Implementing ecological compensation in New Zealand: stakeholder perspectives and a way forward

Abstract

Ecological compensation is widely used, and often criticised, for promulgating poor outcomes for biodiversity. There is a lack of systematic research on ecological compensation and, to date, limited research globally into the perspectives of the various stakeholders involved. We undertook 116 semistructured interviews with practitioners working with ecological compensation in New Zealand. Participants consider that benefits to biodiversity are the chief attraction of ecological compensation (49.2% of all responses), with the disadvantages mainly relating to the difficulties of practical implementation of the concept. Our results also show that 96.5% of participants support the concept fully or to a limited extent and most (83%) participants consider that it contributes to sustainable management, with significant support (87.9%) for a statutory approach. Formal statutory guidance at a national level in New Zealand, and an increased focus upon follow-up and monitoring, is considered likely to generate more robust exchanges.

Games between stakeholders and the payment for ecological services: evidence from the Wuxijiang River reservoir area in China

“…In this model, x was used to describe the main factors affecting the willingness of the respondents to pay, annual income, age, sex and ecological environmental concern for the respondents, ε was used to describe the regression coefficient for each factor, and δ was used to describe random perturbation term with a normal distribution of [0, δ/2]. According to the above, ln W WTP+1 was also a function that follows the normal distribution (Brown et al, 2014), σ represents the standard deviation of the normal distribution function. From the result of the regression, σ = 0.955205, thus; …”

“…If the social benefits or the beneficiary object cannot be determined, the government will make compensation (Qiao, Yang & Yang, 2012). Stakeholder analysis rules in ecological compensation state that based on the importance of initiative, decisiveness, and interest in each decision, the government, farmers, and enterprises can be defined as core stakeholders (Brown et al, 2014; Chen, 2014). Many scholars think that the government and residents in the upstream area of the water source are the compensable subjects (He, 2012).…”

Farmers’ Willingness to Accept Compensation to Maintain the Benefits of Urban Forests

“…CVM can also be used to assess market-based goods, such as livestock, if reducing reliance on these goods can enhance public ecosystem services [35]. As a market simulation method, CVM has inherent shortcomings [32]; however, it contains mechanisms to reduce the impact of most deviations, such as providing the respondents with detailed information, increasing the credibility and certainty of the content of the questions, and controlling the investigation time of each sample at 20 to 30 min [36][37][38].…”

The Effect of Payments for Ecosystem Services Programs on the Relationship of Livelihood Capital and Livelihood Strategy among Rural Communities in Northwestern China

“…Ecological compensation is a policy tool to address environmental problems that have an impact on household livelihood that is closely related to project sustainability and social fairness. As a financial incentive mechanism that transfers external or non-marketable environmental values to the local actors who provide ES, ecological compensation has attracted widespread attention in society and is being implemented in many countries with increasingly pressing ecological problems [8][9][10][11]. There are three modes of ecological compensation: compensation for the cost of ecosystem protection or damage mitigation, compensation for the funding of ecosystem protection and the loss of development opportunities, and investment in protected areas or objects with significant ecological value.…”