Valuing watershed services: concepts and empirics from southeast Asia

Abstract

Few empirical studies have rigorously analyzed the downstream economic benefits of watershed protection to generate economic values of watershed services. By developing a conceptual framework and using household level economic and environmental data to illustrate its empirical tractability, this paper addresses the neglected, but critical, question of the importance of watershed services to farming communities in southeast Asia. A case study from Flores, Indonesia provides evidence of a substantive, quantified economic benefit of watershed service based on a fixed-effects regression model of water collection costs. The paper also offers lessons for researchers at all stages of data collection and analysis and a research agenda for enhancing our toolkit for policy analysis. This discussion of conceptual, empirical and methodological issues collectively suggests that ecosystem valuation can provide critical input into the design and evaluation of conservation and development policies in the tropics.

Payments for environmental services in watersheds: Insights from a comparative study of three cases in Central America

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A review on trade-off analysis of ecosystem services for sustainable land-use management

“…Spatial trade-offs could be simply recognized as benefits here while cost there (Ring et al, 2010), it occurs spatially between different landscapes, ecosystems, communities and even countries. For example, the improvement in water productivity with more agricultural inputs in the upstream will consequentially impact the water quality regulation services and incur costs in the downstream (Pattanayak, 2004). Such trade-offs have been illustrated specifically in the agricultural production in the USA, where the highly intensive agriculture relied greatly on artificial fertilization and finally led to massive negative impacts on the fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico (Tilman et al, 2002;Cumming, 2005).…”

Aplicação do método Delphi na prática de serviços ambientais em mananciais

“…Para Pattanayak (2004), os serviços ambientais oferecidos por bacias hidrográficas podem ser mensurados por alterações positivas nas medidas de escoamento de superficial, vazão de cursos de água, erosão de solo e produção de sedimentos. Pagiola (2005) relata que PSA consiste na venda de serviços prestados pelas florestas (individualmente ou em conjunto).…”