Using "accounting values" for ecosystem services to assess land use trade-offs associated with protected areas in China

Abstract

This thesis valued ecosystem services (ESs) to assess land use trade-offs (situations with both benefits and costs) associated with protected areas (PAs) in China to inform decision makers of land use management. Tourism may promote economic growth and interaction with nature but impact the environment negatively. Conventional environmental impact assessments (EIAs) assess direct impacts on separate environmental components, underestimating and poorly linking environmental costs with human wellbeing and financial costs. To overcome this shortcoming, this thesis complemented EIAs with ES valuation (using US$2010) and valued tourism impacts using basic benefit transfer that assumes a constant unit value/ha/yr of each ecosystem type. Tourism has reduced ESs' values in the Wulingyuan Scenic Area. Damage to vegetation and population decline of macaque monkeys reduced ES value by $1.2 and $728 million/yr, respectively, in the worst situations. Potential land encroachment would cost $0.5 million/yr permanently and $0.09 million/yr temporarily. Artificial reforestation and soil treatment would increase ES value by $1.8 and $0.25 million/yr, respectively, but could not offset the costs. Establishing PAs benefits people and the planet but has costs. The total value of the flows of a subset of ESs of terrestrial PAs covering 18% of China's land was estimated at $2.64 trillion/yr (US$2017). This is 15 and 14 times the basic costs for preventing current ESs and biodiversity from deteriorating and optimised costs for potentially improving ESs and biodiversity, respectively. China has committed to placing 25% of its lands within an 'eco-redline' (geographic space with strict protection), conserving ESs with a total value underestimate at $4.83 trillion/yr (US$2017). This is 20 and 18 times the basic and optimised costs, respectively. The ESs were valued using accounting measures that assume a linear relationship between ESs' biophysical supply and values. Another trade-off occurs between conservation and livelihoods. Payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes can compensate livelihoods impacted by conservation (e.g., restricted economic activities) but often neglects non-marketable cultural ESs (e.g., loss of interaction with nature). This thesis conducted conventional stated-preference and deliberative valuation on those ESs in the case of Fanjingshan. If the participants were to be local guides, they stated they would be willing to sacrifice some portion of salary for opportunities of working outdoors to interact with nature rather than being restricted to merely work indoors. The mean results were $2,482, $1,427, and $1,090 person/yr (US$2020), respectively, in three contexts: as individuals before deliberation; as individuals after deliberation; and as part of a social group after deliberation. Participants also stated their mean willingness-to-pay (WTP)/person/yr for a hypothetical entrance card to be $237 (pre-deliberation individual), $125 (post-deliberation individual), and $95 (social), respectively. Deliberation may shape more rational, considered, and converged WTP. Expressing social WTP is more likely to consider others' benefits (e.g., an ES's affordability to poor people) and reach a consensus than individual WTP. This thesis anticipates assessment of PAs' option and non-use values, more sophisticated methods improving value credibility, more cost-saving and engaged deliberation, and further research on quantifying the interaction between environmental components and ESs. Policy implications include: (1) joint evaluation based on both Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and ESs' values can lead to more sustainable decisions than GDP-oriented evaluation; (2) more comprehensive and informative tourism EIAs should integrate ES valuation; (3) PES schemes should integrate non-marketable cultural ESs to further balance livelihoods and conservation; and (4) PAs' coverage, effectiveness and connectivity should be improved. Show more