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176A, Vivekananda Park, Mukundapur
Kolkata-700099, West Bengal, India
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You may send an email
ecosystemservices2023@gmail.com
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Contact Number
+91 3379637451
Upshot
Course curriculum on ‘Science of pricing ecosystem services’
- i. The course curriculum on ‘Science of pricing ecosystem services’ has been premeditated after several consultative multi-stakeholder regional workshops. The characteristics of the curriculum are mentioned below.
- ii. Integration of ESs in the curriculum from the basic level (school) of the education system with the knowledge of various environmental, economic and social tools.
- iii. The approach and language of the course will be place-based
- iv. Course curriculum has a timeframe with definite objectives for each target group.
- v. It is a practical credit-based system that can be implemented along with the present systems of universities and colleges.
- vi. Opportunity for employability, achievable and implementable goals will be set along with promotional activities
- vii. This course will empower people, to know about their rights and existing socio-political system and to augment their preparedness to defend their lives or to defend the ESs.
- viii. Mythological case studies of this course will emphasize learning the cultural services of natural resources
- ix. For regulatory services, an assessment of health of the ecosystem will be done using proper scientific methodologies
- x. A virtual platform will facilitate the interactive interface to get inputs from different stakeholders
- xi. Cross-sectoral policies linked with ESs will be incorporated and the synergies and trade-offs will be addressed
- xii. This course will be aligned with the national educational policies of every country
- xiii. 3-day dedicated course with proper mass communication strategies for political personnel and scientific communication strategies for students and researchers associated with small 2-3 min documentary films on various case studies in different languages (circulated in mass media also)
Valuation methodology
- i. For every category of services (provisioning, regulatory, supporting or cultural) for an ecosystem, 4 categories of empirical values are assigned.
- ii. All the stakeholders and their opinions in that ecosystem are considered from various surveys.
- iii. Relevant sub-services are chosen based on specificity, functionality, and fruitful impact for each category of services (4).
- iv. Each stakeholder provides a particular weightage value to each sub-service according to his or her discretion and perception of the importance and relevance of the impact of that particular sub-service.
- v. Those values are tabulated and the highest and lowest value of every sub-service is noted.
- vi. Calculation of collective aggregate is done to obtain maximum and minimum collective aggregate.
- vii. Every sub-service has to be evaluated in the context of positive or negative impact on that ecosystem or both. The final cost of that service can be obtained after combining it with the enrichment (positive) or detrimental (negative) cost per unit area to that ecosystem. If the final value is positive, then it can be considered as the investment that is committed to that ecosystem as it has a revenue value of the same amount. If the value is negative, then that amount needs to be invested by the global community as a grant to conserve that ecosystem to stabilize and obtain a positive value from the service.
- viii. Willingness to pay or accept and range of negotiation: If the value of conserving the ecosystem is considered to be high enough for the global community to invest, the community has to come to a negotiation point. So, the pricing and the values have to align in one particular scale of willingness to pay or accept.
- xiv. The entire process is to be repeated for every service and its sub-services through participatory methods and then tabulated and accumulated to get the final value to conserve the ecosystem. Thereafter it can be pitched to the global community for intervention or investment.