Participatory Economic Valuation

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Participatory Economic Valuation

• Conservation International Indonesia
• Raja Ampat Program
• ITMEMS, October 16-20, 2006

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Facts about Raja Ampat

• Raja Ampat Archipelago lie at the heart of the
  Coral Triangle off the westernmost point of
  mainland Papua
• High biodiversity of Marine Resources 1104
  species of fishes, 699 mollusk, 537 species of
  coral
• New established Regency in 2003 ? Revenue ?
  Economic Development Option
• Four major development options Fisheries,
  Tourism, Forestry, Mining

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Coral Triangle Eco-region
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Economic Valuation Study Initiatives

• Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) initiative of
  Conservation International Indonesia, The Nature
  Conservancy, The World Wide Fund for Nature
  Indonesia
• Participatory Approach Valuation
• a. Partnership with local academic institution
  State University of Papua (UNIPA)
• b. Verification of final result to local experts
  and stakeholders in Technical Focus Group Meeting
  (TFGM)

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Why Economic Valuation?

• Research Objectives
• 1) Assess Total Economic Value (TEV) of
  ecosystem goods and services
• 2) Assess current or potential environmental
  impacts or damages that can impose significant
  cost to the region caused by one economic
  activity/ sector to the others
• 3) Assess returns from conservation and
  management options with extended Cost Benefit
  Analysis (CBA) and provide recommendations to
  local decision makers

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Methods and Process

• A participatory approach has been chosen to carry
  out the valuation, where the study
• 1) Utilizes the data and knowledge of local
  decision-makers and stakeholders
• 2) Involvement and feedback from partners and
  counterparts to develop and improve the resource
  valuation analyses and approach
• 3) Raises awareness among all valuation
  participants. The outcome of this participatory
  approach will be more acceptable to the local
  government and community of Raja Ampat.

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Achievements and shortcomings

• Market based data collection is relatively
  attainable compared to the non production use
  (tourist visitor numbers and expenditure) and the
  willingness to pay survey. The data of tourism is
  not properly documented? Tourism Regulation is
  not well established. The concept of valuing the
  services provided by the ecosystem is alien to
  the local villagers.
• Major achievement from TFGM is the utilization
  of the final result of this study for Raja
  Ampats spatial planning that Development Agency
  (Bapeda) of Raja Ampat has committed to.

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Challenges and Solutions

• Few available existing data on natural resource
  values in Raja Ampat. Participatory Rural
  Appraisal (PRA) mapping and Atlas of Natural
  Resources in Raja Ampat were performed to deal
  with the data deficiency.
• The valuation concept of environmental services
  was virtually new to the local researchers.
  Intensive feedback and inputs were given to UNIPA
  for the environmental services and tourism
  sectors. A combination of approaches from UNIPA
  and CI was then developed.

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Challenges and Solutions (2)

• Time and budget constraint to estimate the value
  of several ecosystem goods and services.
  Application of benefit transfer method,
  principally derived from Costanza et al. 1997,
  Environmental Valuation Reference InventoryTM
  (EVRITM) website.
• Immediate result is needed to be explicitly
  adopted in the Regency regulation and short term
  (1 year) and long term (5 years) strategic
  planning. The local government has been
  continuously informed about the newest progress
  of this valuation and coming extended cost
  benefit analysis of development option scenarios
  to identify suitable economic development options
  for Raja Ampat community.

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Future Improvements

• Participatory Approach ? involving local
  counterpart credible to local government ?
  Represents neutral opinions in this valuation.
• 1. Preliminary discussion between CI and local
  counterpart (UNIPA) to identify the valuation
  methods by anticipating the factual needs from
  the field and the feasibility to apply the
  methods
• 2. Pretests should be conducted to a sample of
  respondents ? time and cost savings

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Recommendation

• Initial socialization should be intensively
  performed, to familiarize the concept of economic
  valuation, performing pretests to a sample of
  respondents
• Intensive initial discussions to the relatively
  new approaches (Contingent valuation and travel
  cost methods) should be performed
• The benefit transfer approach could be used to
  complement the missing values from the other
  approaches and is preferable to yield significant
  time and cost savings. However, it should be
  noted to be very cautious in using results from
  benefit transfer methods.

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Thank you Anita Gracia, 2006