|
|
Introducing the new GPS Seminar Series
|
Knowledge sharing and learning are a key aspect GPS. As part of the Program’s efforts to draw attention to the need for—and benefits of—integrating natural capital and ecosystem services valuation into decision-making, a new Seminar Series will use real-life case-studies to highlight ongoing work and lessons learned from around the world. |
|
|
|
Harnessing Tourism to Enhance the Value of Biodiversity and Promote Conservation in Nepal
|
Like many places around the world, Nepal’s protected areas are struggling to address the steep declines in biodiversity and the need for a green COVID-19 recovery. |
|
 |
A new GPS-supported report released by the World Bank is providing some answers. Economic Impacts of Protected Area Tourism on Local Communities in Nepal estimates the direct and indirect benefits of protected area tourism to the local economies, thereby making the case that the economic benefits of protected areas far outweigh the benefits reaped by protected area management alone. Promoting sustainable and inclusive tourism in Nepal’s protected areas is foundational for the country’s Green, Resilient, and Inclusive Development (GRID).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Indonesia is home to an estimated 20% of the world’s mangroves, the largest extent of mangrove ecosystems in the world. On June 27th, GPS co-sponsored an event in Jakarta to discuss the essential role of mangroves in providing valuable ecosystem services and sustaining Indonesia's livelihoods, economies and biodiversity.
|
|
|
|
While gross domestic product indicates how much monetary income or output a country creates in a year, wealth accounting indicates the value of the underlying national assets and therefore the prospects for maintaining and increasing that income over the long term. the GPS-supported publication The Changing Wealth of Nations (CWON) 2021 provides an updated wealth accounts database and rich analysis spanning 146 countries annually from 1995 to 2018.
|
|
|
On June 20th, the Development Research Center of the State Council and World Bank, with the Green China Research Flagship, hosted a CWON-focused seminar to introduce the report's wide set of assets, including human capital broken down by gender and natural capital assets spanning minerals, fossil fuels, forests, mangroves, and marine fisheries. The session presented an introduction to how to use the CWON database and explained accounting methodologies used to derive key wealth measures. It also provided practical advice for interpreting wealth accounts with national-level examples and country comparisons from China. |
|
|
|
|
|
Nepal is endowed with a wealth of natural resources including snow-capped mountains, abundant rivers, sub-tropical forests, significant biodiversity and wildlife, and pristine, diverse landscapes. Over 45% of tourists to Nepal visit protected areas, which play a significant role in driving tourism, and contribute to the country’s economy. Visitors, however, predominantly visit only four parks, and thus, there is much potential for protected areas in Nepal to further contribute to development goals while maintaining the country’s rich biodiversity asset base. This study strengthens the economic case for the government of Nepal to promote sustainable and inclusive tourism in its protected areas by estimating the direct and indirect benefits to local economies from protected area tourism. |
|
|
|
The Economics of Large-scale Mangrove Conservation and Restoration in Indonesia |
The key policy messages stemming from the study’s findings are that an efficient mix of mangrove restoration and conservation activities is needed, that conservation of existing mangroves should be prioritized, and that conservation net benefits are generally higher than restoration net benefits.
|
|
Morocco’s agricultural sector is critical for the country’s economy, food security, and livelihoods, supporting 40% of jobs and approximately 15% of GDP. While agriculture’s significance is widely acknowledged in macro-economic policy, less well-recognized is the sector's primary production reliance on renewable natural resources, most notably, land, freshwater, and wild fish stocks.
WAVES Plus work supports the development of much needed natural capital accounts for crop, livestock, and fish products. Physical flow accounts documenting production, consumption and trade are summarized in Supply-Use Tables, and monetary flow accounts look at primary and secondary crop products and primary fish products.
Accounts and modeling for agriculture are being taken up by the World Bank’s Agriculture and Food Global Practice, while the Environment, Natural Resource, and Blue Economy Global Practice will provide follow-up support for fisheries accounts with a GPS technical assistance grant. Through this work, Morocco has taken an important first step in developing Natural Capital accounts and the Government’s interest and intention to institutionalize natural capital accounting is expected to continue.
|
|
As the Government of Uganda moves toward its vision of resource-led industrialization, it is developing a set of national natural capital accounts and integrating wealth accounting into its macroeconomic data. As such, policy briefs and issue papers were prepared to analyze the implications of the land and forest accounts, which show that Uganda could run out of forests outside of gazetted protected areas by 2025, if the current rate of depletion, driven by population growth, urbanization and poor natural resource management, is not held in check.
The Government of Uganda requested that the GPS/WAVES team prepare an issue paper to inform the preparation of the National Development Plan III, with the objective of mainstreaming natural capital accounting into the development dialogue. Since then, the government has requested continued support for natural capital accounting, focusing on further work on ecosystem accounts, as well as developing environmental-economic tools for policy analysis. As a result of this policy work natural capital accounting is included as one of the strategies to guide investment, development, and natural resource management in the National Development Plan.
|
|
UPDATE FROM THE AFRICA CoP |
|
|
|
WEBINAR: ARIES for SEEA for rapid natural capital accounts generation |
On May 5th, the Africa Natural Capital Accounting Community of Practice hosted a webinar to present the Artificial Intelligence for Environment & Sustainability (ARIES) for SEEA Explorer, a computational platform that lowers the barriers to compiling ecosystem accounts. The application can generate a basic set of ecosystem accounts for any user-specified terrestrial area in the world (such as a country, administrative region, watershed, etc.), through its access to hundreds of global and local data sets. The Explorer’s technology is based on machine reasoning and chooses the best-available combination of web-hosted data and models for the analysis context. |
|
|
|
World Bank Changing Wealth of Nations Data Featured in The Economist |
|
|
|
The new Seminar Series is pegged to be a regular event on the GPS calendar. Stay tuned for upcoming sessions on valuing the services of forest ecosystem services to inform landscape management strategies in Cambodia, environmental fiscal reform case studies, and integrating natural capital accounts in sector strategies and development plans in Zambia. |
|
NEWS FROM THE NCA COMMUNITY |
|
Twenty-five years of valuing ecosystems in decision-making: The economic value that the world’s ecosystems provide was first estimated in 1997, eliciting a wide range of reactions. How have such valuations advanced since then, and what are today’s frontiers in using these values for decision-making? (Nature, May 2022)
(The Wall Street Journal, April 14 2022)
When will ‘economic growth’ account for environmental costs? (The Hill, May 2022)
|
|
Cover Photo: aerial view of mangroves in The Gambia (Curioso.Photography / shutterstock)
This newsletter is published by the GPS Communications Team
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
