IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i10p5374-d552550.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic Valuation of Benefits in Freshwater Ecosystems: Complex Wetlands System Belonging to the San Juan River in the Magdalena Medio Region, Colombia

Author

Listed:
  • Lya Sierra

    (Department of Economics, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Cali, Cali 760031, Colombia)

  • Wilmer Marin

    (Independent Consultant, Bogotá 111161, Colombia)

  • Luis Guillermo Castro

    (School of Management, Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá 111711, Colombia)

  • Olga Lucía Hernández-Manrique

    (Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, Bogotá 111311, Colombia)

Abstract

This paper identifies and assesses the economic value of the main natural benefits relating to the complex system of wetlands (CSW) belonging to the San Juan River in the Colombian Magdalena Medio. This is a region rich in biodiversity and natural resources, which in the past was hit by violence and the actions of different armed groups. Benefit estimation takes into account diverse monetary valuation techniques, such as market prices for direct wetland uses and the transfer of benefits, for the assessment of indirect use and non-use values. The results reveal that the most important values relate to ecotourism (60.1%) as a possible future use of the CSW, the benefit of preventing flooding (28.4%), and the biodiversity that inhabits the area (6.7%). All three values represent the total economic value of the CSW. This research also finds that the benefits of the ecosystems currently provided by the CSW exceed the opportunity cost, represented by the total conversion of the area to livestock. Lastly, the net present value (NPV) of 25 and 75 years, relating to the benefits of the CSW, exceeds the income from the conversion of land to livestock, revealing profitable investments in conservation and ecotourism projects.

