Economic Assessment of Biodiversity Function of the Hamoon Wetland Ecosystem by Contingent Valuatiom

Abstract

In the development process of the countries, the wetlands play a significant role in people's well-being by providing the goods and services that are used directly and indirectly. Some examples of these goods include recreational use (as non-consumable values), harvested meat (as direct consumable values), carbon uptake, oxygen generation, water conservation, and soil retention (as indirect consumable values). In addition to consumption values, wetlands have other values too; i.e. the money paid by people to protect the wetlands for future use, for next generations and for their being, no matter if they are used or not used. These non-consumable values are called protection values, too. The present work estimated the value of goods and services of Hamoon wetland ecosystem in the form of biodiversity function in order to economically evaluate the drought damages to Hamoon wetland in 2015. The data needed to estimate the value of these functions were collected by a questionnaire. The biodiversity protection value of Hamoon wetland as the protection value of its forest ecosystem was estimated by contingent valuation method using the data collected from 450 people living in the rural areas surrounding the wetland. The results show that the value of protection of the Hamoon wetland biodiversity is 333.75 billion IRR and the expected WTP to protect its wildlife is 35542.74 IRR per family per year.