Context:
Throughout the globe, forests are not evenly distributed and the 10 most forest rich countries including India account for two-thirds of the total (4 billion ha) forest area. India holds 8.1% of the world’s total bio-diversity and is recognized as one of the twelve mega-centers of bio-diversity in the globe. The total forest and tree cover accounts for 77.8 million hectares, which is 23.7% of the total geographical area of the country. In the 6 year old small state of Uttaranchal, forest is the major land-sue covering 65% (34662 sq km) of the total geographical area. Eco-system services flowing from the forested areas of Uttaranchal are immensely benefiting local communities as well as to the large number of people living in the adjacent Indo-Gengetic plain known as ‘terai’ (agriculture in ‘terai’ supports 400 million livelihoods). However, pressure emanating from growing population and changing socio-economic and physical development are degrading the forest quality and hence flow of ecosystem services. Many of the services, which have indirect value and not bought and sold in the market are frequently lost or degraded. Evaluations show that the net benefits from a totally conserved ecosystem are far greater than those from the human altered ecosystem even though the economic benefit from the market would be greater from the latter types.

The emerging concept of valuation of ecosystem services should contribute to good environmental governance which promotes equity in relation to participation and benefit sharing; strengthen shared responsibility at all levels; and conservation and regeneration of natural resources that maintains flow of goods and services from the ecosystems.

Expected Outcome:
The expected outcomes of the project are as follows:

• Identification of ecosystem services, stakeholders and their perceptions, services and their temporal dimensions;
• The experience gained during present exercise to help faster concretization of the process of appreciation and valuation of ecosystem services;
• Stakeholders including local communities understand the critical importance of these life-supporting ecosystem services and their generating processes;
• Help informed, balanced and appropriate decision making on issues related to natural resource conservation, land-use and development;
• Enable to see ecosystem holistically rather than looking at relatively narrow set of benefits;
• Successful concretization to lead to large scale replication to help practitioners to seek effective community participation in conservation and restoration of degraded ecosystems;
• Contribute in making conservation locally sustainable and contribute to livelihood concerns;
• Catalyze the development of self-sustaining production systems in the long run and
• Throw new challenges and opportunities before researchers and policy makers to continuously improve/strengthen the conservation and development approaches.

Time Frame:
The research and report writing phase of the project will be completed within a span of four months beginning December 2006. Dissemination of research findings, advocacy and dialoguing with state and national level decision makers through workshops, seminar, panel discussion and media involvement would continue for another two months i.e. till May 2007.

Contact:
Ms. Pragya.D.Verma,
LEAD-India,
66 Hemkunt Colony, Near Nehru Place,
New Delhi 110 048
Tel: +91 11 26225790, 92, +91 11 41638440
Fax: +91 11 26225791
Email: office@leadindia.org
Website: www.leadindia.org