Dr. Saichon Seedang has joined a study team in Thailand conducting research on economic valuation of ecosystem services in four watershed pilot sites around the country. The study is a part of national project called “Community Based Forestry and Catchment Management Project (CBFCM)” and is supported by the GEF (Global Environment Facility) and the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme-Thailand), and partners with Thailand Regional Environment Offices (REOs) of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

The focus of the research is to provide an estimate of watershed ecosystem services that can assist in serving as a base for designing and developing a market-based incentive payments program such as a PES (Payment for Ecosystem Services) and biocarbon financing mechanisms. PES and biocarbon financing mechanisms are rewarding local stakeholders/landowners for their efforts to provide major ecosystem services, such as planting forest, implementing soil/water conservation practices, and other efforts identified as enhancing benefits of ecosystem services.

The economic valuation study consists of identifying major ecosystem services in a watershed and estimates their economic value to stakeholders/landowners. The study team employed a household survey and conducted focus group interviews in the pilot sites. The pilot sites represent diverse ecosystem types including forest/freshwater ecosystems, community forests, and coastal zone ecosystems. The watershed sites are the Mae Sa Catchment (North), Lam Sebai Catchment (Northeast), Tha Chin Catchment (Central), and Pa-Ngan Catchment (South). The CBFCM project’s ultimate goal is to scale up the outcomes of implementation of the market-based experience in pilot sites to the national level. For more information about the CBFCM project, visit UNDP website at:

http://www.th.undp.org/content/thailand/en/home/operations/projects/overview.html