Suggested Citation

  • Lya Sierra & Wilmer Marin & Luis Guillermo Castro & Olga Lucía Hernández-Manrique, 2021. "Economic Valuation of Benefits in Freshwater Ecosystems: Complex Wetlands System Belonging to the San Juan River in the Magdalena Medio Region, Colombia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-17, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:10:p:5374-:d:552550
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/10/5374/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/10/5374/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pemberton, Carlisle A. & Mader-Charles, Kathleen, 2005. "Ecotourism as a Means of Conserving Wetlands," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 37(2), pages 1-12, August.
    2. Hackbart, Vivian C.S. & de Lima, Guilherme T.N.P. & dos Santos, Rozely F., 2017. "Theory and practice of water ecosystem services valuation: Where are we going?," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 218-227.
    3. de Groot, Rudolf S. & Wilson, Matthew A. & Boumans, Roelof M. J., 2002. "A typology for the classification, description and valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and services," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 393-408, June.
    4. Admiraal, Jeroen F. & Wossink, Ada & de Groot, Wouter T. & de Snoo, Geert R., 2013. "More than total economic value: How to combine economic valuation of biodiversity with ecological resilience," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 115-122.
    5. Grima, Nelson & Singh, Simron J., 2019. "How the end of armed conflicts influence forest cover and subsequently ecosystem services provision? An analysis of four case studies in biodiversity hotspots," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 267-275.
    6. Perevochtchikova, María & De la Mora-De la Mora, Gabriela & Hernández Flores, José Álvaro & Marín, Wilmer & Langle Flores, Alfonso & Ramos Bueno, Arturo & Rojo Negrete, Iskra Alejandra, 2019. "Systematic review of integrated studies on functional and thematic ecosystem services in Latin America, 1992–2017," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 1-1.
    7. Christie, Mike & Fazey, Ioan & Cooper, Rob & Hyde, Tony & Kenter, Jasper O., 2012. "An evaluation of monetary and non-monetary techniques for assessing the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services to people in countries with developing economies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 67-78.
    8. Farber, Stephen C. & Costanza, Robert & Wilson, Matthew A., 2002. "Economic and ecological concepts for valuing ecosystem services," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 375-392, June.
    9. Pemberton, Carlisle A. & Mader-Charles, Kathleen, 2005. "Ecotourism as a Means of Conserving Wetlands," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(2), pages 463-474, August.
    10. Chaikumbung, Mayula & Doucouliagos, Hristos & Scarborough, Helen, 2016. "The economic value of wetlands in developing countries: A meta-regression analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 164-174.
    11. Correa Restrepo, Francisco, 2008. "Tasa de descuento ambiental Gamma: una aplicación para Colombia," Revista Lecturas de Economía, Universidad de Antioquia, CIE, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexander I. Belyaev & Anna M. Pugacheva & Evgenia A. Korneeva, 2022. "Assessment of Ecosystem Services of Wetlands of the Volga–Akhtuba Floodplain," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-14, September.
    2. Lida Díaz-Pinzón & Lya Sierra & Francesc Trillas, 2022. "The Economic Value of Wetlands in Urban Areas: The Benefits in a Developing Country," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-19, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schmidt, Katja & Walz, Ariane & Martín-López, Berta & Sachse, René, 2017. "Testing socio-cultural valuation methods of ecosystem services to explain land use preferences," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 26(PA), pages 270-288.
    2. Andrea Ghermandi & John Agard & Paulo A. L. D. Nunes, 2018. "Applying Geographic Information Systems to ecosystem services valuation and mapping in Trinidad and Tobago," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 289-306, October.
    3. Aryal, Kishor & Ojha, Bhuwan Raj & Maraseni, Tek, 2021. "Perceived importance and economic valuation of ecosystem services in Ghodaghodi wetland of Nepal," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    4. Scholte, Samantha S.K. & van Teeffelen, Astrid J.A. & Verburg, Peter H., 2015. "Integrating socio-cultural perspectives into ecosystem service valuation: A review of concepts and methods," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 67-78.
    5. Acharya, Ram Prasad & Maraseni, Tek & Cockfield, Geoff, 2019. "Global trend of forest ecosystem services valuation – An analysis of publications," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    6. Hackbart, Vivian C.S. & de Lima, Guilherme T.N.P. & dos Santos, Rozely F., 2017. "Theory and practice of water ecosystem services valuation: Where are we going?," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 218-227.
    7. Rode, Julian & Le Menestrel, Marc & Cornelissen, Gert, 2017. "Ecosystem Service Arguments Enhance Public Support for Environmental Protection - But Beware of the Numbers!," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 213-221.
    8. Mohamed A. M. Abd Elbasit & Jasper Knight & Gang Liu & Majed M. Abu-Zreig & Rashid Hasaan, 2021. "Valuation of Ecosystem Services in South Africa, 2001–2019," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-18, October.
    9. Egor Selivanov & Petra Hlaváčková, 2021. "Methods for monetary valuation of ecosystem services: A scoping review," Journal of Forest Science, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 67(11), pages 499-511.
    10. Angelos Alamanos & Phoebe Koundouri, 2022. "Economics of Incorporating Ecosystem Services into Water Resource Planning and Management," DEOS Working Papers 2211, Athens University of Economics and Business.
    11. Sinden, John Alfred & Griffith, Garry, 2007. "Combining economic and ecological arguments to value the environmental gains from control of 35 weeds in Australia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2-3), pages 396-408, March.
    12. Hassan, Suziana & Olsen, Søren Bøye & Thorsen, Bo Jellesmark, 2019. "Urban-rural divides in preferences for wetland conservation in Malaysia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 226-237.
    13. Antonio Nesticò & Marianna La Marca, 2020. "Urban Real Estate Values and Ecosystem Disservices: An Estimate Model Based on Regression Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-15, August.
    14. Houdet, Joël & Trommetter, Michel & Weber, Jacques, 2012. "Understanding changes in business strategies regarding biodiversity and ecosystem services," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 37-46.
    15. Fan, Fan & Henriksen, Christian Bugge & Porter, John, 2016. "Valuation of ecosystem services in organic cereal crop production systems with different management practices in relation to organic matter input," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 22(PA), pages 117-127.
    16. Richardson, Robert B., 2011. "Ecosystem Services and Food Security: Economic Perspectives on Environmental Sustainability," Food Security International Development Working Papers 98782, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    17. Heinze, Alan & Bongers, Frans & Ramírez Marcial, Neptalí & García Barrios, Luis & Kuyper, Thomas W., 2020. "The montane multifunctional landscape: How stakeholders in a biosphere reserve derive benefits and address trade-offs in ecosystem service supply," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    18. Häyhä, Tiina & Franzese, Pier Paolo & Paletto, Alessandro & Fath, Brian D., 2015. "Assessing, valuing, and mapping ecosystem services in Alpine forests," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 12-23.
    19. Egoh, Benis & Rouget, Mathieu & Reyers, Belinda & Knight, Andrew T. & Cowling, Richard M. & van Jaarsveld, Albert S. & Welz, Adam, 2007. "Integrating ecosystem services into conservation assessments: A review," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 714-721, September.
    20. Konarska, Keri M. & Sutton, Paul C. & Castellon, Michael, 2002. "Evaluating scale dependence of ecosystem service valuation: a comparison of NOAA-AVHRR and Landsat TM datasets," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 491-507, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:10:p:5374-:d:552550. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.