Contextualizing willingness to pay for sustainable management of agroecosystem services in a rapidly transforming landscape: Insights from the interdunal wetlands of Medinipur Coastal Plain, India

Abstract

Interdunal wetlands of the Medinipur coastal plain provide various agroecosystem services (AES). Local populace had been found to utilize these wetlands for subsistence livelihood since time immemorial. However, many of these wetlands have become degraded by extensive land use conversions along with increasing apathy among young farmers to continue wetland based traditional livelihood practices in the recent years. In this regard, the present study attempts to assess the willingness to pay (WTP) of the local wetland dependent populace towards restoration and management of the various AES of a regional interdunal wetland complex using contingent valuation (CV) method. The CV survey was conducted among 229 households from 14 villages associated to the wetland complex. Four Landsat images from 1990 to 2020 and several ancillary spatial datasets were analysed to detect the current as well as future status (2030) of land use covers using the artificial neural network algorithm. Results showed that socio-economic factors such as age, level of education, monthly income per person, ownership of wetlands, and availability of AES primarily determined the average WTP (US$ 0.30 per month) of surveyed households. Thus, the total economic value of the wetland complex, calculated as the aggregate WTP, was remarkably as low as US$ 11568.64 per year, thereby indicating towards lesser environmental awareness and widespread poverty among the respondents. This perilous condition is also manifested in the present and future projected LULC patterns from 1990 to 2030. If the same trend of mismanagement prevails in the imminent years, a drop of more than 50% in areal coverage of interdunal wetlands is anticipated. Based on the findings, it was suggested that the vicious cycle of ‘lesser awareness-low WTP-wetland loss-degrading provision of AES’ could only be replaced through a three-pronged approach comprising environmental education, technological dissemination, and legislative cum ecotourism interventions.