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 pharmaceuticals Timber 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 -> % 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/population Convert 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 change Two Tiers of economic tools : Environmentally adjusted national accounts Value maps

Methodology -GIS Analysis, Ecosystem Services Models, Decision Support System User Needs Analysis

GIS- Ecosystem Value maps Sum the values of various services  1 km 2 Forest( Y$) = X$ Flood control+ X$ Soil conservation+ X$ Carbon storage Scientific Ecosystem Service Values Economic Value Unique Total economic value

‘Optimized’ Trade off decisions

Environmentally Adjusted National Accounts Work Pioneered by UN Statistics division System of Environmental and Economic Accounts 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 EANA Enables Monitoring and Evaluation Facilitates targeted spending Where are we losing environmental wealth (well being) How much environmental wealth is lost How 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

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