Oroquieta City Households’ Willingness to Pay for Coastal Biodiversity Conservation

Julie Carl P Ureta,Rodel D Lasco,Asa Jose U Sajise,Margaret Mejorada Calderon

doi:10.5539/jsd.v7n5p82

Abstract

Over the years, ecosystem services have been undervalued since regarded as public good. Low appreciation on the benefits provided by the ecosystem has led to the overutilization of resources, causing negative impacts to biodiversity and environment. In the Philippines, biodiversity conservation has not been given enough priority, and has been beset with various problems such as insufficient funding. This usually applies in coastal communities, where majority of community members have low capacity to contribute monetarily. However, the rising occurrence of climate-related phenomena also increases the awareness of communities and their willingness to contribute to environmental conservation activities such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). This study aimed to value the coastal conservation activities from households of Oroquieta City through contingent valuation method. The computed mean willingness to pay for coastal conservation using parametric estimation was PhP 30.39, wherein the estimated mean willingness to pay translates to 0.23% of their average income. Potential revenue to be collected annually could amount to PhP 1.8 million. In five years, the total collection could reach PhP 9 million, which is also substantial to make the biodiversity conservation activities sustainable. The estimation of this study could serve as basis for implementation of PES in the the coastal communities for sustainable biodiversity conservation.

Highlights

Ecosystem services are usually valued only through its direct use or the provisioning services
The rising occurrence of climate-related phenomena increases the awareness of communities and their willingness to contribute to environmental conservation activities such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)
The remaining 7% rely on pensions and remittances from OFW family members

Summary

Introduction

Ecosystem services are usually valued only through its direct use or the provisioning services. Other types of services such as supporting, regulating and cultural are often less appreciated and undervalued. Undervaluation of the ecosystem tends to lead to faster degradation compared to rate of ecosystem recovery. Due to the rapid global development, ecosystem services which were previously provided by nature for free are becoming scarcer (Wunder, 2005). This insight gave rise to the concept of payments for ecosystem services (PES) which recognizes the trade off of using the ecosystem services with corresponding compensation. Increasing economic development pushes the ecosystem services into critical state while biodiversity conservation efforts are not catching up with the markets’ exploitation of resource

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