Assessing social values of ecosystem services in the Phewa Lake Watershed, Nepal

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2018.01.011Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Social values of ecosystem services are important in watershed management.

  • Priority ecosystem services vary between local subsistence farmers and business communities.

  • Trade-offs exist between provisioning and regulating services and synergies among regulating, habitat and cultural services.

Abstract

Community-based forestry (CBF) has developed through co-evolution of human societies, social values and biophysical systems shaped by long-term community activities. CBF has been practised for nearly 40 years in Nepal and has resulted in the restoration of forest cover to a considerable proportion of the mountain regions. In the Phewa watershed, restored forests are important for the subsistence of local communities and the provision of economically valuable recreation, aesthetic and cultural services for a wider group of stakeholders. In that context, this study aims to assess the social values of ecosystem services (ES) and their relative importance to different stakeholders. Community perceptions and expert opinions to assess and prioritise ES in the watershed were sought through focus group discussions and key informant surveys. There were 23 ecosystem services relevant to the local communities and other stakeholders in the watershed. Sediment retention, recreation and ecotourism, freshwater, firewood and timber were priority ES for local benefits, while recreation and ecotourism, biodiversity maintenance, sediment retention and carbon stock were priority ES for wider (regional – global) benefits. Priority ES revealed key areas of correlation and conflict between different services and between stakeholder groups. For local benefits, trade-offs were identified between provisioning services and regulating, habitat and cultural services. Synergies were predominant between regulating, cultural and habitat services. The study indicated that the social values concept is a promising tool for eliciting people's preferences in the ES assessment and analysis of trade-offs and synergies in developing countries where community involvement is the dominant approach of forest management.

Introduction

The ecosystem services framework is increasingly being used as a tool for natural resource management (Chan et al., 2011; Fisher et al., 2009; Lamarque et al., 2011; Lele et al., 2013; Oteros-Rozas et al., 2014). Ecosystem services assessment has been given importance in international initiatives such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), the Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity (TEEB) and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (Oteros-Rozas et al., 2014). However, most of these studies have focused on biophysical assessments and economic valuation (Garcia-Llorente et al., 2011; Nieto-Romero et al., 2014; Plieninger et al., 2013; Schroter et al., 2014; Seppelt et al., 2012) while social values have received less attention (Chan et al., 2012; Cole et al., 2015; Martin-Lopez et al., 2012; van Riper et al., 2017). More broadly, community values and, local knowledge have been essential components of natural resource management for several decades (Sherren et al., 2010), although social value has been given a lower priority (Smith and Sullivan, 2014). Recently, the importance of integrating social perspectives of ecosystem services (ES) has been promoted as a strategy for sustainable development (Caceres et al., 2015; Chan et al., 2012; Martin-Lopez et al., 2012; Nagendra et al., 2013; Reyers et al., 2013).

Social values for ecosystem services represent benefits that ecosystems provide to society (Kendal et al., 2015; Kenter et al., 2015) and the perceived quality of natural ecosystems for human well-being (MEA, 2005; van Riper et al., 2017). They indicate which services are directly experienced by individuals and are tied to intrinsic motivations to own, manage, and protect natural resources (Brown and Fagerholm, 2015). Some recent studies have been focused on social values approach in woodlands and forests (Sherrouse et al., 2014), grasslands (Lamarque et al., 2011), coastal zones and mangroves (Cole et al., 2015), watersheds services (Zagarola et al., 2014) and on a regional scale (Bryan et al., 2010; Raymond et al., 2009). However, their focus has been on cultural services; the social values ascribed to provisioning, regulating and supporting services have largely been disregarded (Plieninger et al., 2013). This oversight may be due to a lack of expertise, confusion over defining social values (Felipe-lucia et al., 2015) or methodological difficulties (Bagstad et al., 2016). A growing interest in the use of ‘social value of ecosystem services’ is not yet methodologically aligned with what is actually being assessed and valued in ecosystem services (Nahuelhual et al., 2016).

