Towards Valuation of Ecosystem Services for Biodiversity Management in the Kangchenjunga Landscape

Humans benefit from biodiversity rich areas in many ways: aesthetically, culturally, via the provision of services such as climate regulation; regulation of floods, drought, land degradation; soil formation and nutrient cycling; and from the direct harvest of biodiversity for food, fuel, fodder, fibres, and pharmaceuticals. These services are crucial for sustainable economic, social, cultural and environmental development. As the world experiences growth in human population, the demand for these services, and the probability of negative impact on the services are likely to grow, affecting not just humans but all other species as well (MA 2005). The global conservation efforts vary from preservation of either select or threatened species to the protection of critical haitats (Brooks et al, 2006). However, biodiversity management efforts have somewhat overlooked the linkages among the ecosystem, and the provision of services from the biodiversity rich protected landscapes. Conventional conservation thus had difficulty considering degradation of ecosystem services and evaluating them in making biodversity management decisions.

The Kangchenjunga Landscape (KL hereafter) refers to the 14,432 sq.km of area shared by western Bhutan, Darjeeling and Sikkim of India and eastern Nepal. It is one of the important transboundary landscapes of the eastern Himalayas, which is exceptionally rich in biodiversity. It contains 14 protected areas and proposed 6 conservation corridors that could connect and provide habitat contiguity to the scattered protected areas. KL provides a variety of ecosystem services, which have strong implications on people’s livelihoods. The people living there as well as in the surrounding areas depend on these services for sustenance and well being. Unfortunately these ecosystem services are not recognized or valued properly. As a result, some of the valuable ecosystems are deteriorating and their capacities to generate goods and services are decreasing (Chettri et al. 2008). There has been little effort towards quantifying the services in economic terms and advocating the benefits from ecosystem serices. In view of that, ICIMOD is undertaking a study to estimate the economic value of some of the ecosystem services in the KL.

This paper outlines the process of valuation study being planned in the KL. It is an effort to integrate economics into biodiversity conservation, with the foresight that rationalising the services from protected areas and corridors in monetary terms could serve as a long erm incentive providing mechanism within the umbrella of the landscape approach to biodiversity conservation and management. The landscape approach, as advocated by the Convention on Biological Diversity considers long term sustenance and management of ecosystems of all kins, integrating people’s well being, especially those communities who depend on the biodiversity resources for their livelihoods.