Fig. 2: Values of ecosystem services provided by forests in Vietnam. (Source Authors). Shapefiles retrieved from: Viet Nam – Subnational Administrative Boundaries – Humanitarian Data Exchange (humdata.org)

CGIAR Jan. 9 2024

By Upeksha Hettiarachchi, Wei Zhang, and Kristin Davis, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

A conservative estimate suggests forests provide services worth $25.78 billion for Kenya and $35.60 billion in Vietnam annually in 2022 US dollars. The findings provide a crucial defense against deforestation and degradation because of the costs associated with these threats. While more information is needed to understand the full value of forests’ ecosystem services, these estimates can be of great utility to policymakers and nature-positive decision-making.

The earth’s ecosystems are critical for our survival and quality of life. Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human wellbeing. Our recent study estimates per hectare values of ecosystem services provided by forests in Kenya and Vietnam based on a systematic literature review. These countries have received much attention from the research and development communities for their biodiversity significance, opportunities for scaling nature-positive solutions, climate and poverty challenges, and political will.

This analysis adopts the conceptual and analytical frameworks provided by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). Both frameworks provide a structure to collect standardized data on ecosystem service valuation. The categorizations recognize that ecosystem services are wide and varied, and cover a large spectrum of ecosystem services, including provisioning, regulating, cultural, supporting services and additional general services.

To estimate the values of ecosystem services in areas lacking data, we used “value transfer”. This method involves using economic values from one site to estimate the value of a different site with similar characteristics. In this study, we aggregated the values for ecosystem services across prior studies reviewed and applied the values to the entire forest area in Kenya and Vietnam.

Tree cover extent data sourced from the Global Forest Watch (GFW) provided a reliable proxy for forest cover, which was used to calculate the total value of ecosystem services provided by forests in Kenya and Vietnam.

See https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/ecosystem-services-may-provide-large-economic-values-in-forests-in-kenya-and-vietnam/