This document summarizes ecosystem accounting and natural capital valuation projects in the Philippines. It discusses several past and ongoing projects, including the Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) project, Capturing Coral Reef Ecosystem Services (CCRES) project, and work using the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). It also describes the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) which aims to create a national biodiversity business plan and consolidate results. Current work is focusing on mineral and mangrove accounts and integrating with national economic statistics. Valuation is important for investment planning, pricing natural resources, and informing decisions while also strengthening institutions.
The Learning Route on Natural Resource Management and Climate Change Adaptation best practices, the experience in Kenya; took place between the 6-13 July 2014 in several counties in Kenya.
The objective of this learning route is to scale up through peer to peer learning the Kenyan best multi stakeholders' strategies, tools and practices to fight environmental degradation and to adapt to climate change with the aim of improving the livelihoods of people living in affected communities.
The learning Route has been developed by International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) CARE (relief agency) in Kenya and the Cgiar Research Program on Climate Change & Food Security, in partnership with Procasur Africa.
Here we have an overview of the presentation shared with us from our first of the three host case studies that were visited:
Case 1: Mount Kenya East Pilot Project (MKEPP), the Upper Tana Natural Resource Manangement Project (UTANRMP)
Improving livelihoods through climate smart agriculture in Central AsiaExternalEvents
The World Bank is addressing climate change and improving livelihoods through CSA in Central Asia. In collaboration with its partners, the World Bank is implementing various regional initiatives and projects, which focus on the water-energy-climate nexus.
Payment for Ecosystem Services Pilot Implementation in Mae Sa-Kog Ma Biospher...CIFOR-ICRAF
This presentation was given on the “Regional workshop on Payment for Environmental Services” on November 19 2014 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The overall aim of the workshop was to enhance the understanding and capacity of policy makers, PES practioners, and researcher communities on the topic of payments for ecosystem services and ecosystem-based approaches and also to increase dialogue between them on latest lessons learned and recommendations for effective, efficient and equitable implementation of PES.
The Learning Route on Natural Resource Management and Climate Change Adaptation best practices, the experience in Kenya; took place between the 6-13 July 2014 in several counties in Kenya.
The objective of this learning route is to scale up through peer to peer learning the Kenyan best multi stakeholders' strategies, tools and practices to fight environmental degradation and to adapt to climate change with the aim of improving the livelihoods of people living in affected communities.
The learning Route has been developed by International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) CARE (relief agency) in Kenya and the Cgiar Research Program on Climate Change & Food Security, in partnership with Procasur Africa.
Here we have an overview of the presentation shared with us from our first of the three host case studies that were visited:
Case 1: Mount Kenya East Pilot Project (MKEPP), the Upper Tana Natural Resource Manangement Project (UTANRMP)
Improving livelihoods through climate smart agriculture in Central AsiaExternalEvents
The World Bank is addressing climate change and improving livelihoods through CSA in Central Asia. In collaboration with its partners, the World Bank is implementing various regional initiatives and projects, which focus on the water-energy-climate nexus.
Payment for Ecosystem Services Pilot Implementation in Mae Sa-Kog Ma Biospher...CIFOR-ICRAF
This presentation was given on the “Regional workshop on Payment for Environmental Services” on November 19 2014 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The overall aim of the workshop was to enhance the understanding and capacity of policy makers, PES practioners, and researcher communities on the topic of payments for ecosystem services and ecosystem-based approaches and also to increase dialogue between them on latest lessons learned and recommendations for effective, efficient and equitable implementation of PES.
These slides cover the purposes for ecosystem service valuation (ESV), methods for valuation, examples of valuation studies, and government regulation and program related to ESV.
Rapid land transformation driven by large scale investments is one of the big trends defining this century. In a virtual briefing for the Global Donor Platform members CIAT agriculture expert Deborah Bossio dismisses the cry for more investments often heard in development circles. From her perspective a lack of investments is not the problem. The more pressing question is whether these large scale investments could be sustainable and socially inclusive. How are they going to play out in the end?
Another emerging feature, according to Bossio, is the dominance of globalization as well as foreign income and international trade as major drivers of land use change. Taking a closer look at these dynamics shows that we aim at achieving multiple goals (sustaining communities, produce goods, store carbon, protect wildlife, sustain biodiversity, ecosystem services). The landscapes approach provides a vehicle for realizing those objectives.
After outlining the reasons behind choosing landscapes approaches, Deborah rounds off with introducing specifics of CIAT’s landscapes approach.
