Mr. Alexander Girvan University of the West Indies & The Cropper

Foundation

Overview Are forests really Valuable ?

If they are valuable how do we value them?

Using valuation to influence change

Forest Ecosystem services Provisoning

Food Medicine -25% of western pharmaceuticalsTimber

Regulating Water supply/purification- 2/3 T&T water supply Pollination Flood prevention Soil regulation Lungs of our Planet –Amazon 20% of worlds oxygen

Yet…..Global coverage of rainforest has dropped

from 14% to 6%

90% of West Africans costal Rainforest

88% of South Asia's rainforest

Projected -> 2030 10% intact forest 10% degraded and 80% lost

Why?-If nature is so valuable why is it disappearing

Value of nature not included in decisions

Pavdan Sukdev – “Economic Invisibility of nature”

Economics – Drives policy

Costs of Forest loss and degradation ignored

Valuation- A tool for making costs of Forest loss explicit Speak the language of Policymakers/populationConvert the wealth of biophysical knowledge on forest into

economic values Draw attention to the value of forest

Valuation methods Damage Cost avoided – Flood prevention

How much flood damage is avoided by maintaining forest?

Hedonic pricing – Clean air What is difference in property values due to

clean air supply?Production Function – Water supply

If we change volume supplied of water how do production costs change ?

Valuation methods Travel cost method – Ecotourism/Cultural

values How much do people pay to travel to enjoy free

ecotourism values? Contingent valuation – Cultural values

How much are you willing to pay to ensure this resource exist?

Replacement cost – Topsoil How much does it cost to purchase and replace

a tonne of topsoil?

ProEcoServ-Using valuation to Influence changeTwo Tiers of economic tools :

Environmentally adjusted national accounts

Value maps

GIS- Ecosystem Value maps Sum the values of various services

1 km2 Forest( Y$) = X$ Flood control+ X$ Soil conservation+ X$ Carbon storage

‘Optimized’ Trade off decisions

Environmentally Adjusted National Accounts

Environmentally Adjusted National Accounts • Work Pioneered by UN Statistics division

System of Environmental and Economic Accounts -2012

GDP and GNP are the most familiar and widely used Aggregates by policymakers

National accounts may be adjusted to reflect ; Delivery of Ecosystem Services Environmental Damages Expenditure on the Environment

Why EANAEnables Monitoring and Evaluation Facilitates targeted spending

Where are we losing environmental wealth (well being)

How much environmental wealth is lostHow best can we spend limited funds –

Environmental Improvement

Public Awareness

Tools for Communicating the value of Forests Estimates not pin-points

Trojan Horsing –what issues capture the minds of policymakers/population

Different tools for different audiences

Conclusions Ecosystems will recover

Global Local

Question: will we endure ?Large scale long term

solutions Medium Term ‘Smart’

solutions Low cost Facilitate development

by protecting ‘development assets’ aka Ecosystem services

•Masdar City - Abu Dahbi•$22bn USD•50,000 people

http://www.highsnobiety.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/earth-fly-over-time-lapse-video.jpg

agirvan@thecropperfoundation.orgalexander.girvan@gmail.comhttp://www.proecoserv.org/

Twitter @EnviroEcon