Valuation of Ecosystem Services in South Africa, 2001–2019

Mohamed A. M. Abd Elbasit, Jasper Knight, Gang Liu, Majed M. Abu-Zreig and Rashid Hasaan
Additional contact information
Mohamed A. M. Abd Elbasit: School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Sol Plaatje University, Kimberley 8301, South Africa
Jasper Knight: School of Geography, Archaeology & Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa
Gang Liu: State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwest A&F University, Xianyang 712100, China
Majed M. Abu-Zreig: Civil Engineering Department, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid 22110, Jordan
Rashid Hasaan: Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy in Africa (CEEPA), University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 20, 1-18

Abstract: Although changes in ecosystems in response to climate and land-use change are known to have implications for the provision of different environmental and ecosystem services, quantifying the economic value of some of these services can be problematic and has not been widely attempted. Here, we used a simplified raster remote sensing model based on MODIS data across South Africa for five different time slices for the period 2001–2019. The aims of the study were to quantify the economic changes in ecosystem services due to land degradation and land-cover changes based on areal values (in USD ha −1 yr −1 ) for ecosystem services reported in the literature. Results show progressive and systematic changes in land-cover classes across different regions of South Africa for the time period of analysis, which are attributed to climate change. Total ecosystem service values for South Africa change somewhat over time as a result of land-use change, but for 2019 this calculated value is USD 437 billion, which is ~125% of GDP. This is the first estimation of ecosystem service value made for South Africa at the national scale. In detail, changes in land cover over time within each of the nine constituent provinces in South Africa mean that ecosystem service values also change regionally. There is a clear disparity between the provinces with the greatest ecosystem service values when compared to their populations and contribution to GDP. This highlights the potential for untapped ecosystem services to be exploited as a tool for regional sustainable development.

Keywords: biomes; climate change; land degradation; MODIS; remote sensing; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/20/11262/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/20/11262/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:20:p:11262-:d:654821

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().