Deborah Bossio is the director of soils research area at CIAT. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and has more than 15 years experience working in sustainable agriculture development research.
See the virtual briefing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-sUzAC-B7w
Our Goal: Lasting human well-being by Conservation International, Ricky Nunez. Presentation for Seminar on Environmental Reporting conducted at Hotel Alejandro, Tacloban City.
ICRAF (World Agroforestry Centre) presentation to International Fund for Agricultural Development, end-May, 2011 on Rewards for Environmental Services / Payments for Environmenal Services
Donal Daly, EPA Catchment Science and Management Unit outlines a possible approach to integrating Water Framework Directive and Biodiversity goals at the catchment scale.
These slides cover the purposes for ecosystem service valuation (ESV), methods for valuation, examples of valuation studies, and government regulation and program related to ESV.
Rapid land transformation driven by large scale investments is one of the big trends defining this century. In a virtual briefing for the Global Donor Platform members CIAT agriculture expert Deborah Bossio dismisses the cry for more investments often heard in development circles. From her perspective a lack of investments is not the problem. The more pressing question is whether these large scale investments could be sustainable and socially inclusive. How are they going to play out in the end?
Another emerging feature, according to Bossio, is the dominance of globalization as well as foreign income and international trade as major drivers of land use change. Taking a closer look at these dynamics shows that we aim at achieving multiple goals (sustaining communities, produce goods, store carbon, protect wildlife, sustain biodiversity, ecosystem services). The landscapes approach provides a vehicle for realizing those objectives.
After outlining the reasons behind choosing landscapes approaches, Deborah rounds off with introducing specifics of CIAT’s landscapes approach.
Deborah Bossio is the director of soils research area at CIAT. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and has more than 15 years experience working in sustainable agriculture development research.
See the virtual briefing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-sUzAC-B7w
Our Goal: Lasting human well-being by Conservation International, Ricky Nunez. Presentation for Seminar on Environmental Reporting conducted at Hotel Alejandro, Tacloban City.
ICRAF (World Agroforestry Centre) presentation to International Fund for Agricultural Development, end-May, 2011 on Rewards for Environmental Services / Payments for Environmenal Services
Donal Daly, EPA Catchment Science and Management Unit outlines a possible approach to integrating Water Framework Directive and Biodiversity goals at the catchment scale.
The increased availability of biomedical data, particularly in the public domain, offers the opportunity to better understand human health and to develop effective therapeutics for a wide range of unmet medical needs. However, data scientists remain stymied by the fact that data remain hard to find and to productively reuse because data and their metadata i) are wholly inaccessible, ii) are in non-standard or incompatible representations, iii) do not conform to community standards, and iv) have unclear or highly restricted terms and conditions that preclude legitimate reuse. These limitations require a rethink on data can be made machine and AI-ready - the key motivation behind the FAIR Guiding Principles. Concurrently, while recent efforts have explored the use of deep learning to fuse disparate data into predictive models for a wide range of biomedical applications, these models often fail even when the correct answer is already known, and fail to explain individual predictions in terms that data scientists can appreciate. These limitations suggest that new methods to produce practical artificial intelligence are still needed.
In this talk, I will discuss our work in (1) building an integrative knowledge infrastructure to prepare FAIR and "AI-ready" data and services along with (2) neurosymbolic AI methods to improve the quality of predictions and to generate plausible explanations. Attention is given to standards, platforms, and methods to wrangle knowledge into simple, but effective semantic and latent representations, and to make these available into standards-compliant and discoverable interfaces that can be used in model building, validation, and explanation. Our work, and those of others in the field, creates a baseline for building trustworthy and easy to deploy AI models in biomedicine.
Bio
Dr. Michel Dumontier is the Distinguished Professor of Data Science at Maastricht University, founder and executive director of the Institute of Data Science, and co-founder of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data principles. His research explores socio-technological approaches for responsible discovery science, which includes collaborative multi-modal knowledge graphs, privacy-preserving distributed data mining, and AI methods for drug discovery and personalized medicine. His work is supported through the Dutch National Research Agenda, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, Horizon Europe, the European Open Science Cloud, the US National Institutes of Health, and a Marie-Curie Innovative Training Network. He is the editor-in-chief for the journal Data Science and is internationally recognized for his contributions in bioinformatics, biomedical informatics, and semantic technologies including ontologies and linked data.
A brief information about the SCOP protein database used in bioinformatics.
The Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) database is a comprehensive and authoritative resource for the structural and evolutionary relationships of proteins. It provides a detailed and curated classification of protein structures, grouping them into families, superfamilies, and folds based on their structural and sequence similarities.
Introduction:
RNA interference (RNAi) or Post-Transcriptional Gene Silencing (PTGS) is an important biological process for modulating eukaryotic gene expression.
It is highly conserved process of posttranscriptional gene silencing by which double stranded RNA (dsRNA) causes sequence-specific degradation of mRNA sequences.
dsRNA-induced gene silencing (RNAi) is reported in a wide range of eukaryotes ranging from worms, insects, mammals and plants.
This process mediates resistance to both endogenous parasitic and exogenous pathogenic nucleic acids, and regulates the expression of protein-coding genes.
What are small ncRNAs?
micro RNA (miRNA)
short interfering RNA (siRNA)
Properties of small non-coding RNA:
Involved in silencing mRNA transcripts.
Called “small” because they are usually only about 21-24 nucleotides long.
Synthesized by first cutting up longer precursor sequences (like the 61nt one that Lee discovered).
Silence an mRNA by base pairing with some sequence on the mRNA.
Discovery of siRNA?
The first small RNA:
In 1993 Rosalind Lee (Victor Ambros lab) was studying a non- coding gene in C. elegans, lin-4, that was involved in silencing of another gene, lin-14, at the appropriate time in the
development of the worm C. elegans.
Two small transcripts of lin-4 (22nt and 61nt) were found to be complementary to a sequence in the 3' UTR of lin-14.
Because lin-4 encoded no protein, she deduced that it must be these transcripts that are causing the silencing by RNA-RNA interactions.
Types of RNAi ( non coding RNA)
MiRNA
Length (23-25 nt)
Trans acting
Binds with target MRNA in mismatch
Translation inhibition
Si RNA
Length 21 nt.
Cis acting
Bind with target Mrna in perfect complementary sequence
Piwi-RNA
Length ; 25 to 36 nt.
Expressed in Germ Cells
Regulates trnasposomes activity
MECHANISM OF RNAI:
First the double-stranded RNA teams up with a protein complex named Dicer, which cuts the long RNA into short pieces.
Then another protein complex called RISC (RNA-induced silencing complex) discards one of the two RNA strands.
The RISC-docked, single-stranded RNA then pairs with the homologous mRNA and destroys it.
THE RISC COMPLEX:
RISC is large(>500kD) RNA multi- protein Binding complex which triggers MRNA degradation in response to MRNA
Unwinding of double stranded Si RNA by ATP independent Helicase
Active component of RISC is Ago proteins( ENDONUCLEASE) which cleave target MRNA.
DICER: endonuclease (RNase Family III)
Argonaute: Central Component of the RNA-Induced Silencing Complex (RISC)
One strand of the dsRNA produced by Dicer is retained in the RISC complex in association with Argonaute
ARGONAUTE PROTEIN :
1.PAZ(PIWI/Argonaute/ Zwille)- Recognition of target MRNA
2.PIWI (p-element induced wimpy Testis)- breaks Phosphodiester bond of mRNA.)RNAse H activity.
MiRNA:
The Double-stranded RNAs are naturally produced in eukaryotic cells during development, and they have a key role in regulating gene expression .
THE IMPORTANCE OF MARTIAN ATMOSPHERE SAMPLE RETURN.Sérgio Sacani
The return of a sample of near-surface atmosphere from Mars would facilitate answers to several first-order science questions surrounding the formation and evolution of the planet. One of the important aspects of terrestrial planet formation in general is the role that primary atmospheres played in influencing the chemistry and structure of the planets and their antecedents. Studies of the martian atmosphere can be used to investigate the role of a primary atmosphere in its history. Atmosphere samples would also inform our understanding of the near-surface chemistry of the planet, and ultimately the prospects for life. High-precision isotopic analyses of constituent gases are needed to address these questions, requiring that the analyses are made on returned samples rather than in situ.
