REPORT ON THE 2ND EXPERT WORKSHOP ON DEFINING A METHODOLOGY
TO VALUE THE CITY OF CAPE TOWN’S NATURAL ENVIRONMENT
WORKSHOP VENUE
Sustainability Institute
University of Stellenbosch
Lynedoch
Stellenbosch
WORKSHOP DATE:
18 February 2009
TIME 09:30-13:30
WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
•
•
•
•
•
•
Welcome and Purpose
Presentation of the Cape Town Study
Presentation of the Durban Study
Presentation of the Richard Bay & Saldana Studies
Discussion
Closure
CONTACT PERSON:
Terence P Jayiya
E-mail: tjayiya@jaymat.co.za
Tel no: + 27 21 979 3602
Fax no. 086 513 5736
Date: 26 February 2010
1. OPENING OF THE WORSHOP
The workshop was opened by Dr Martin De Wit, the project leader of the Cape Town
study. Martin thanked all those in attendance for making time to attend the workshop.
He outlined the programme of the workshop which was subsequently adopted by the
meeting. Further, it was stated that the purpose of the workshop was to get expert
inputs which could assist in defining a methodology to value the City of Cape Town’s
natural environment.
2. PRESENTATION: DRAFT METHODOLOGY OF THE CITY OF CAPE
TOWN STUDY
Dr De Wit presented the current City of Cape Town study. The presentation focused
on what has been achieved and what still has to happen in order to complete the study.
In summary, the presentation covered the following issues:
•
Phase One: International Review (finalised)
•
Valuation techniques, pros and cons; data requirements
•
Phase Two: Consultation (finalised, next presentation)
•
Workshops with line functions; participatory approach
•
Phase Three: Methodology (draft, this presentation)
•
Build a consolidated methodology.
•
Phase Four: Pilot Valuation
•
Demonstrate & test valuation methodology
Further Dr De Wit mentioned that a similar study in Europe was currently being
implemented. This European study was specifically on Biodiversity and principally
asking ‘why is society continuing to lose biodiversity value’.
A copy of the
presentation is included in Appendix A.
DISCUSSION
Dr De Wit’s presentation was followed by a discussion which focused on the
following issues:
•
Goods and Services: The project team should consider including other issues
such as quality of life, icons, and beautiful streets when valuing the natural
environments. These are seen as more difficult to value but necessary for the
project.
•
Poverty: When making the case to politicians try to show that some goods and
services are helping with poverty alleviation. The fact here is that
environmental services are important in meeting the basic needs of
communities that do not have access to high levels of utility services or
infrastructure.
•
Funding: City politicians often confuse the funding of Table Mountain with
funding of the whole City environment. The fact is that Table Mountain is
small part of the City’s natural environment and thus funding should cover all
environmental aspects.
•
Values: It might be useful to convert values to dependence level. The issue
here is that some goods and services might have a low value but a lot of needy
people might depend heavily on those. High levels of dependency could lead
to that specific asset being considered irreplaceable.
•
Services and Human Rights: Certain ecosystem services are essential for
meeting human rights. Some environmental services are considered essential
to human rights (clean environment, safe drinking water). The absence of
these services might open the city to litigation for abuse of human rights. It
was suggested that the human rights issues be considered when making a case
to politicians as they would probably relate to it. It was stressed that this kind
of argument has been successful in the Durban context.
•
Legal: A legal argument could also be made. In cases where the City degrades
the environment, this may lead to the provisioning of sub-standard services.
This could open the City to litigation. Further, an argument should be made
that increased budgets would help the City meet its legal obligations.
•
Service Levels: An argument of service levels could also be advanced when
making the business case. This is about acceptable levels of service by the
natural environment. It can be shown that biodiversity in Cape Town is
essential for attaining acceptable levels of carbon sequestration or any other
service.
In summary, the discussion focused on highlighting the value of the environment to
the City and that these services are offered free of charge by the natural environment.
Further, if these values are not recognised the City might lose them and would
subsequently have to pay (through engineering solutions for example) in order to
continue offering the services. It was also stressed that the business case argument
illustrates how goods and services help meet people’s needs.
The above points were made following the presentation of the Cape Town study. The
points were intended to strengthen the methodology and thus the business case for the
environments.
PRESENTATION: THE DURBAN STUDY EXPERIENCE
Dr Myles Mander gave a presentation on resource economics as a tool for open
planning in Durban. A copy of the presentation is included in Appendix B. The
presentation covered the following issues:
•
The need for City wide open planning policy.
•
There is 110 HA of open space in Durban
•
The study was designed in order to formalise a Durban policy for open space
management.
•
Open spaces are service providers, for example, flood control through
grasslands. The near shore is also included as an open space, assimilating
waste and providing recreational and shipping space.
•
The study approach was an attempt to show the value of the open space
relative to the Durban Metro. Subsequently, the study estimated that the
Durban open space yielded good s and services of R4 billion pa.. This value is
about 25% of the annual Durban metro budget and raises the importance of
using relative values in presenting a business case
•
How to make an environmental case to politicians. The Durban case studies
showed that you have to bring in the human rights issues and threat of
litigation. This was seen as something that the politicians understand.