Application of social values in landscape management and planning are manifold (Table 1). A few studies have used social values and local preferences (Scholte et al., 2015) and they highlight the relevance of social values in ES assessment and valuation in landscapes that have been shaped by long-term community activities (Iniesta-arandia et al., 2014; Lakerveld et al., 2015; Martin-Lopez et al., 2012; Oteros-Rozas et al., 2014), such as community-based forestry. In fact, community-based forestry (CBF) has developed through co-evolution of human societies, social values and biophysical systems (Zoderer et al., 2016) and is driven by societal priorities, considering what society wants from their forests. This, in turn, is governed by both traditional practices and locally developed rules and regulations. CBF often implicitly incorporates different ES values, but these are often not transparent to local communities or wider users and decision makers. Linking the social values concept to CBF is, therefore, a potentially innovative tool for stimulating thinking regarding the importance of ecosystem services from community forests (Pandey et al., 2016, 2014).

In Nepal, community-based forestry emerged following a series of catastrophic policy failures prior to 1970. These resulted in an environmental crisis due to massive deforestation that triggered widespread landslides, raw materials shortage and water scarcity in the mountain regions and flooding in the plains (Gautam et al., 2004). The success of CBF in the restoration of Nepalese mountain landscapes has been widely recognised (Maraseni et al., 2014, 2005; Maraseni and Pandey, 2014; Paudyal et al., 2017c). However, local people have not fully realised the benefits of this restoration resulting from their activities. Local people can realise greater benefits if an ES approach is mainstreamed into community-based forest management (Paudyal et al., 2017a, 2016), with a focus on meeting the needs of local communities and providing rights, justice and equity in the distribution of benefits accruing from efforts to restore degraded watersheds (Cronkleton et al., 2017; Paudyal et al., 2017b).

Recent research has explored the relationship between ecosystem services and community-based forest management (Birch et al., 2014; Paudyal et al., 2017a). Appropriate method to assess the social values would contribute to a broader understanding of this relationship (Pan et al., 2016). Priorities are determined by socially and individually-held values (Al-assaf et al., 2014) however, these values and attitudes regarding natural resource management vary between rural and urban populations (Hicks et al., 2013; Williams et al., 2017). In the case of CBF, a significant variation in the selection of priority ecosystem services has been observed between rural and urban people. Rural people are more emotionally attached to forests and surrounding landscapes compared to urban people, as a result of regular interactions with landscapes in various facets of life (Pan et al., 2016; Williams et al., 2017) and it is necessary to identify these differences for effective management decisions (Bryan et al., 2010; Kumar and Kumar, 2008).

Multiple interactions occur between ecosystem services in community-managed forests because they provide numerous benefits to several users (Briner et al., 2013). Understanding such interactions and associations (positive and negative) is required for managing multiple ES (Bennett et al., 2009). Trade-offs occur when an improvement in one ES results in a decline in another (Howe et al., 2014) or among stakeholders when a particular ES is prioritised by one stakeholder at the expense of the preference of others (McShane et al., 2011). Conversely, when stakeholders assign similar priorities to multiple ES, synergies can emerge (Hicks et al., 2013). Synergies and trade-offs create opportunities and conflicts, and their study can provide decision-makers with information to maximise benefits and transparently address conflicts (Bennett et al., 2009; Crouzat et al., 2016; Hicks et al., 2013).

This study aims to assess perceptions of the social values of ecosystem services resulting from community-based forestry and to assess and prioritise ecosystem services for different stakeholders based on these perceptions. An additional aim was to identify areas of agreement (synergies) and conflict (potential trade-offs) among priority ES. The study was undertaken in the watershed of Lake Phewa (hereafter Phewa watershed in western Nepal where six upstream community forest user groups (CFUGs), downstream business people and experts were consulted using mixed methods research to record their perceptions and opinions.