Earliest Galaxies in the JADES Origins Field: Luminosity Function and Cosmic ...Sérgio Sacani
We characterize the earliest galaxy population in the JADES Origins Field (JOF), the deepest
imaging field observed with JWST. We make use of the ancillary Hubble optical images (5 filters
spanning 0.4−0.9µm) and novel JWST images with 14 filters spanning 0.8−5µm, including 7 mediumband filters, and reaching total exposure times of up to 46 hours per filter. We combine all our data
at > 2.3µm to construct an ultradeep image, reaching as deep as ≈ 31.4 AB mag in the stack and
30.3-31.0 AB mag (5σ, r = 0.1” circular aperture) in individual filters. We measure photometric
redshifts and use robust selection criteria to identify a sample of eight galaxy candidates at redshifts
z = 11.5 − 15. These objects show compact half-light radii of R1/2 ∼ 50 − 200pc, stellar masses of
M⋆ ∼ 107−108M⊙, and star-formation rates of SFR ∼ 0.1−1 M⊙ yr−1
. Our search finds no candidates
at 15 < z < 20, placing upper limits at these redshifts. We develop a forward modeling approach to
infer the properties of the evolving luminosity function without binning in redshift or luminosity that
marginalizes over the photometric redshift uncertainty of our candidate galaxies and incorporates the
impact of non-detections. We find a z = 12 luminosity function in good agreement with prior results,
and that the luminosity function normalization and UV luminosity density decline by a factor of ∼ 2.5
from z = 12 to z = 14. We discuss the possible implications of our results in the context of theoretical
models for evolution of the dark matter halo mass function.
Comparative structure of adrenal gland in vertebrates
philippines-ecosystemaccounting.pptx
1. Ecosystem Accounting/
Natural Capital Accounting
Experiences in the Philippines
Theresa Mundita Lim
Director
Biodiversity Management Bureau
Department of Environment and
Natural Resources
Mt. Kalatungan Range Natural Park
Photo credits: NewCAPP Project, BMB-DENR
2. Presentation Outline
• Precursor accounting projects
• Current ecosystem accounting / valuation
projects
• BIOFIN as consolidator of results
3. Precursor Ecosystem Accounting /
Resource Valuation
Projects
• Environmental and Natural Resources
Accounting Project (ENRAP), 1991-2000,
USAID
• Integrated Environmental Management for
Sustainable Development (IEMSD)
Programme, 1995, UNDP
• Philippine Framework on the Development
of Environment Statistics (PFDES), 2000, ADB
4. Current Projects
Wealth Accounting And The
Valuation of Ecosystem
Services (WAVES)
Capturing Coral Reef
Ecosystem Services
(CCRES)
System of Environmental and
Economic Accounting
(SEEA)
The Economics of
Ecosystems and
Biodiversity (TEEB)
8. System of Integrated Environmental and
Economic Accounting
(SEEA)
Focus on mineral and mangrove accounts
On-going integration of the Phil-WAVES with
Philippine Statistics Authority Macro Economics
Statistics Office
First set of estimates for mineral accounts
targeted for December 2014
9. • Technical assistance project – East
Asia-Pacific Region
• Collaborative partnership:
Partners from donor agencies,
research institutions,
government, regional projects,
private businesses, NGOs and
communities
• Five year duration (October 2013
– December 2018)
• $10.4 million in funding: US$4.5m
(GEF); AUD$2.0m (UQ); $3.9m
(Partners)
What is CCRES?
Credit: Mags Quibilan
El Nido, Palawan
12. TEEB
What is the
natural capital
in my country
and what is
driving
change?
Do we
measure and
understand
our natural
capital?
To what
extent are the
values of
nature
integrated
into decision-
making?
What are the
issues that
need policy
attention?
What are the
policy tools
and decision
options that
offer
solutions?
13. The BIOFIN Methodology is
a roadmap for creating a
national biodiversity
business plan
Biodiversity Finance Initiative
(BIOFIN)
14. Importance of Valuation
• Valuation is an essential component of investment
planning – Benefit/Cost Analysis; Trade off Analysis; ROI
should be embedded with ecosystem services
costs/benefits
• Valuation contributes to appropriate pricing of ecosystem
goods and services
• Valuation techniques can inform investment decisions
(benefit / cost) but institutional strengthening processes
should not be ignored
As director of the Biodiversity Management Bureau, the difficulty of arguing in support of biodiversity is not lost on me, especially when the alternatives contribute to incomes, employment, and exports whilst biodiversity is usually measured as number of trees or birds or fish. Ecosystem accounting and valuation are important tools that help contextualize and blunt the development agenda especially when large scale destruction of biodiversity resources is concerned. By appropriate valuation, we are able to value the destruction, both seen and unseen, both measured immediately and for future generations.