•
The argument to find a budget should EGS be lost is also one that finds
appeal. The environment provides a free public service and if it falls away,
huge costs need to be incurred.
•
Learning point is to manage for a range of services and not only focus on one
or two.
•
The study received a lot of criticism from academics as they were critical of
the method and values produced.
DISCUSSION
In summary, the Durban experience used work done by Costanza et al. (1997) as a basis.
This study attempted to quantify, for the first time, the financial value of the goods and
services provided by the world’s ecosystems. This is important to open-space planning, as
decision-making regarding the use of urban open space or the allocation of resources occurs
through economic and political processes which compare the value of open space to the value
of alternative land uses (e.g., housing, landfills, and industry). In most cases, the value of
open space (outside of its aesthetic and recreational appeal) is not understood well, while the
benefits of the alternative land uses appear explicit and quantifiable. In cities, this situation
has resulted in open spaces being significantly undervalued because of the general failure of
society to recognize the value of a resource when it is not expressed in monetary terms or
cannot be owned, or where the services provided are not immediately obvious. Consequently,
the identification and economic valuation of environmental services is a critical tool in
helping ensure the appropriate planning, management and resourcing of open spaces in urban
areas.
PRESENTATION: ERE METHODOLOGY, A REFLECTION ON 2 CASE STUDIES
Mr Jackie Crafford from CIC international presented the ERE studies conducted for the
Richards Bay Harbour and Saldanha Bay. In summary, the presentation covered the
following issues:
•
Design of ERE project method: Key considerations
•
Dealing with reality
•
Thoughts about the Cape Metro and a Case Study
It is always important to start the ERE project by drawing a definition of the problem. This
comes up in the form of a problem statement. The project team should be constituted in such
a way that it allows a mix of experience and youthful exuberance. Data availability is a
problem always encountered during ERE studies. This was also the case during the ERE
study in Richards Bay and Saldanha. The two projects made extensive use of indicators for
measuring change in the ecosystem.
Jackie Crafford then proceeded to present the key steps in the implementation of the 2 case
studies. The key steps were as followed:
•
The systemic description of a conceptual and functional model of the respective Bays
as an ecosystem.
•
Comparative risk assessment, to identify the priority risks to services, which results in
a priority list of the services to be valued. The risk descriptions, together with the
systems analysis, complemented by quantitative or qualitative analysis of scientific
studies elsewhere but relevant to the Bays, provided the production functions
employed to predict changes in the services.
•
Collect all relevant market data for affected sector, and conduct surveys of
beneficiaries of these services in Saldanha Bay’s population and other affected
populations.
•
Value the marginal changes that would result from each development option. Net
present social values of future flows of different ecosystem services for the different
options are quantified.
•
The projects were then completed with a design and costing required for the
mitigation or offsets or both for the development proposal.
The above project implementation steps possibly have some lessons for the City of Cape
Town project.
DISCUSSION
The following lessons can be deduced from the work conducted in Saldanha Bay and
Rechards Bay:
•
ERE techniques is not a constraint. It can be used to estimate values of environmental
assets and despite several assumptions an acceptable way to do this.
•
It can also be used to demonstrate the practical linkages between natural assets and
human well-being through EGS (or ecosystem services) and the chain of causality
•
Activities in a specific areas tend to have an influence or impact of other areas
elsewhere (there is a community of goods and services)
•
Estimating the boundaries of the system is an important consideration. This particular
study identified an “entity” and a “meta-system”. The “meta-system” was interpreted
from a bio-physical point of view and included issues such as migratory birds.
Cumulative impacts may be important, as is the supply-chains of EGS to the entity
which originates and is affected outside the entity (e.g. catchments providing water
services). It raises the point that an entity’s management of EGS needs to look
broader then the boundaries of the entity itself.
•
A discussion on the need to standardise EGS was held. Standardisation would
certainly support analysis, especially when a chain of causality needs to be
established, as in the case of these two studies. Others were of the view that
standardisation of EGS is not the place to start, but a focus on what the user or
consumer needs, a starting position taken in the Durban study.
Further, the discussion provided a list of possible case studies for the City of Cape
Town Project:
–
Blaauwberg CA
–
False Bay EP
–
Biodiversity
–
City Parks
–
Freshwater river systems
–
Coastal areas
–
Urban storm water and rivers
–
The Milnerton estuarine system was mentioned as a potential case study given
serious recent pressures and spills that led to fish deaths and adjacent urban
property values.
SUMMARY & CLOSURE
In a short summary of the workshop the following points were raised:
1. Identify priority services to the City. This can be informed by
a. services currently below the legal level
b. services scoring high in an (ecological) risk assessment
c. Services that have a high amount of dependency
d. Services that support a larger number of users
e. Services that have attracted higher amounts of investment already
f. Services that attract a high value and which may change (due to pressures)
2. Scenarios may inform priority services over time
3. Estimate broad values of such services
4. Invest in process
It was concluded that these issues will refine the proposed methodology on valuing the City’s
natural assets.
The workshop was closed at 13:20.