Section snippets

Social valuation framework

Many frameworks have been used for ES assessment and prioritisation (Boyd and Banzhaf, 2007; Costanza et al., 1997; de Groot et al., 2002; MEA, 2005; TEEB, 2010). It has been suggested that monetary valuation frameworks are incapable of accommodating public values and preferences (de Oliveira and Berkes, 2014; Kumar and Kumar, 2008; Ulgiati et al., 2011) and that economic models and valuation methods are limited to represent the entire social values, instead of signaling that economic values

Study area

We selected the watershed area of Lake Phewa as the research area because it is accessible, is a successful case of participatory watershed conservation, has a long history of CBF and a variety of forest types and restored forests in good condition. The watershed provides water for drinking, hydropower and irrigation. It feeds the beautiful Lake Phewa that is the backbone of Pokhara's tourism and economy (Regmi and Saha, 2015). The watershed lies between 28°11′39 and 28°17′25 north latitudes

Important ecosystem services and their connection to social values

Drawn from the knowledge and perceptions of upstream residents, 81.5% of the sampled respondents recognised that ecosystems from Phewa watershed delivered 23 ES to society (Fig. 4). Members of the business communities and experts were in full agreement with this list. Responses received varied from 35 (58%) to 60 (100%) regarding the identification of ecosystem services (Table A1). Ecosystem services that were well-known and easily understood by local communities were provisioning and cultural

Discussion

This study confirmed that there are spatial associations between social values, local practices and resource use in ES assessment that are consistent with previous studies (Martin-Lopez et al., 2012; Oteros-Rozas et al., 2014; Zoderer et al., 2016). A framework was designed and implemented to evaluate ES assessment in CBF regimes that depend on participatory tools to bring together inputs from communities and experts (Felipe-lucia et al., 2015). The use of this framework demonstrates how

Conclusion

This study aimed to quantify the social values ascribed to ecosystem services in the forests of the Phewa watershed in western Nepal, where there has been considerable landscape change over the last 30 years associated with community-based forestry. The results indicated that the watershed provides 23 ecosystem services to local communities and a wider set of users across Nepal and beyond. This study demonstrated the spatial associations between public uses, social values and ES supply.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Australia Awards Scholarship Program for providing financial support to the first author. We are deeply grateful to all participants of the focus group discussions and workshops for their time for meetings and discussions. Our cordial thanks go to the staff of District Forest Office, Kaski, District Soil Conservation Office, Kaski, Hariyoban Program, Pokhara for their support for fieldwork and workshops. Two anonymous referees and the copy-editor are gratefully

References (109)

  • K.M.A. Chan et al.

    Rethinking ecosystem services to better address and navigate cultural values

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2012)
  • A.I.J.M. van Dijk et al.

    Planted forests and water in perspective

    For. Ecol. Manag.

    (2007)
  • B. Fisher et al.

    Defining and classifying ecosystem services for decision making

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2009)
  • M. Garcia-Llorente et al.

    The role of multi-functionality in social preferences toward semi-arid rural landscapes: an ecosystem service approach

    Environ. Sci. Pol.

    (2012)
  • A.P. Garcia-Nieto et al.

    Mapping forest ecosystem services: from providing units to beneficiaries

    Ecosyst. Serv.

    (2013)
  • R.S. de Groot et al.

    A typology for the classification, description and valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and services

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2002)
  • J. Hauck et al.

    Benefits and limitations of the ecosystem services concept in environmental policy and decision making: some stakeholder perspectives

    Environ. Sci. Pol.

    (2013)
  • C.C. Hicks et al.

    Synergies and tradeoffs in how managers, scientists, and fishers value coral reef ecosystem services

    Glob. Environ. Chang.

    (2013)
  • C. Howe et al.

    Creating win-wins from trade-offs? Ecosystem services for human well-being: a meta-analysis of ecosystem service trade-offs and synergies in the real world

    Glob. Environ. Chang.

    (2014)
  • I. Iniesta-arandia et al.

    Socio-cultural valuation of ecosystem services: uncovering the links between values, drivers of change, and human well-being

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2014)
  • S. de Juan et al.

    Integrating stakeholder perceptions and preferences on ecosystem services in the management of coastal areas

    Ocean Coast. Manag.

    (2017)
  • D. Kendal et al.

    The VALS: a new tool to measure people ’ s general valued attributes of landscapes

    J. Environ. Manag.

    (2015)
  • J.O. Kenter et al.

    What are shared and social values of ecosystems?

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2015)
  • M.E. Kragt et al.

