Abstract
Ecosystems provide vital services that improve and support livelihoods and human well-being. Consequently, scientific research on ecosystem services (ES) has increased, over the past two decades globally, as well as in Africa. This study provides an overview of existing economic ES valuation methods in Africa using the Web of Science databases. The results highlighted that South Africa recorded the high number of ES valuation publications. The most evaluated ES category was provisioning then regulating services. In terms of economic valuation methods, the market price was the most popular, followed by the contingent valuation and the choice experiment methods. Recommendations are provided for future research in this filed.
Highlights
Ecosystems provide humans a diversity of services known as “Ecosystem services” [1]
Africa hosts a high number of Least Developed Countries [6], and more than 50 percent of its rural population depends on ecosystem services [7]
No publication has been selected for 2005, 2006, and 2009. This global progress can be explained by the release of several initiatives and projects around ecosystem services (ES) and biodiversity, including the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP)
Summary
Ecosystems provide humans a diversity of services known as “Ecosystem services” [1] They are generally classified into provisioning services such as food and raw materials, regulating services such as water and climate regulation, supporting services such as soil formation, and cultural services such as recreation and tourism. Common drivers are rapid population growth, increasing demand for food, water and energy, climate change, and overexploitation [9]. This shows the importance of assessment and valuation of such services in safeguarding and managing the loss of ecosystems [9,10]
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