Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and Environmental Economics

Objectives

• Enhance the capacities of CT6 to develop and implement PES
  This will involve piloting of PES schemes in the CT region by providing basic knowledge on valuation concepts, valuation techniques, and procedures in implementing a PES scheme. This work on environmental economics and payment for ecosystem services will also involve consolidating existing knowledge on resource valuation and assisting countries in estimating the values of their coastal resources.
• Enhance policy-making through the introduction of economic evaluation concepts

Principles

A PES deal seeks to sustain desired ecosystem services by ensuring best management practices by the resource user and that payment of an incremental fee encourages these best practices. PES creates a market for an ecosystem service where there was none existing. It identifies a seller and a buyer who will voluntarily agree to "pay" a certain fee to enjoy a defined level of ecosystem service. The other party will accept the "fee" in exchange of maintaining that particular ecosystem service.

Activities

1. Compilation of partial list of PES and valuation experts in the CTI
2. Compilation of useful links on PES and coastal resources valuation and selected readings.
3. Economics of Fisheries and Aquaculture in the Coral Triangle (EFACT) Study
   

• Study Team. Ms. Annabelle C. Trinidad, Study Team Leader/EEPES Specialist; Ms. Lydia Napitupulu, Junior Resource Economist (JRE), Mr. Rollan Geronimo, Research Assistant for Fisheries and Aquaculture Economics (RAFE), and Mr. Reniel Cabral, Data Encoder (DE).
• Outline. Click here to download the guide questions per section of the EFACT study.
• Progress.

1. coordination with development partners. The ADB KM and the Australian Government strengthened their collaboration by jointly preparing a learning note entitled, “The Blue Economies of the CTI: Gearing for Rio+20.” It was disseminated during the Seventh Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) held in Jakarta in October 2011 to raise awareness on advocacy platforms to be tackled at the Rio+20 Conference.
2. Data mining. The study team has been collecting and analyzing data at three levels:

• regional data collection, which is sourced from published materials and mainly done through internet searches by the EFACT core study team;
• in-country data collection involving the knowledge integrators (KIs), which covers data mining from existing country statistics, gray literature, and technical reports that are not usually uploaded on the internet; and
• primary data collection involving the KIs and local partner institutions.
• Solomon Islands -The coral reef export survey was conducted between October to December 2011
• Papua New Guinea - Leitongo Village and Hagalu Village for the Central Province and Saeraghi Village and Paelonge Village in the Western Province were chosen based on the results of the planning meeting with the PNG National Coordination Committee (NCC) and a separate meeting involving WorldFish and the ADB KM Project in August 2011. The communities in the Central Province are representative of areas that have a known history of coral extraction for the aquarium, curio, and betel nut trade, while those in the Western Province do not (i.e., control site), although there is some betel nut lime extraction.
  
  The KI conducted community surveys to document the value of coral reef ecosystem goods and services and to document willingness to change from coral wild harvest techniques. Field activities in the Central Province were held from 3-11 November 2011, while field activities in the Western Province were undertaken from 14-22 November 2011

Related Links

• Learning Note - Basics of PES in the in Coral Triangle

• News - E-FACT Study can help show the importance of CT6 to global fish supply
• New - High interest in PES evident during Needs Assessment Workshop in Papua New Guinea

Contact

Email Abbie Trinidad, Environmental Economics and PES Specialist and Team Leader