Conservation and Marketing of Environmental Goods and Services

Conservation

Conservation means to keep something in its natural state or use something in such a way that it is not depleted. Therefore, conservation of biodiversity refers to the conservation of different lifeforms in a particular ecosystem so that they are maintained in their natural states or they are not depleted. For example, conservation of biodiversity in a tropical rainforest ecosystem.

To a person not well-versed with the issue of conservation, it would appear that leaving a tropical rainforest ecosystem intact is the ideal state of conservation. For many years, this had been the case with biodiversity conservation. Forest and marine conservation areas were protected in this way using the concept of Protected Areas.

With Protected Areas, everything within conservation areas were out of bounce to people. People, both customary landowners and land users, were not allowed to freely enter the conservation area to harvest resources such as fruits and nuts, firewood, wild game, fiber, or plants that were to be used for special ceremonies, and materials for construction of houses.

In keeping people out of conservation areas, illegal activities such as poaching of wild animals, insects, or rare plants like orchids have plagued Protected Areas for many years. Because customary landowners or land users could not freely enter a conservation area to make use of environmental goods and services, they had to use illegal means to help themselves.

Customary landowners usually had conflicting views to that of conservationists because they felt deprived of their natural resources while there were no economic benefits emanating from a conservation area. Conservation was viewed as serving the interest of donor partners and the scientific community while ignoring land owners and users and the social issue of poverty.

In recent years, and with the advent of new knowledge for valuing nature, it is now possible to conserve biodiversity in such a way that natural resources can be utilized in conjunction with their conservation. This is type of conservation is known as the Landscape Approach.

Environmental Goods and Services

Most of us are used to the idea of going to fresh food markets, shops, and supermarkets to buy groceries like bread, rice, sugar, potatoes, fresh meat, vegetables, and many others for our consumption. We are also used to the idea of going to shops and supermarkets to pay for our water and electricity bills, or more recently, using our phones and computers to pay bills for the use of these utilities. These are some of the traditional goods and services mankind has been accustomed to since the beginning of the industrial age, when man began to produce goods and services to sell for a profit, up to the present time.

A few decades ago, due to concerns by environmental groups in regard to the adverse impacts of human activities on the natural environment and the goods and services provided by nature, environmental goods and services have become clichés within scientific and public domains. And with the onset of the issue of climate change in recent years, the importance and application of environmental goods and services have soared to unprecedented levels. International fora such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change have captured the essence of environmental goods and services, thus the international community is now endeavoring to market environmental goods and services as a way to sustaining the natural environment and mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change.

However, environmental goods and services and how they are to be marketed remain elusive to the masses due to their complexities as naturals goods and services and the need to place values on them so that they can be marketed just like manufactured goods and services. Therefore, there is an urgent need to elucidate these issues so that more people can become aware and utilize environmental goods and services as means to earn a living and improve their lives, simultaneously addressing the issues of environmental sustainability and climate change. In this article, I have tried my best to simplify these scientific jargons, environmental goods and services, to a level where anyone with a secondary education level can be able to understand, assimilate, and utilize to earn a living with.

Placing a Value on Environmental Goods and Services

Mankind has known for thousands of years that nature provides many environmental goods and services that sustains life on earth. However, placing a value on environmental goods and services had always been a problem for mankind. Man could not directly place values on environmental goods and services, monitor, and market them. It seemed like an impossible task, and all one could do was protected the environment and the goods and services it provided using conservation mechanisms like Wild Game Reserves and Nature Parks.

Despite the use of conservation mechanisms for protection of the environment and the environmental goods and services it provided, increasing human populations and activities made it impossible for mankind to adequately protect large swathes of natural environments outside of Wild Game Reserves and Nature Parks.

If one has a piece of forested land, he can cut down a portion of it to plant a garden of sweet potatoes. Once the sweet potatoes are ready, he can harvest and sell them at the nearest market to earn some money. At the market, it would not be difficult for one to place some value on his sweet potatoes and market them. One can heave 5 pieces of medium-sized sweet potatoes and sell them for $1 or he can sell a heave of 5 large sweet potatoes for $3.

However, if the same forest owner wants to market his forested land for some environmental goods or services instead of cutting it down to plant sweet potatoes, it becomes a problem because the marketing of environmental goods and services are not part of the formal market system.

Environmental goods and services cannot be directly measured, valued and monitored, and it is not easy to place price tags on environmental goods and services and trade them at the market place.

However, a proxy - substitute measurement - can be used for measuring, valuing and monitoring non-value environmental goods and services. A proxy can be used to measure, value and monitor the beauty of a forested land and its waterfalls, flowing rivers and lush plant and animal life for ecotourism ventures. A proxy can also be used to value a rare orchid plant that is facing extinction, whether it is beautiful or not, for the purpose of conservation.

Environmental goods are goods produced by nature. They include things like timber, fiber, wild fruits and nuts, wild spices, wild game, wild vegetables, and many other goods that can be found in the wild. Natural goods can be provided by forested and non-forested lands, and they can also be found in the sea, in lakes, and in rivers.

Environmental services include natural services like soil erosion control, water purification, forest carbon sequestration and many others that can be found in the wild. Environmental services can be provided by both forested and non-forested lands, and they can also be found in the sea, in lakes, and in rivers.

