The Value of Water-An Assessment of a Direct Application of Ecosystem Service Conceptions

The Value of Water-An Assessment of a Direct Application of Ecosystem Service Conceptions

In this blog I will develop the discussion of Wetland Ecosystems in Africa, whilst more directly combining this with Ecosystem Service conceptions. This will be through looking at an academic paper which uses valuation techniques to discuss irrigation projects, showing how the concept can be applied in an African development context. Further, it highlights some of the limitations and counter-arguments discussed in an earlier blog.

In ‘The Value of Water’ Barbier and Thompson combine hydrological models and economic valuations to predict the likely opportunity cost of upstream damming and irrigation on the downstream net benefits, within the Hadejia-Jama'are River Basin in north-eastern Nigeria. This is particularly interesting in light of recognition of importance of wetlands, a stance which their results support.

Figure 1-Hadejia-Jama'are Basin

They find that the reduction in floodplain areas from many of these schemes lead to the loss of direct use values that local populations gain, crop production, fuelwood and fishing. They find that these often outweigh the benefits from planned or implemented irrigated agriculture upstream, with values both per hectare and per metre cubed of water significantly less in irrigated areas than in the floodplains they reduce. For example in the Hadejia-Jama'are wetlands net present values for above direct uses found to be around $34-51 per Ha and $10-15 per 10m³ of floodwater, whilst in the Kano River Irrigation Project the agricultural production benefits are only $20-31 per Ha, or $0.03-0.04 per 10m³. This means that many of the schemes overlook the importance of floodplain benefits, utilising the water in irrigation schemes without the economic output of floodplain areas. This can be seen as highlighting the usefulness of ecosystem services as a method of guiding development policy and techniques.

However, the flaws in the paper also highlight some of the issues in ecosystem services and their underlying logic. Firstly, its economic valuation methodology is somewhat limited, focusing solely on direct use values, both for the irrigation areas as well as the floodplains. This means that a huge range of other human economic uses are not included. In the floodplain areas aspects such as the seasonal role as pasture, scarcity mitigation and tourism, whilst the importance of the water for drinking, sanitation and industry are mentioned but not modeled for upstream usage. The importance of these sources is undeniably hard to quantify. For example the impacts of water on health are dependent on a range of factors beyond total volume provided, such as whether piped supplies are standing pumps or in-home, individuals levels of education and waiting times, and so perhaps can never be expect to be adequately quantified.

Beyond this, the focus is purely on human usages of the water resources, and overlooks the natural and environmental importance of the river. Again, although there are brief mentions of the floodplains importance to migratory birds, this isn’t factored into valuations, and shows the anthropocentric focus of the valuation, as is the case with many such valuations. Further, it also highlights the importance of complexity in these valuations, which are often hard to achieve.

Despite these criticisms, the paper offers an important stance in showing the need to recognise the downstream impacts of schemes. It illustrates many of the arguments made in Schroter et al on the role ES concepts are best placed to play, advising and guiding policy, with its limitations accepted but nonetheless utilised to help inform decisions.