The coverage of this presentation will be as follows :
Precursor accounting projects
Current ecosystem accounting / valuation projects
BIOFIN as consolidator of results
Even prior to the current wave of ecosystem accounting / valuation projects, the Philippines already implemented
Click 1 - the Environmental and Natural Resource Accounting Project or ENRAP. From 1991 -2000, the Philippines implemented ENRAP to address deficiencies in the System of National Accounts to reflect economic-environmental interactions by explicitly recognizing that the natural environment is a productive economic sector. Environmental quality services, waste disposal services, environmental damage, and natural resource depreciation were some of the variables measured by ENRAP. Some policy applications of ENRAP include: (i) inputs to the logging ban issue; (ii) fee reforms for grasslands and plantation agreements; and (iii) the phase out of leaded gasoline due to emission coupled with health effects.
In 1995, the UNDP supported
Click 2 - the Integrated Environmental Management for Sustainable Development (IEMSD) Programme which has two sub projects: ENRA 1, which adopted the UN System of integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) framework and compiled Assets & Activity Accounts from 1988 – 1994, and ENRA II, which started in 1998, and began the Institutionalization of the Philippine Economic-Environmental and Natural Resources Accounting (PEENRA) System and piloting at subnational levels.
In 2000, the Asian Development Bank supported the development of
Click 3 - the Philippine Framework on the Development of Environment Statistics (PFDES) and by 2000, the Philippines published the Compendium of Environmental Statistics
Click 1 - At present there are at least five major projects providing technical assistance in resource valuation and ecosystem accounting. These are
Click 2 - WAVES or wealth accounting and the valuation of ecosystem services is working in Laguna Lake and Southern Palawan
Click 3 – CCRES or Capturing Coral Reef Ecosystem Services is piloting in El Nido, Palawan
Click 4 – SEEA or System of Environmental and Economic Accounting is working at the national level
Click 5 – TEEB or The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity piloting in Manila Bay and Southern Palawan
BIOFIN can be viewed as an
Click 1 - umbrella project which will utilize the outputs of these 4 projects.
Click 1 - WAVES (Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services) is working in two locations: Laguna Lake and Southern Palawan.
Click 2 - Laguna Lake Basin is a vital ecosystem and center of economic activity for Manila and its neighboring provinces. The area surrounding the lake is home to an estimated 15 million people who rely on the lake for water, food, energy, recreation and livelihoods.
Click 3 - The Lake’s ecosystem is at risk with fish catches dwindling, predatory aquatic species proliferating, and increasing rainfall causing perennial flooding.
Click 4 - WAVES shall properly price the waters for water concessionaires and for aquaculture operators.
Click 1 - There are numerous competing demands on resources in biodiversity-rich Southern Palawan. It is home to indigenous tribes and there is great potential for ecotourism and agriculture but the three large protected areas in the area are threatened by uncontrolled bird hunting, conversion of forest lands, mining claims and destruction of watershed areas.
Click 2 - One of the largest protected areas is Mt. Mantalingahan for which the total economic value of ecosystem services was estimated by Conservation International to reach USD 5.5 billion. WAVES will provide decision makers with data and evidence-based analysis to make the best decisions for the region.
In addition, WAVES shall contribute to macroeconomic indicators of sustainable development through the establishment of mineral accounts involving the Philippines Statistics Authority and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the DENR.
SEEA - System of integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA)
What was discussed was the WAVES component which is executed through a Bank -(world Bank) executed trust fund.
Click 1 - There is yet another component which is funded by the Philippine government and is executed by the Philippine statistics Authority focusing on
Click 2 - SEEA accounts for minerals, mangroves and macro indicators. Scoping of data for the national account (i.e., gold, copper, nickel and chromium) and satellite account (i.e., nickel).
The previous ENRA resulted in an unpublished interim environmentally adjusted GDP based on Monetary Asset and Emission Accounts estimates from 1988 to 1994. EDP1, or the environmentally adjusted NDP (Net Domestic Product), the red line, is computed by deducting the estimated resource depletion from the conventional NDP while EDP2, or the environmentally adjusted NDP, the green line, is derived by deducting from the EDP1 the estimated environmental cost of degradation. Note that the divergence between official GDP estimates and EDP1 and EDP2 is about 2 billion pesos.
CCRES - Capturing Coral Reef and Related Ecosystem Services
Click 1 - CCRES will undertake research to calculate a value for the contribution which natural assets in the coastal environment - seagrass beds, mangroves, coral reefs – make to livelihoods, food security and climate resilience in coastal communities across the East Asia Pacific region.
