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June 2001 |
| Regional Tourism Accounts
(Dr. D Poonyth - E-mail: dpoonyth@postino.up.ac.za) |
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| A pilot study on the potential
for tourism satellite accounts (TSA) and natural asset base accounts (also
known as tourism resource accounts, TRA) for South Africa (SA), Botswana
and Namibia has been completed under the NRASA project. In all three
countries studied, TSA are needed to improve planning in the tourism sector.
No TSA are available and the constraint has been lack of sufficient data.
However, all countries intend to develop them. Surveys are currently
in place in Botswana and similar efforts and project plans are underway
in SA and Namibia. Basic TSA including consumption, production, supply
and use, employment and capital tables are required. Technical and
human resources are scarce, and the capacity to make and use very detailed
accounts is limited. All three countries need to further develop
their national accounts which form the basis for TSA. SA, with a
relatively very large and multi-dimensional tourism industry, requires
the most sophisticated accounts. The process of TSA development should
take place step by step.
Since tourism is a demand
based concept, attention is commonly focused on final consumption and foreign
trade, rather than on supply. Determining values on the supply side,
namely value added, GDP and employment in the industries that supply the
goods and services to tourists, is normally done by direct measurement
through tourism producer surveys. However, when such data are missing,
estimation methods can be deployed, and the standard procedure when direct
measurement is not possible is to use input-output (I-O) tables. In addition,
I-O analysis also makes it possible to determine the direct and indirect
flows of value through the economy resulting from tourism consumption,
and thus determine impact of tourism on the economy.
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| Examples of Tourism Accounts Statistics in SA, Namibia and Botswana | ||||||
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Other Studies on Natural Resource Accounting in the Region |
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| Few other studies constructing and integrating NRA into economic planning and policy models are being completed in southern Africa. Next issues of the newsletter will feature syntheses of the said studies. Livestock accounts are being compiled for Botswana (Contact M. Monamati at mmonamati@gov.bw for more details). An effort to build a pilot macro-economic model for Namibia using the social accounting matrix (SAM) framework for integrated macro-economic and environmental management and planning is underway. For more details contact J. Barnes at jibarnes@iafrica.com.na. The forest policy project at the Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the Central Statistics Office in Swaziland and RANESA is embarked on a major forest resource accounts study. The study is funded by the DANCED. Contact S. Gamedze/M. Jaeger at fplp@africaonline.co.za for further details. | ||||||
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Genuine Saving Per Capita in South Africa (Kirk Hamilton, Environment Department, The Wolrd Bank)1 |
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| A fundamental result in
the ‘green national accounting’ literature is that there is an intrinsic
linkage between sustainable development and changes in the wealth of a
country. If a country’s total wealth, defined with appropriate shadow
prices, is in decline then welfare over some interval in the future must
be lower than it is currently – i.e., the country’s development path is
not sustainable. Estimates of the change in total wealth, termed
‘genuine saving,’ are published each year by the World Bank in the World
Development Indicators.
In assessing sustainability for countries with growing populations it is essential to measure the change in wealth per capita terms. A recent policy research working paper2 develops estimates of genuine saving per capita for over 100 countries. Figure 1 presents the results for South Africa. 1 The opinions
expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of he World
Bank.
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The saving measure, expressed in per capita terms, is decomposed as follows: Gross saving is the usual national accounts definition of GDP minus public and private consumption. Education and health expenditures (investments in human capital and ‘health capital’) are added to this saving figure. Only certain health expenditures, those leading to permanent increases in healthfulness, are included. R&D (research and development) expenditures by the public and private sectors are similarly treated as investment and added to the saving measure. Depreciation – the usual national accounts measure of consumption of fixed capital – is then subtracted. Depletion of natural resources is also subtracted. In the case of the World Bank estimates for South Africa this consists primarily of depletion of minerals and energy, as well as damages from CO2 emissions. As Figure 1 shows, once the various adjustments to traditional savings measures are made the overall saving per capita in South Africa falls from $540 to $410. The final adjustment to the saving measure involves population growth. When accounting for the additional 1.7% of the South African population that a year’s growth brings, this implies a decline in wealth per capita on the order of $700 – this is because the total assets available per person shrink as a result of the growth in population. The final figure for genuine saving per capita is therefore a decline of roughly $280. The net effect on per capita saving of depletion of the environment and growth in population is considerable. This analysis increases the urgency of implementing policies to increase gross savings, invest in human and health capital and research and development, and to increase the efficiency of exploitation of the environment. Many policies aimed at boosting income, educating women, and providing environmental infrastructure such as water and sanitation, will have a positive impact on sustainable development both by decreasing the population growth rate and by increasing savings. |
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Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) Second Technical Design Workshop (8 – 11 October 2001, Cape Town, South Africa). |
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| Overview of the MA
In light of growing human needs and the vast changes humans are making in ecosystems, it is imperative that wise choices be made in the use and conservation of these ecosystems. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which commenced in April 2001, is a four-year process designed to improve the management of the world's natural and managed ecosystems by helping to meet the needs of decision-makers and the public for peer-reviewed, policy-relevant scientific information on the condition of ecosystems, consequences of ecosystem change and options for response. The Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Convention on Wetlands all have endorsed the establishment of the MA as a joint assessment process to meet some of the information needs of the conventions. The MA is supported and funded by most of the key international organizations and funds including the World Bank, UNEP, GEF, UNDP, UESCO, FAO, CGIAR among others. Representatives of the conventions and other audiences will determine the specific focus and products of the MA through their representation on the MA Board. An Advisory Group of some 90 individuals from 35 countries has been established and the MA will also establish links to the national focal points for the ecosystem-related conventions in all nations. The MA Will:
FOR MORE INFORAMTION ON MA VISIT: www.millenniumassessment.org |
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What is an Integrated Ecosystem Assessment? |
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| An integrated ecosystem
assessment is an analysis of the capacity of an ecosystem to provide goods
and services important for human development. Ecosystem goods include
products such as food, timber, genetic resources, and medicines, and services
encompass water purification, flood control, coastline stabilization, carbon
sequestration, waste treatment, bio-diversity conservation, soil generation,
disease regulation, pollination, maintenance of air quality, and the provision
of aesthetic and cultural benefits. Typically, we manage ecosystems
to increase the production of one or more goods and services, such as food
or timber, at the expense of others such as water quality or bio-diversity.