    Quantifying ecosystem services trade-offs from agricultural practices

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2014)
  • M. Kumar et al.

    Valuation of the ecosystem services: a psycho-cultural perspective

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2008)
  • R.P. Lakerveld et al.

    The social distribution of provisioning forest ecosystem services: evidence and insights from Odisha, India

    Ecosyst. Serv.

    (2015)
  • R. Lopes et al.

    Valuing marine and coastal ecosystem services: an integrated participatory framework

    Ocean Coast. Manag.

    (2013)
  • T.N. Maraseni et al.

    Can vegetation types work as an indicator of soil organic carbon? An insight from native vegetations in Nepal

    Ecol. Indic.

    (2014)
  • T.N. Maraseni et al.

    An assessment of the impacts of the REDD+ pilot project on community forests user groups (CFUGs) and their community forests in Nepal

    J. Environ. Manag.

    (2014)
  • T.O. McShane et al.

    Hard choices : making trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and human

    Biol. Conserv.

    (2011)
  • M.A. Mouchet et al.

    An interdisciplinary methodological guide for quantifying associations between ecosystem services

    Glob. Environ. Chang.

    (2014)
  • H. Nagendra et al.

    Impacts of land change on biodiversity : making the link to ecosystem services

    Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain.

    (2013)
  • M. Nieto-Romero et al.

    Exploring the knowledge landscape of ecosystem services assessments in Mediterranean agroecosystems: insights for future research

    Environ. Sci. Pol.

    (2014)
  • L.E.C. de Oliveira et al.

    What value Sao Pedro's procession? Ecosystem services from local people's perceptions

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2014)
  • Y. Pan et al.

    Prioritising ecosystem services in Chinese rural and urban communities

    Ecosyst. Serv.

    (2016)
  • S.S. Pandey et al.

    Dynamics of carbon and biodiversity under REDD+ regime: a case from Nepal

    Environ. Sci. Pol.

    (2014)
  • S.S. Pandey et al.

    Assessing the roles of community forestry in climate change mitigation and adaptation: a case study from Nepal

    For. Ecol. Manag.

    (2016)
  • K. Paudyal et al.

    Participatory assessment and mapping of ecosystem services in a data-poor region: case study of community-managed forests in central Nepal

    Ecosyst. Serv.

    (2015)
  • K. Paudyal et al.

    Local actions for the common good: can the application of the ecosystem services concept generate improved societal outcomes from natural resource management?

    Land Use Policy

    (2016)
  • K. Paudyal et al.

    Ecosystem services from community-based forestry in Nepal: Realising local and global benefits

    Land Use Policy

    (2017)
  • K.S. Peh et al.

    Synergies between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision: lessons on integrated ecosystem service valuation from a Himalayan protected area, Nepal

    Ecosyst. Serv.

    (2016)
  • T. Plieninger et al.

    Assessing, mapping, and quantifying cultural ecosystem services at community level

    Land Use Policy

    (2013)
  • C.M. Raymond et al.

    Mapping community values for natural capital and ecosystem services

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2009)
  • C.J. van Riper et al.

    Toward an integrated understanding of perceived biodiversity values and environmental conditions in a national park

    Ecol. Indic.

    (2017)
  • S.S.K. Scholte et al.

    Integrating socio-cultural perspectives into ecosystem service valuation: a review of concepts and methods

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2015)
  • R. Seppelt et al.

    Form follows function? Proposing a blueprint for ecosystem service assessments based on reviews and case studies

    Ecol. Indic.

    (2012)
  • K. Sherren et al.

    Using photography to elicit grazier values and management practices relating to tree survival and recruitment

    Land Use Policy

    (2010)
  • B.C. Sherrouse et al.

    An application of Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES) to three national forests in Colorado and Wyoming

    Ecol. Indic.

    (2014)
  • H.F. Smith et al.

    Ecosystem services within agricultural landscapes—Farmers' perceptions

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2014)
  • A. Al-assaf et al.

    Identifying forest ecosystem services through socio-ecological bundles: a case study from northern Jordan

    Int. J. Sustain. Dev. World Ecol.

    (2014)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text