According to the definition given by the Ramsar Convention Manual (2013) “wetlands are areas where water is the primary factor controlling the environment and the associated plant and animal life” and it recognizes the existences of five major types of wetlands (Ramsar, 2013):
1) marine(coastal wetlands including coastal lagoons, rocky shores, and coral reefs)
2) estuarine(including deltas, tidal marshes, and mangrove swamps)
3) lacustrine (wetlands associated with lakes)
4) riverine(wetlands along rivers and streams)
5) palustrine (meaning “marshy” – marshes, swamps and bogs)
Also, according to Ramsar (2013), wetlands are among the world’s most productive environments and its importance has being documented greatly in recent years. Since they are a fundamental piece for the development of the areas around them, it’s become important to properly value its environmental functions and services, and to acknowledge the benefits associated with their restoration and conservation.
Economic valuation gives us a basic tool for making decisions on environmental resources. The decision to protect and/or maintain these environments should be compared with the monetary results of alternative development to those spaces. The monetary valuation process is known as the attempt to assign a monetary value to goods and services provided by environmental resources (Barbier, 1997).
Since the goods and services provided by wetlands are not traded in markets, it is necessary to conduct a joint assessment by the following three methods proposed by the Ramsar Convention (Barbier, 1997):
1) Impact Analysis: measures the impact of damage to the wetland by specific external source.
2) Partial evaluation: evaluation of two more options for using wetlan...
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...Restoration of Damage to Natural Resources for the Purpose of Environmental Liability, European Commission, Directorate-General Environment.
• Ramsar Convention Secretariat, (2013). The Ramsar Convention Manual: a guide to the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971), 6th ed.
• Lambert, A. (2003). Economic valuation of wetlands: an important component of wetland management strategies at the river basin scale. Ramsar bureau http://www. ramsar. org/features/features_econ_val1. htm.
• Schuyt, K., & Brander, L. (2004). The economic values of the world's wetlands. WWF.
• Barbier, E. B., Acreman, M., & Knowler, D. (1997). Economic valuation of wetlands: a guide for policy makers and planners. Gland, Switzerland: Ramsar Convention Bureau.
• Jantzen, J. (2006). The economic value of natural and environmental resources. TME, Institute for Applied Environmental Economics.
The first mitigation banking guidance was released in 1995 by the EPA and Corps of Engineers. The most recent wetland mitigation banking guidance was released in 2008. The idea behind both wetland mitigation banking and conservation banking is to provide compensation for unavoidable impacts to resources prior to the environmental impact taking place (FWS, 2003). Based on the rules set forth in section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act and section 404 of the Clean Water Act, wetland impacts are reduced by using the following sequence of steps: avoiding impacts, minimizing impacts, and as a last resort, mitigating for impacts. Although the Corps has enforced a mitigation policy to reg...
The Badu Wetlands are located within the Bicentennial Park which is located in the Parramatta River Basin approximately 12km west of the CBD. It receives slightly less rainfall and higher average temperatures than that of the CBD (central business district). The latitude of Bicentennial Park is 3350’ and the longitude is 15304’ with an altitude of 0-10 meters above seas level (m.a.s.l )The average temperature of the park is a warm temperate eastern marine. The size of the park is 100 hectares with the wetland size being 58 hectares, showing that the wetlands cover more than half of the park.
Our system today is inherently opposed to developing a relationship with the land because it depends on evidence in terms of monetary worth. “One basic weakness in a conservationist system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value” (246). How much is a wildflower or a songbird worth? Therefore, this infinitely complex ecological system, which depends upon an unforeseeable amount of community-shaping mechanisms, tends to become increasingly diseased. “It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial values, but that are (as we know) essential to its healthy functioning” (252).
Westfields, a medium sized wetland region, is located on the outskirts of Limerick city and within the floodplain of the River Shannon (CAAS (Environmental Services) Ltd., 1999). Wetland regions are broadly defined within the Ramsar Convention (1971, 1), as, “areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt including areas of marine water, the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres.” Identified as some of the most diverse habitats on earth, wetlands are also under severe threat, with a “10% decrease in their area occurring worldwide between the years 1990 and 2006” (CORINE, 2006). Westfields is no exception. Known worldwide for the diverse flora and fauna, in particular avifauna, that are present, the area has seen a dramatic decrease in size from its traditional expansive domain to a present area of twenty-six hectares. Thus, this essay aims to examine in detail the biogeographic merits of these declining wetland regions in particular Westfields, record the current condition of this particular wetland, and explore potential ideas for future conservation.