We thus make conscious and unconscious trade-offs between the capacity
of the system to support different goods and services. And when that
capacity is diminished, the most serious toll is exacted on the poor, who
often depend directly on forests, fisheries, and agriculture and who tend
to be most vulnerable to the environmental problems that result from ecosystem
degradation such as floods or crop failures. But while policymakers
have ready access to information on the condition of their nation's economy,
educational programs, or health care system, comparable information on
the condition of ecosystems is unavailable despite the important role that
they play. In fact, no nation or global institution has ever undertaken
a comprehensive assessment of how well ecosystems are doing in meeting
human needs.
An integrated ecosystem assessment includes both ecological and economic analysis and it considers both the current state of the ecosystem and its future potential. The principal benefit of an integrated ecosystem assessment is that it provides a framework for examining the inter-linkages and trade-offs among various goods and services. The opportunity to increase the aggregate benefits from the bundle of goods and services produced by an ecosystem would be hidden in an assessment of each sector in isolation. The goal of management of the ecosystem may well be to favor one service, say food production, over the others, but by looking at the production and condition of the entire array of services, trade-offs among various services become apparent. Ecosystem management must meet conflicting goals and take into account the inter-linkages among environmental problems. A nation can increase food supply by converting a forest to agriculture, but in so doing decreases the supply of goods that may be of equal or greater importance such as clean water, timber, bio-diversity, or flood control. It can increase timber harvest but only with decreased revenues from downstream hydro-facilities and increased risk of landslides. Both local resource managers and national policymakers need some means of weighing these trade-offs, and this in turn requires a more integrated view of just what those trade-offs might entail. Yet another difficulty in assessing the condition of an ecosystem is the issue of scale. Certain types of ecosystem information are most relevant at global scales, such as information on the global flows of water, nitrogen, and carbon or information on migratory species or species introductions, while other ecosystem information will be most relevant at national or local scales such as farm employment, soil erosion, or water quality. |
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The South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE) |
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| About SANDEE
The South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE) is a new network that hopes to bring together analysts from the different countries in South Asia to address environment-development problems. SANDEE’s mission is to strengthen the capacity of individuals and institutions in South Asia to undertake research on the inter-linkages among economic development, poverty, and environmental change. It also seeks to disseminate practical information that can be applied to development policies. SANDEE’s objectives are met through small research grants, institutional support, intensive peer interaction, and information dissemination. SANDEE supports research in three thematic areas: a) poverty and natural resource Management; b) economics of environmental health; and c) sharing of transboundary resources. Research proposals are solicited twice a year through a well-advertised competitive grants program. SANDEE made six research grants as a result of its first research competition; we will likely make a similar number of grants as a result of a recently completed research competition. SANDEE’s training activities include training workshops in environmental and resource economics, study grants to young researchers (to support research proposal development with the help of senior mentors), support for graduate education within the South Asia region and limited institutional support for centers of excellence within the region. SANDEE’s bi-annual meetings are a forum for peer interaction and professional development. These meetings bring together 30-35 junior and senior scholars from within and outside South Asia. They are organized to allow researchers to discuss new developments in the field and to solicit detailed feed back about their own research. SANDEE’s newsletters are currently it’s primary means of information dissemination. These newsletters seek to provide news of applications of resource and environmental economics to policy and management concerns. As research outputs emerge, SANDEE will develop working papers as well as policy briefs. All of these will be available on SANDEE’s website at www.sandeeonline.org. |
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Announcements of SANDEE Events for 2001
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Announcements |
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| RANESA 5th
Technical Training Workshop on Environmental Accounting
will be held in Zanzibar, 13 – 15 September 2001. Contact Dalène
du Plessis at duplessisd@postino.up.ac.za
for further details on the workshop.
The Beijer International Institute for Ecological Economics is holding a training of trainers workshop on Environmental Economics in Zanzibar, 17 – 28 September 2001. More details are available from Christina Leijonhufvud at chris@beijer.kva.se. |
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New RANESA Research Grants The following research grants have been awarded by RANESA in support of new research projects on natural resource accounting in eastern and southern Africa: 1. Fisheries Resources
in Lake Tanganika, Tanzania
2. Energy Accounts for
Botswana
3. Inter-Basin Water Transfers
– Lesotho
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| Ranesa Home Page | Newsletter No 5 - April 2001 | Previous Newsletters |
