Work package D

The Work package D will play a crucial role for economic valuation. In a first stage a range of so-called value transfer functions will be developed to support the rapid assessment of the 4 MAB sites.

In the rapid assessment willingness-to-pay data will be gathered and tested in the stakeholder workshops.

A rapid assessment will be made for the 4 sites using benefit transfer valuation and in addition a more in depth valuation using contingent valuation will be executed for Lake Tana (Wilson and Hoehn, 2006).

In the Lake Tana site the rapid assessment will be followed by slower, but higher quality methods through the VLIR IUC project in order to assess the quality of the rapid approaches. This additional valuation exercise will also be used to test the robustness and to complement the benefit transfer valuation.

In practice WP D will be applied through the different phases of WP. B and C. Because of the importance of this work package, we invited no less than 3 experts in the field of ecological economics (1 partner and 2 optional partners) to complement the biological, ecological, biodiversity, hydrological and carbon stock expertise.

The valuation context will certainly very much influence the way the assessment is done. This should be conducive to formulate first recommendations to scenarios of reward mechanisms which could lead to PES systems.