Click 2 - The project will develop eco-friendly businesses, toolkits and spatial planning models which will harness the value of the coastal natural capital and assist communities to develop new, sustainable revenue streams.
Click 1 - El Nido is the CCRES pilot site in the Philippines.
Click 2 - A first-class municipality located in northwest Palawan, El Nido has one of the highest marine biodiversity in the country. It is also a declared National Protected Area and a Marine Biodiversity Area. El Nido has been dubbed
Click 3 - the "Last Ecological Frontier" but with the tremendous increase in tourism from 10,000 tourists in 1994 to over 50,000 in 2013, El Nido is now under threat.
CCRES is now in the design phase with work programs designed, stakeholder consultations organized, and data collection started.
Click 1 - Five countries (Bhutan, Ecuador, Liberia, Philippines and Tanzania) expressed interest to participate in this three year project, and they will each undertake a TEEB country study, specific to their specific context, over the three years of the project.
A TEEB country study identifies
Click 2 - the ecosystem services that are vital to meeting the country’s policy priorities and makes recommendations on how these services can be integrated into policies. These recommendations depending on the country context, can include policies for poverty alleviation, subsidy reform, land use management, protected area management, securing livelihoods, investment in natural infrastructure restoration and national accounting to include natural capital.
TEEB studies can help countries answer these questions:
What is the natural capital in my country and what is driving change?
Do we measure and understand our natural capital?
To what extent are the values of nature integrated into decision-making?
What are the issues that need policy attention?
What are the policy tools and decision options that offer solutions?
TEEB studies can help countries answer these questions:
Click 1 - What is the natural capital in my country and what is driving change?
Do we measure and understand our natural capital?
To what extent are the values of nature integrated into decision-making?
What are the issues that need policy attention?
What are the policy tools and decision options that offer solutions?
TEEB studies can help countries answer these questions:
Click 1 - What is the natural capital in my country and what is driving change?
Do we measure and understand our natural capital?
To what extent are the values of nature integrated into decision-making?
What are the issues that need policy attention?
What are the policy tools and decision options that offer solutions?
BIOFIN
Click 1 - The Philippines is one of the 19 pilot countries for BIOFIN, a project conceived to
Click 2 - close the global financing gap for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity by assisting developing countries in identifying, accessing, combining and sequencing sources of biodiversity funding to meet their specific needs.
BIOFIN estimated the costs of implementing the PBSAP from 2015-2028 with the pie chart illustrating the breakdown of costs according to Aichi Targets. The total estimated cost is USD 6,297,357,596 (low).
Protection accounts for 50% of the total estimated cost at $3.1 billion dollars. 42% is attributed to Restoration with a total estimated cost of $2.6 billion. While this budget includes direct action towards attempting to restore ecosystem services and functions, it does not include the value of lost ecosystem services, which will even inflate the cost even more. This also denotes the goal of the country for both Protection and Restoration go hand-in-hand in its futile attempt in reverting to the pre-exploitation levels and at the same time protect the biodiversity from various factors affecting its decline.
We are hoping that future iterations of the PBSAP costing will surely benefit given inputs from WAVES, TEEB, CCRES, and SEEA.
BIOFIN will pilot at least one resource mobilization scheme from a menu that includes traditional sources such as grants and government allocations to non=traditional resource generation schemes such as carbon credits, water fees, use fees, conservation fees, etc --- which will require, in one form or another, some inputs from valuation of ecosystem services or ecosystem accounting. We are therefore pleased that WAVES, TEEB, CCRES and BIOFIN are being implemented simultaneously and we will ensure the convergence of outputs.
Valuation is an essential component of investment planning. When we do benefit / cost analysis or trade off analysis or compute for Return on Investments, our benefits must reflect ecosystem services which are left unvalued such as biodiversity in the case of a forest and coastal protection in the case of coral reefs, for example. Our return on Investment (ROI) then will be embedded with ecosystem services costs / benefits. It would be ideal to do ecosystem accounting on a regular basis so in the meantime, we are thankful for the technical assistance that WAVES, CCRES, TEEB and BIOFIN will provide.
Second is the contribution of valuation to the appropriate pricing of ecosystem goods and services. This is very useful as we evaluate our user fee systems and ensure that the willingness to pay of users are adequately reflected.
Lastly, valuation techniques can inform investment decisions (benefit / cost) but institutional strengthening processes should not be ignored.
