Valuation and financing of National Parks in South and South East Asia: a meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

Protected Areas, the mainstay of biodiversity conservation, are facing an unprecedented threat of being exploited, making their conservation not only crucial but also urgent. As the looming threat does not leave scope for expensive and time-consuming surveys, this paper intends to add to the existing literature and to the cause of biodiversity conservation by undertaking the first ever multinational Meta-Analysis of National Park (NP) valuation studies in South and South East Asia. The relative importance of study-, site-, and socioeconomic characteristics is estimated through a meta-regression and suggestions for redesigning pricing strategies to capture the unrealized consumer surplus are presented. Key results highlight the importance of the place of residence, area of the NP, and GDP per capita in explaining variation in NP value. Furthermore, taking note of the havoc wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the study highlights the need to diversify the funding base for NP management in order to ensure sustainable financing by presenting country-specific examples.

KEYWORDS:

• Contingent Valuation
• meta-analysis
• National Parks
• non-market valuation
• sustainable financing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has developed six Protected Area Management Categories that define PAs according to their management objectives. Out of these six categories, National Parks have been defined as Category II type of PAs.

2 TCM is a demand-based model used to estimate use values for recreation activities and changes in these use values associated with changes in environmental quality. It is based on the observation that expenditure, in terms of both time and money, is necessary to take part in any recreational activity. Hence, travel cost is seen as a proxy of access price to a recreational site.

3 CVM is a stated preference approach that asks respondents how they would behave if market for environmental goods existed. It is the most standardized method of non-market valuation with wide range of applicability and is generally considered superior to most other techniques based on its ability to capture both use and non-use values.

4 The Biodiversity and Habitat issue category assesses countries’ actions toward retaining natural ecosystems and protecting the full range of biodiversity within their borders. It consists of seven indicators: terrestrial biome protection (weighted for the national and global rarity of biomes), marine protected areas, Protected Areas Representativeness Index, Species Habitat Index, Species Protection Index, and Biodiversity Habitat Index (EPI, 2020).

5 Detailed description of these tools is beyond the scope of this study. IUCN’s report titled ‘Closing the Gap’ can be referred to for the same (IUCN ESARO, 2020).