E STIMATION OF E COSYSTEM S ERVICES : A C ASE S TUDY OF A C OMMUNITY ALONG THE M EKONG R IVER Apisom Intralawan Mae Fah Luang University, Chiang Rai, Thailand

O UTLINE Background and Rationale Research Methodology Findings Conclusions

W HERE IS M EKONG R IVER B ASIN ?

P HYSICAL C HARACTERISITICS 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).

S OCIO - ECONOMIC C HARACTERISTICS Approximately 70 million (2-2.5% population growth rate— projected to 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.

W HERE IS P AK I NG T AI 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.

D EVELOPMENT P ROGRAMS 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)

C ONCERNS The proposed development schemes will greatly affect land use land cover (LULC) in the area. Transparency, equity, sustainability issues. Lack of participation. R ESEARCH Q UESTIONS 1. What have been the consequences and tradeoffs of these changes?

R ESEARCH M ETHODOLOGY 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.

R ESEARCH M ETHODOLOGY 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 = ∑ (A i x VC i ), where TESV = Total Value of Ecosystem Services for each biome A i = area of each land category in hectare VC i = value efficiency in dollar per hectare per year R ESEARCH M ETHODOLOGY

F INDINGS (L AND U SE C HANGES )

F INDINGS L AND C LASSIFICATION S TATISTICS

F INDINGS

F INDINGS (V ALUE T RANSFER C OEFFICIENT )

F INDINGS

E COSYSTEM S ERVICES PER BIOME PER YEAR

F INDINGS : The total ESV was $USD , $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 The overall estimated changes in ESV shows a decline of $USD million during the period of 1977 to 2008.

C ONCLUSIONS 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