Enhancing the Economics for Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity (ECO-BEST)

BACKGROUND

Despite covering only 3% of the earth’s total surface, South-East Asia (SEA) is home to 20 % of species of plants and animals. Common land and water borders have allowed the countries to share many species that are biologically diverse from the rest of the world. 1,312 out of 64,800 species are endangered. There will be massive decline and extinction in SEA, if governments and their citizens fail to protect and conserve the region’s biodiversity. Over 500 million people could be affected. A number of documents prove that the traditional ways of biodiversity conservation, the restrictions on the use of natural resources and the schemes of nature protections as well as the existing administrational structure no longer meet the pressure on natural resources, nor make the populations profit from ecosystem services.

The core deficiency is seen in presenting the economic value of ecosystem services and biodiversity, which would allow for financing biodiversity conservation, guaranteeing the sustainability of ecosystem services, including natural resources use.

OBJECTIVES AND APPROACHES

Under the “Thematic Programme for Environment and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources, including Engergy” funded by EU, GIZ cooperates with Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) and Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) to implement a four-year project named “Enhancing the economics for ecosystem services in South-East Asia: Instruments for biodiversity conservation through payment mechanisms for ecosystem services in designated areas in Thailand as a model for South-East Asian countries”. The objective is to reduce land biodiversity loss in South-East Asian countries for the benefit of local communities.
The project will strengthen biodiversity conservation systems in pilot areas as a SEA model for effective management and innovative financing schemes through improving institutional capacities for Protected Area in selected pilot areas in Thailand and Laos. The intervention aims also to improve framework conditions and initiate new categories of designated areas and promote best practices in the management of ecosystem service and payment systems through national and regional know-how transfer.

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