Economic valuation of ecosystem services in agricultural systems forests of the Colombian Amazonian piedmont

Abstract

Forests provide ecosystem services (ES) that confer comparative advantages to the land market. The aim of research was to value forests that support ES in agricultural systems located in the Colombian Amazon piedmont. The hedonic price method was used to observe the influence of the forest on the price of farms and the contingent valuation method was used to find urban inhabitants’ Willingness to Pay (WTP) for the conservation of the forests that guarantee these ES. Landowners identified carbon storage as the forest’s main ES, but the price of the land did not reflect the economic benefits derived from these: the marginal WTP was - $ 964.4 dollars, a value that represents the opportunity cost of land use. However, the WTP per household was 0.33 dollars per year, a value that shows potential in the implementation of environmental conservation policy.

Keywords

• econometrics
• climate change
• forest conservation
• environmental policy
• land use
• economic evaluation