Valuing Community Based Forest Landscapes Restoration: Bivariate Probit Analysis for Degraded Forest Lands in North Western Ethiopia

Abstract

Restoring forest landscapes is recognized as one of the strategies for tackling some of the major environmental problems of our time, notably climate change, loss of biodiversity and desertification. The latest strategy of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (2011 - 2020) sets the bold goal of restoring at least 15% of the world’s degraded ecosystems by 2020. The value of using community based payments in ecosystem restoration is receiving growing recognition among practitioners and policymakers. This study examined households’ willingness to pay for restoration of degraded forest lands in a hypothetical market. The study was conducted in Sekella woreda of the Amhara region, northwestern Ethiopia. A total of 320 households had been surveyed in the study area in November and December 2013. During the survey, Contingent Valuation Method with double bounded dichotomous choice with follow up question format was applied to elicit willingness to pay of restoration of degraded forest lands capes. A bivariat probit model were used for the estimation of mean WTP from the double bounded responses. The study indicates that 75% of the surveyed households showed their willingness to pay if the restoration of the degraded forest land capes will be carried out. The bivariat probit model result shows that mean willingness to pay for rehabilitation of degraded forest resources ranged from ETB 19.18 to 21.02 ETB.

Keywords: Forest landscapes, WTP, Bivariat probit, double bounded dichotomous choice