Green Accounting Bibliography Entry
Adger, W. Neil; Brown, K.; Cervigni, R. and Moran, D. "The functions and services of Mexico's forests." In: Pearce, D.W.; Pearce, C. and Palmer, C. (eds.) Valuing Environmental Benefits: Case Studies from the Developing World. 2002, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
Conclusion: Forests are multi-functional ecosystems with numerous uses by local people and more distant beneficiaries. Failure to recognize and account for these multiple uses have led to the loss of forests observed on the global scale. In economic terms, it is the public good nature of the environmental services which leads to this detrimental resource use. This chapter has demonstrated the economic techniques for valuing these non-marketed services and has applied these techniques to the Mexican forest case. The results show an annual lower bound value of the services of Mexico's forests to be in the order of US$ 4 billion. These values stem from the non-marketed services provided by non-consumptive use; from future potential uses of the genetic resources and from pure existence values; and the largest proportion of economic value coming from the functional values of hydrological and carbon cycling.
Posted by Gernot Wagner on 1/01/2002.