ESTIMATION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: A CASE STUDY OF A COMMUNITY ALONG THE MEKONG

RIVER

 

Apisom Intralawan

Mae Fah Luang University, Chiang Rai, Thailand

OUTLINE

Background and Rationale Research Methodology Findings Conclusions

WHERE IS MEKONG RIVER BASIN?

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISITICS

Shared by 6 countries. (China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam)

Tremendous hydropower potential. Tropical, monsoon, great biodiversity. Flood pulse—avg. wet season discharge can be

up to fifty times greater than dry season (Jacob 1999).

SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS

Approximately 70 million (2-2.5% population growth rate— projected to 100-140 million in 2050)

Resource rich, but economically poor—46.7% (China), 32.5% (Thailand), 73.2% (Laos), 77.7%(Cambodia), 63.7% (Vietnam) live on less than US$ 2 a day. (UNDP 2005)

Fisher-farmers, subsistence life style.

WHERE IS PAK ING TAI COMMUNITY?

• 1.2 sq.km. degraded forest-swamp areas, plantations, and residential area.• 142 villagers, 40 households, rural farmer-fishers, subsistence life style. • Migrated from Laos and settled down during Indo-China colonization in the early 1900’s. • Multiple livelihood strategies necessary in a context of seasonal climate variations and changing dependence upon hydrological systems and the local landscape.

DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS In the past 30 years, Thai government has

adopted market liberalization and followed modernization development strategy.

More recently, at the Asian Development Bank’s suggestion, the Thai government has shown renewed interest in development, and has identified nine elements for the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) cooperation: transportation, energy, telecommunications, the environment, human resource development, tourism, trade, investment and agriculture (Thailand 2005)

CONCERNS

The proposed development schemes will greatly affect land use land cover (LULC) in the area.

Transparency, equity, sustainability issues. Lack of participation.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. What have been the consequences and tradeoffs of these changes?

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Remote sensing (How the land has changed overtime?)

Ecosystem Service Valuation (What are the tradeoff?)• Ecosystem services are the benefits that nature

provides to households, communities and economies (Costanza et al. 1997; Boyd and Banzhaf 2007)

• The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2003) classifies ecosystem services in to four functional grouping: 1) provisioning services, 2) regulating services, 3) cultural services, and 4) supporting services.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Value transfer applies economic value estimates from one location (a reference study site) to a similar site (a policy site) in another location.

Xie et al. (2003) extrapolated the equivalent weight factors of ecosystem services per hectare based on the Chinese context.

Since Thailand and China share similar economic situations, popular culture and attitudes toward environmental conservation, value transfer using coefficiencies based on the Chinese situation used is appropriate

Estimation of Ecosystem Service

TESV = ∑ (Ai x VCi),

 where TESV = Total Value of Ecosystem Services for each

biome

Ai = area of each land category in hectare

VCi = value efficiency in dollar per hectare per year

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

FINDINGS (LAND USE CHANGES)

FINDINGS LAND CLASSIFICATION STATISTICS

FINDINGS

FINDINGS (VALUE TRANSFER COEFFICIENT)

FINDINGS

ECOSYSTEM SERVICES PER BIOME PER YEAR

FINDINGS:

• The total ESV was $USD 102.48, $80.86, $80.88, and $71.07 million per year. • ESV from cropland has increased from $USD 11.2 million in 1977 to $USD 15.1 million per year in 2008.• The overall estimated changes in ESV shows a decline of $USD 31.41 million during the period of 1977 to 2008.

CONCLUSIONS

Had ecosystems been treated “the commons” and their benefits were paid by users, revenues generated from payment of ecosystem services could be used to either support related public services or eradicate poverty.

appropriate arrangement for payment for ecosystem service mechanism is needed.

Questions, Comments, Suggestions