Course description



Economic survival of various production sectors, and of the people depending on those sectors for their livelihoods, is intricately connected to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Despite this realization, development projects and policies intended to meet Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) often go forward unwittingly at the expense of the nature without realizing the dependencies on nature's benefits or ecosystem services.

Much of the puzzle surrounding the development induced threats to biodiversity lies in an inadequate understanding of how humans value the functions and services that flow from biodiversity conservation and how decline in benefits from these services is reflected in economic terms. Recognition of broader total economic valuation of natural assets can be instrumental in adopting development options which present a clear choice between destruction and conservation.

Capturing both environmental and socio-economic factors, in an integrated impact assessment frame work can prove to be a powerful approach for balancing the relative gains from different activities and investments, including those that are concerned with conservation as well as those that lead to ecosystem modification, degradation or conversion. This course is designed on the rational that the valuation of the ecosystem services and integration of economic evaluation approaches for biodiversity require major adaptation in the EIA framework. This retooling of impact assessment for achieving ecological and economic valuation of biodiversity requires strengthening existing capacity of development planners, EIA practitioners, economists, biodiversity experts and decision makers.