Today, with our understanding of how fragile the coastal areas are, there are many study and restoration projects underway. Since the implementation of the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) in 1990, there have been 151 coastal restorat...
The Everglades, classified as a wetland or a "transition zone" can support plant and animal life unlike any other place. Wetlands are an important resource for endangered species and "that more than one third of the United States' threatened and endangered species live only in wetlands." Says Elaine Mao, the author of Wetlands and Habitat Loss. People have started to notice the importance and the role of wetlands like the Everglades and how they are valuable and essential for ecosystems to live. Wetlands provide so many kinds of plants, mammals, reptiles, birds, and
...n, the Louisiana wetlands are an extremely valuable asset to the State of Louisiana and the United States. The continual loss of Louisiana wetlands has the potential to have an immensely negative effect on the economy at a state and national level. Over 2 million people live in the Louisiana coastal parishes (Field et al., 1991). The majority of people living on the Louisiana coast make their living from things that are directly related to the wetlands. The Louisiana wetlands make up the largest wetland community in America and is being lost at a rate greater than the other wetland communities in the country. The suggested strategies that are being taken into consideration could be helpful but it seems that the State of Louisiana is not as concerned as it should be given the future consequences and much like climate change coastal erosion is not being taken serious.
This paper introduces the environmental concerns of the loss of coastal wetlands. The paper will discuss the significance of wetlands and the devastation that is occurring because of human activity. Wetlands are an essential element of our environment both ecological and societal; conservation will be essential for the preservation of these precious ecosystems.
Rudel, K. Thomas, J. Timmons Roberts and JoAnn Carmin. 2011. “Political Economy of the Environment.” Annual Review of Sociology 37: 221-238.
...hrow off the balance of the ecosystem. Different marine biodiversity requires different types of ways to conserve them, some need government and some do not. Depending on the different types of technology of public goods supplied, there are different ways to and different methods to preserve the marine biodiversity. We have looked at the different types of externalities that are associated with impure public goods (in this case marine biodiversity). We also looked at the three types of technology of public good supplies and see why it affects marine biodiversity. Lastly, we have discussed the incentives to conserve marine biodiversity, both private solutions and public solutions. To put it briefly, “wildlife exploitation and conservation involves various costs and benefits, which should all be taken into account to achieve an optimal outcome.” (Bulte, 1)
Wick, K. & Bulte, E. (2006). Contesting Resources - Rent Seeking, Conflict and the Natural Resource Curse. Public Choice, 128, 457–476.
Between 300 and 400 million people worldwide live in areas near wetlands and depend on them. Wetlands are mechanisms for treatment of wastewater are extremely efficient because they absorb chemicals and filter pollutants and sediments. Half the world's wetlands have disappeared due to urbanization and industrial development. The only way to achieve sustainable development and poverty reduction will be through better management of rivers and wetlands, and the land they drain and drain as well as through increased investment in them.
First of all, one climate’s change is due to the drying of the marshes in Iraq. The marshes is a wetland area located in southern Iraq. Today, less than 10% of the original marsh remains. While some of the marsh declines can be traced to dams built upstream in Turkey, Syria and Iran, the decline accelerated dramatically in the early 1990s.Due to a massive drainage project. Lately, the past government shut all of the dams on the waterways, bringing on desertification of the area. There is an absence of Horticulture and Fisheries in the Iraq district. For this situation, the administration must open the dams to water all the area and dispose of desertification.
Leal, Donald R., and Holly Lippke Fretwell. "Users Must Pay to Save Our National Parks." Consumers' Research Magazine, August 1997. First Search. Online. 12 Oct. 1998.
Economic valuation is an important component of environmental policy, although it is difficult to affix a cost on the environment and ecosystem services, it is a measurement that is relevant to most in society humans. Therefore, economic tools may be useful in reinforcing the importance of maintaining biodiversity and preserving fragile ecosystems.