One of the most important commodities of environmental goods and services is carbon, which is an environmental good as well as an environmental service. Carbon in the form of charcoal can be used for Regenerative Agriculture to grow health and foods and also sequester (capture and store) carbon dioxide and store it in the soil for hundreds or thousands years, mitigating climate change. Therefore, companies, individuals and governments are now trading carbon on carbon markets in order to sustain the natural environment and mitigate climate change.

Placing Value on Environmental Services

Let us look at the health benefit a Nature Park can provide in terms of relaxation for a high blood pressure patient.

Outside a nature park a patient may feel agitated by the issue of high blood pressure. But after he goes to a Nature Park and relaxes for some hours, his blood pressure returns to normal. He is relieved of high blood pressure naturally instead of going to a doctor to be treated with drugs. Natural healing provided by the Nature Park to the high blood pressure patient is an environmental service.

But how much should the high blood pressure patient pay the Nature Park for the natural healing or environmental services provided? Should he pay the same cost as all the customers without any ailments visiting the same Nature Park that day? Or, should the high blood pressure patient pay an amount equivalent to what he would pay if he went to seek help from a doctor?

Such a case was the subject of a study carried out by a forestry student for his Doctoral Thesis at Tokyo University, Japan, some years back.

Relaxation at the Nature Park has definitely lowered the patient’s blood pressure, but what value, or price tag, do we place on this health benefit and charge the patient for using the park to heal himself?

You cannot directly value the environmental service provided by the Nature Park, but you can go to a doctor and ask him for the types of treatments and how much it would cost to treat this patient had he gone to him and not the park to heal himself. The total cost of treatments the doctor would administer to the patient, if he had gone to him for treatment, is the amount that could be used to create a proxy that can be used to charge the patient for using the Nature Park to naturally heal himself. The proxy that can be used to charge people visiting a nature park can be calculated based on the health status, including that of the high blood pressure patient, and the different reasons people enter the gates of the park to use it.

Another example would be the value of a white, sandy beach that can be used by tourists for swimming, relaxation and just to enjoy the panoramic view of the place.

In this case the proxy would be different to the one used for valuing the natural healing for the high blood pressure patient in the Nature Park. The method used would be to elicit the views of different stakeholders through surveys conducted in person or using the internet.

Not all peoples view or value a white, sandy beach in the same way. A fisherman would value the white sand beach as a good spot for fishing and would not want it to be used for tourism, so he would score a low value for the beach in terms of tourism. He would on the other hand give a high value to the beach for fishing if he was asked to value it for fishing instead of tourism.

However, a conservation fanatic would score highly in favor of tourism because he would rather see the beach conserved for its natural environment and beauty than to see it used for fishing or other destructive ventures.

Soliciting scores or values from a wide array of peoples will give one a fair view of the real value that should be placed on the environmental service provided by the white, sandy beach. Critics of tourism would give scores at the lower end of the score line (a score of 1 – 10; 1 = low and 10 = high) while fanatics or lovers of conservation would give scores that are highly favorable to conservation.

By soliciting these scores from people at extreme ends of the score line, an average value can be given that represents the most agreed value we can place on that environmental service.

Placing a Value on Environmental Goods

Let us take the example of a rare orchid as an environmental good. A rare orchid, whether it has beautiful flowers or not, is worth saving as far as conservation is concern.

A rare orchid without beautiful flowers will be of little value to the orchid industry right now. However, this orchid still needs to be conserved because it may hold genes that can be useful for breeding, genetic research and genetic engineering in the future.

If high value orchids – those with beautiful flowers - are one day affected by a certain pest or disease that threatens their survival, alternative means of survival must be sought by the orchid industry to ascertain their survival.

Since the orchids with beautiful flowers have no resistance to the pest or disease threatening the existence of the orchid industry, they could be wiped out if no proper intervention is sought. The orchid without beautiful flowers that was conserved and has genes that are resistant to the pest or disease threatening beautiful orchids in the orchid industry can now be used to breed or genetically engineer new orchid varieties that may be resistant to the pest or disease infestation.

The proxy that can be used to charge for the rare orchid with resistant genes can be calculated based on the value of beautiful orchid species to the orchid industry and the cost of breeding or genetically engineering new orchid varieties. In this way, the orchid with resistant genes to a certain pest or disease but has no beautiful flowers is still of value to the orchid industry, and is worth conserving. Otherwise, the orchid with resistant genes to a certain pest or disease but has no beautiful flowers will not be of value to the orchid industry, and it would not be worth conserving.

Conservation Methods

Conservation can be done in situ or ex situ. That is, conservation of a plant or animal species can be done in its natural environment (in situ) or outside of it natural environment (ex situ).

Places where plants or their germplasm (parts than can be propagated) can be conserved include large conservation areas, seed banks, botanical gardens, gene banks or clonal archives, tissue culture laboratories, seed or clonal orchards, and plantations where certain plant varieties or clones are propagated for commercial purposes.

For animals, they can be conserved in large conservation areas or game parks and in zoos and botanical gardens. For some endangered animal species such as the New Guinea Singing Dog, people in the western world have been allowed to own and raise puppies of the dog as a form of conservation. The germplasm of animals can be conserve in liquid nitrogen through cryopreservation.