year) and per household ($/hh) in our study are generally higher than those reported in these studies (Table 2), which is likely due to the extent of the Niger Delta wetlands, and the level of dependence of the local community upon them compared to the other smaller wetlands.…”

Significance of Urban Green and Blue Spaces: Identifying and Valuing Provisioning Ecosystem Services in Dhaka City

“…We identified rooftop gardens during our survey. Based on the survey data we extrapolated total gross value of rooftop provisioning services for all holdings in the study area following equation 1 from Lannas and Turpie (2009)…”

Rapid Assessment of Wetland Ecosystem Services (RAWES): An example from Colombo, Sri Lanka

“…A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that wetlands can deliver a great variety of benefits to human society (Ghermandi et al 2010). These benefits include, but are not limited to, managing flood risk (Mitsch and Day, 2006), decreasing peak air temperatures (Sun et al, 2012), improving water quality (Shutes, 2001;Dhote and Dixit 2009), protecting coastal communities from storms (Gedan et al 2011), supporting food production (Lannas and Turpie, 2009;Verhoeven and Setter, 2009), providing vital cultural resources (McGregor et al 2010) and offering locations for a variety of education and recreation opportunities (Cachelin et al 2009;Finlayson et al 2013).…”