Payments for Ecosystem Services Flashcards
1980-2012: ≈154 Mha of forest converted
x77 area size of Wales
Biodiversity loss, habitat loss, ecological pressures
Cost of downlisting bird species 850 000 dollars per year
Total cost in low & lower-middle income countries to conserve species
$379 - 614 million annually. Can’t afford this, would need a x10 increase in budget
Can Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) fund protection of tropical forest and biodiversity?
Given scale of conservation losses, we need a big solution that can raise huge amounts of money to protect remote forests…
Protection competes with timber and oil palm industries
Net Present Value (NPV) of forest
Profits from timber extraction
Focus on Sabah, NE Borneo
Logging records from 300,000 ha of forest
Records include tree species and sizes
Profits from conversion to oil palm
What carbon price ($tCO2) must be paid under REDD+ to meet our NPV?
Any shortfall must be met from other sources (e.g. conservation NGOs)
What is an ecosystem service?
Ecosystem service is “the provision of a natural resource or process that is valued by humankind” (Edwards et al. 2014 Trends Ecol Evol)
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2003) defines four broad categories: Supporting services Provisioning services Regulating services Cultural services
Supporting services
Necessary for production of all other ecosystem services
Soil formation, photosynthesis, nutrient recycling = difficult to measure
Seed dispersal & pollination = easier to measure
Provisioning services
Products obtained from ecosystems
Food, water, timber, and fibre
Regulating services
Benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes
Climate, flood, disease regulation, and water purification
Cultural services
Non-material benefits
Aesthetic, recreational (e.g., angling & ecotourism), mental well-being
Valuing ecosystem services
Ecosystem services can be valued in monetary terms (Costanza et al. 1997 Nature)
Costanza et al. aimed to foster an understanding of the economic benefits of conservation
Their study has:
spurned an entire field
it is one of (if not the) most highly cited scientific paper (>5,000 times)
Three stages to valuation of ecosystem services
1) Economic framing
- ecosystems viewed as ‘capital’, ecosystem functions viewed as ‘services’
2) Monetization
- capital or services given exchange ($$) values
3) Commodification
- Inclusion of non-marketed services into pricing systems and markets
- Creation of institutional structures for sale and exchange (Gómez-Baggethun 2011 Prog Phys Geogr)
Value of tropical forest services
Strong spatial congruence with centres of population
Most ecosystem services schemes will not protect remote forests
Dangers of commodification?
Anthropocentric perspective that prioritises instrumental values to humans
Diminish intrinsic values = a key justification for conservation?
Imply substitutability: e.g., insectivorous birds can be replaced by pesticides
Value services close to people (far from wildlife)
“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: “What good is it?” (Leopold 1966, p. 190)
Controversy is over where to draw the line in what should (& shouldn’t) be commodified
REDD+
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
The ‘+’ was added to include roles of:
Biodiversity conservation
Sustainable forestry
Enhancements of forest carbon stocks
North-South flow of capital
UNFCCC predicts REDD+ payments could reach $30 billion per year
The REDD+ market
Carbon sold must be ‘Additional’:
Reduce background rate of carbon emission
Enhance rate of carbon sequestration
Global carbon market
Most purchasers want to pay cheapest price possible
