Economic Valuation of the Shadegan Wetland

Abstract

The Shadegan Wetland is located in the southwest of Iran. It is one of the wetlands internationally registered in the Ramsar Convention. Thanks to its variety of functionalities this wetlands has provided the local people with lots of job opportunities. Nowadays, as a result of located in the oil fields, this wetland is threatened by many of the projects run in its vicinity, like oil exploration, without prior economic-environmental valuations. Lack of data about the economic value of the wetlands has prevented such valuations. The objective of this study is to estimate the total economic value of the Shadegan Wetland staking into account its use and non-use values. To achieve this goal, the direct use value was first calculated using the market-based method. Subsequently, the indirect use value, option value, non-use value (existence value) were estimated suing the method of choice experiment. Based on the results of this study the annual direct use, indirect use, option, and non-use values of this wetland were estimated to be 187104167494, 58568264206752217 and 387974436448 US Dollars respectively. Also, based on the calculations performed, over 50 thousand jobs has been created by the Shadegan Wetland and the total value of it accounts for 7.1 percent of GDP of Khuzestan province.