Suchergebnisse

AbstractUrban green spaces are primarily recognized for their ability to provide opportunities for recreational activities. However, these spaces also offer a broader range of ecosystem services and benefits, which are often overlooked by city inhabitants and the government. This paper utilizes choice experiments to estimate the benefits derived from ecosystem services provided by undeveloped natural areas and urban parks in San José, Costa Rica. We evaluate three ecosystem services provided by undeveloped natural areas, namely habitats for animals and plants, hydrological control, and recreation. Additionally, we estimate the benefits derived from the restoration and construction of three types of urban parks: neighborhood, metropolitan, and central district parks. The results demonstrate that individuals place significant value on the restoration of undeveloped natural areas and urban parks. The findings also indicate variations in the valuation of ecosystem services between undeveloped natural areas and different park types, as well as among households.

We examine the role of individual discount rates in energy efficiency decisions using evidence from an extensive survey of US homeowners to elicit preferences for energy efficiency and cash flows over time. We find considerable heterogeneity in individual discount rates. We also find that individual time preferences systematically influence willingness to invest in energy efficiency, as measured through product choices, required payback periods, and energy efficiency tax credit claims. Education is a key driver of individual discount rates. Our findings highlight the importance of individual discount rates to understanding energy efficiency investments, the energy-efficiency gap, and policy evaluation.

AbstractEmpirical assessment of relationships between land use and land cover and drinking water chemical treatment cost is lacking in developing countries. This study is conducted to assess the impact of forest and non‐forest cover on water purification chemical costs in Ethiopia. A panel fixed effects regression model was applied and analysed at the watershed, upstream parts of the watershed, and different buffer distances ranging from 2.5 to 30 kilometers. Findings indicated that forest cover both at watershed and upstream level has a significant effect on water treatment chemical cost. Result showed that watershed forest cover contributes significantly to reduction of treatment chemical costs as compared to non‐forest cover, but the contribution to the reduction of treatment cost declines as the buffer distance increases. Thus, the findings highlighted that protecting forest enhances water quality and reduces the chemical costs incurred to treat potable water.

AbstractThis study explores a spatial piecewise approach for the hedonic valuation of the area of urban green space at different distances from a property, using a rich census dataset collected from Beijing. We explore three novel empirical strategies that improve the identification of the spatial boundary or threshold distance within which green space is capitalised into housing prices. We first delineated a series of concentric circles surrounding each property and measured the area of green space within each doughnut-shaped ring. We next estimated the hedonic price using three methods. The first is a regression spline model combined with a machine learning type of model selection procedure which objectively selects the exact location of the threshold distance that optimises the model's predictive performance. The second is a novel matching algorithm that minimises covariate imbalance for a continuous treatment variable (i.e., the area of green space) to provide stronger causal evidence on the hedonic prices of green space at different distances. The third is a spatial difference-in-differences approach that further accounts for endogeneity bias associated with unobserved factors. For our dataset, we found that housing prices are more likely to be affected by green space within a 1 km radius.

Mangroves are among the most threatened and rapidly disappearing natural environments worldwide. In addition to supporting a wide range of other ecological and economic functions, mangroves store considerable carbon. Here, we consider the global economic potential for protecting mangroves based exclusively on their carbon. We develop unique high-resolution global estimates (5′ grid, about 9 × 9 km) of the projected carbon emissions from mangrove loss and the cost of avoiding the emissions. Using these spatial estimates, we derive global and regional supply curves (marginal cost curves) for avoided emissions. Under a broad range of assumptions, we find that the majority of potential emissions from mangroves could be avoided at less than $10 per ton of CO2. Given the recent range of market price for carbon offsets and the cost of reducing emissions from other sources, this finding suggests that protecting mangroves for their carbon is an economically viable proposition. Political-economy considerations related to the ability of doing business in developing countries, however, can severely limit the supply of offsets and increases their price per ton. We also find that although a carbon-focused conservation strategy does not automatically target areas most valuable for biodiversity, implementing a biodiversity-focused strategy would only slightly increase the costs.

International audience ; The Convention on Biological Diversity's post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will probably include a goal to stabilize and restore the status of species. Its delivery would be facilitated by making the actions required to halt and reverse species loss spatially explicit. Here, we develop a species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric that is scalable across species, threats and geographies. STAR quantifies the contributions that abating threats and restoring habitats in specific places offer towards reducing extinction risk. While every nation can contribute towards halting biodiversity loss, Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, Madagascar and Brazil combined have stewardship over 31% of total STAR values for terrestrial amphibians, birds and mammals. Among actions, sustainable crop production and forestry dominate, contributing 41% of total STAR values for these taxonomic groups. Key Biodiversity Areas cover 9% of the terrestrial surface but capture 47% of STAR values. STAR could support governmental and non-state actors in quantifying their contributions to meeting science-based species targets within the framework.

International audience ; The Convention on Biological Diversity's post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will probably include a goal to stabilize and restore the status of species. Its delivery would be facilitated by making the actions required to halt and reverse species loss spatially explicit. Here, we develop a species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric that is scalable across species, threats and geographies. STAR quantifies the contributions that abating threats and restoring habitats in specific places offer towards reducing extinction risk. While every nation can contribute towards halting biodiversity loss, Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, Madagascar and Brazil combined have stewardship over 31% of total STAR values for terrestrial amphibians, birds and mammals. Among actions, sustainable crop production and forestry dominate, contributing 41% of total STAR values for these taxonomic groups. Key Biodiversity Areas cover 9% of the terrestrial surface but capture 47% of STAR values. STAR could support governmental and non-state actors in quantifying their contributions to meeting science-based species targets within the framework.