UNCCD 2nd Scientific Conference

1. Economic Assessment of Desertification, Sustainable Land Management
and Resilience of Arid, Semi-arid, and Dry Sub-humid Areas
UNCCD 2nd Scientific Conference
Plenary Session 2
10 April 2013
COSTS AND BENEFITS OF
POLICIES AND PRACTICES ADDRESSING
LAND DEGRADATION AND DROUGHT IN THE
DRYLANDS
Lene.Poulsen@gmail.com
1| Slide

2. FOCUS AND STRUCTURE OF WHITE PAPER 2
• Economic Assessment of Policies and Practices
aiming at Sustainable Dryland and Drought Risk
Management
• Resilience as a means
• Ecosystem Services Approach as a means
• Communication among scientists, practitioners, and
policy makers
• Recommendations for focus of future research
• Structure: 1/Technical discussion (introduction,
valuations, accounting systems, policies and
practices, recommendations), 2/Examples of
frameworks and concrete assessments
2| Slide

3. DRYLANDS: COMPLEX SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
• Heterogeneity – multi-scale
• Interconnection – Interdependency - Feedbacks
• Non-linearity of causation
• Dynamic and Adaptive
• Emergence
• Thresholds - Phase transitions
Challenges in understanding the functioning of complex systems, incl.
the inter- & intraactions of social, biological, and climate drivers
3| Slide

4. MANAGING COMPLEX SYSTEMS
• Uncertainty
• Unpredictability
• Boundaries: social (physical, space), ecological, processes-
products-outcomes (activities-services-benefits), time, space
• How to define thresholds
• How to recognize slow regime shift
• Substituability
• Identifying feedbacks
Specific requirements for effective management of complexity, incl. economic
assessments
4| Slide

5. ECOSYSTEM SERVICES APPROACH
• Linking social and ecological – benefits people obtain
• Good communication tool – potential to capture
externalities
• Differing classifications – challenges of synergistic services
and tradeoffs
• Boundary challenges
• Challenges of predictive analyses
5| Slide

6. RESILIENCE OF COMPLEX SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
- DRYLANDS -
• Capacities to survive, adapt, and follow a positive trajectory
in the face of external and/or internal changes, even
catastrophic incidents, and rebound strengthened and more
resourceful while retaining essentially the same functions.
– Continuous and dynamic process – all phases from pre-
stressor, during the stress, post-stress, and in between stresses
– Proactive and reactive abilities vis-à-vis change
– Can be fostered through interventions and policies
– Need for constant monitoring, analyzing, learning, and
rolling planning.
i.e. resilience management is a means to achieve sustainable drýland and
drought risk management, incl. ZNLD
6| Slide

7. MANAGEABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF RESILIENCE
• Acceptance of uncertainty
• Adaptive with a good learning capacity
• Multidirectional connectedness and diversity
• Coping capacity
• Address critical feedbacks
• Flexible and innovative with redundancy
• Social capital
• Transformative capacity
• Good governance
Can be assessed through quantitative and qualitative indicators and
with clear definitions (whom, what, when, where)
7| Slide

8. ECONOMIC VALUATION OF SUSTAINABLE DRYLAND AND
DROUGHT RISK MANAGEMENT
• Any economic valuation requires measurements – what is
being valued?
• Can we value assets and services that are not marketed?
• Environmental economists have developed a number of
non-market market techniques based on individual
preferences; either revealed / observed or stated /
expressed
• Total Economic Value (use and non-use) – reflect ecosystem
services approach
• Environmental Valuation Reference Inventory (EVRI) - global
repository of environmental valuations (4,000) aiming at
benefits transfer
8| Slide

9. COST-BENEFIT ANALYSES AND ALTERNATIVE METHODS
• Mainstream economics – summation of individual
preferences
• Does not capture the complex system nature
• Good communication value – compulsory for funding of
public investments in many countries
• Alternative methods: e.g., safe minimum standard
9| Slide

10. ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING
• SEEA (topic of other panelist) – work in progress
• Experimenting ecosystem services
• Need to harmonize with UNCCD
• Countries with low statistical capacity: DevInfo
10| Slide

11. VALUATION OF POLICIES AND PRACTICES FOR SUSTAINABLE
DRYLAND AND DROUGHT RISK MANAGEMENT
• Plurality and methodological diversity in assessments of
policies and practices: participatory approaches,
sophisticated models, etc.
• Models often developed independent from policies,
• Some well documented new policies: markets for ecosystem
services, adaptation to climate change
11| Slide

12. STATUS OF RESEARCH
• Increasing focus on transdisciplinary research,
• Resilience: trendy concept – lack of definitions – differing definitions
– some interesting framework development for resilience
assessments of SESs, incl. economic assessments and policy
assessments,
• Ecosystem Services Approach: classification challenges – principles
used for assessments – identification of service bundles – limited
success stories for policy application (water sector),
• Economic assessments: mainly use of mainstream economics but
some interesting developments for system approach – new
frameworks for policy assessments - great use of benefits transfer –
important body of research and assessments from drylands but not
necessarily with a dryland focus
• Communication: mainly information sharing and little
communication – presentations without confidence levels –
differing use of concepts.
Challenge: complexity at all levels: subject matter – managing and
governance structures
12| Slide

13. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FOCUS OF FUTURE RESEARCH FOR A
GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF COMPLEX DRYLAND SYSTEMS
• modeling of the dynamic relationship between dryland system
elements,
• feedback loops,
• resilience indicators,
• identification of potential thresholds´,
• identification of bottlenecks for resilience assessments of the
dryland systems,
• role of socio-economic-political factors shaping economic
impact,
• effective monitoring, organization, and planning of resilience
management,
• uncertainty cascade,
• drought risk management.
13| Slide

14. More Information:
Poulsen, Lene, “Costs and Benefits of
Policies and Practices Addressing Land Degradation
and Drought in the Drylands”
White Paper II. UN CCD 2nd Scientific Conference.
UNCCD Secretariat, Bonn
http://2sc.unccd.int
THANKS!
14| Slide