Willingness of upstream and downstream resource managers to engage in compensation schemes for environmental services

Chapika Sangkapitux,Nongkran Pramoon,Worapong Polkongkaew,Sakdamnoen Nonkiti,Ke Nanthasen,Andreas Neef

doi:10.18352/bmgn-lchr.123

Chapika Sangkapitux, Nongkran Pramoon + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.18352/bmgn-lchr.123

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Abstract

Providing compensation for agricultural conservation practices adopted by upstream farmers is still an alien concept in the Thai political context. The governance of common-pool natural resources, such as forest and water, has traditionally been under the control of powerful government line agencies, while the contribution of local communities to natural resource conservation have been hardly recognized by policy-makers. Drawing on a case study in Mae Sa watershed, Chiang Mai province, northern Thailand, this paper discusses the potential of developing compensation schemes in a socio-political context where upland farmers – mostly belonging to ethnic minority groups – tend to be considered a threat to the natural resource base rather than providers of environmental services. Based on data obtained from 371 households in the upstream communities and 151 households in the downstream communities of the watershed, upstream resource managers’ willingness to accept compensation for the conservation measures and downstream resource managers’ willingness to pay for water resource improvements were estimated through the use of choice experiments. Results from the study suggest that downstream resource managers would be willing to provide on average nearly 1% of their annual income for a substantial improvement of the quantity and quality of water resources, which could be achieved by compensating upstream farmers’ change of their agricultural systems towards more environment-friendly practices. Both willingness to pay of downstream respondents and willingness of upstream resource managers to accept compensation were positively correlated with age, education, participation in environmental conservation activities and previous experiences with droughts and/or erosion. The paper concludes that there is a clear potential for establishing compensation schemes for provision of environmental services in northern Thai watersheds. The important policy implication is to get both upstream and downstream resource managers involved in the institutional design of compensation schemes.

Highlights

There have been rising concerns that upland watersheds in Mainland Southeast Asia deteriorate at a rapid pace due to a variety of reasons, with inappropriate agricultural practices among the most often cited (El-Swaify and Evans 1999; FAO 1999; Kunstadter 2007)
As downstream residents are the immediate beneficiaries of sustainable agricultural practices, the principle that upstream farmers need to be compensated for their losses when managing water and land in more sustainable and ‘downstreamfriendly’ ways has been increasingly accepted by academics, NGOs, donors and – more reluctantly – by national policy makers (e.g. Tomich et al 2004; Swallow et al 2005)
The signs of the parameters are consistent with theory and a priori expectations

Summary

Introduction

There have been rising concerns that upland watersheds in Mainland Southeast Asia deteriorate at a rapid pace due to a variety of reasons, with inappropriate agricultural practices among the most often cited (El-Swaify and Evans 1999; FAO 1999; Kunstadter 2007). High demand for irrigation during the dry season, and cultivation of annual crops without erosion control measures on sloping lands bring about problems of Willingness of upstream and downstream resource managers reliability of water supply, loss of topsoil and contamination of water quality affecting downstream users. To address these problems, the adoption of soil and water conservation practices by upstream communities have been discussed as a potential solution. As downstream residents are the immediate beneficiaries of sustainable agricultural practices, the principle that upstream farmers need to be compensated for their losses when managing water and land in more sustainable and ‘downstreamfriendly’ ways has been increasingly accepted by academics, NGOs, donors and – more reluctantly – by national policy makers (e.g. Tomich et al 2004; Swallow et al 2005)

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