18
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 1 JULY, 2018
World Oceans Day. Why should we care?
Well,
because the oceans cover about 70 percent of the
earth. They are also the source of 80 percent of the air
we breathe and the world’s largest source of protein.
So, human beings can’t survive without the ecosystem
services that the oceans provide. It therefore makes
perfect sense for us to protect the oceans and the life
in them.
Unfortunately, the evidence so far is that we are
not doing a good job, as almost 40 percent of the
oceans are impacted by pollution from land, and
millions of marine creatures have died from ingesting
or being entangled in plastic waste. So in line with this
year’s Worlds Ocean Day theme of preventing plastic
pollution and encouraging solutions for a healthy
ocean, I challenge you to stop using disposable plastic
bags, bottles and straws to help save our oceans.
Using Tobago as an example, most people don’t
realise the high value of the ecosystem service
benefits provided by coral reefs to the economy. That
is why these values are frequently overlooked or
underappreciated in coastal investment, development
and policy decisions, resulting in short-sighted
decisions that do not maximize the long-term
economic potential of coastal areas. The extent of this
started to dawn on me as an undergraduate student
of the late coral reef biologist Professor Julian Kenny
at UWI; and later working along with my recently
deceased friend Richard Laydoo on our first job at
IMA when we were in our 20s. He spent those years
surveying and mapping the reefs of Tobago. He was
the hard-bottom coral reef specialist and I was the
soft-bottom benthic ecologist. The real eye-opener,
though, came many years later with the key work done
in Tobago by Laureta Burke from theWorld Resources
Institute in the Reefs at Risk Project done along with
IMA. So here is what she found:
Tourism and Recreation
The valuation focused on tourists visiting at least
in part due to coral reefs, estimated at 40 percent
of visitors to Tobago. Direct economic impacts
from visitor spending on accommodation, reef
FOR MORE INFORMATION
International Year of the Reef (IYOR)
Trinidad & Tobago IYOR FaceBook
WORLD OCEANS DAY
Part of a coral reef off Castara in Tobago.
PHOTO: JAHSON ALEMU I.
This is an excerpt of a speech by Professor John Agard on the occasion of World Oceans Day on June 8, when the
International Year of the Reef T&T was launched. For the full speech, please see the online version of UWI Today.
Coral Reefs, Climate Change and People
recreation, and miscellaneous expenditures in 2006
were estimated at US$43.5 million. At the time, this
comprised 15 percent of GDP in Tobago.
But there were additional indirect economic
impacts, driven by the need for goods to support
tourism (such as boats, towels and beverages) and they
contributed another US$58–86 million to the national
economy in T&T. The resulting combined direct and
indirect impacts from coral reef-associated tourism
amounted to an estimated US$101–130 million for
Tobago.
The study also produced rough estimates of two
values not currently captured within the economy.
These include the annual value of local residents’ use of
the reefs and coralline beaches—estimated at US$13–
44 million in Tobago—as well as consumer surplus
from reef recreation (i.e. the additional satisfaction
derived by participants above what they paid for dive
and snorkel trips). Consumer surplus was estimated
at $1 million for Tobago.
Recently my new teacher Dr Jahson Alemu and
recent PhD student advanced my knowledge further
on this topic. I am singling out one surprising finding
that was marginal to his mainmathematical modelling
PhD studies on optimising the delivery of ecosystem
services from coral reefs. In his work on evaluating
visitor responses to marginal changes in reef quality,
he discovered that by linking ecosystem services
to the economy, we were able to demonstrate a
preference of recreational users for improved coral
reef management expressed as willingness-to-pay.
The mean willingness-to-pay for improved coral reef
ecosystem management by T&T residents (US$72)
is greater than international visitors (US$61). This
knowledge is an important factor in determining
future management possibilities of coral reefs in
Tobago since people apparently accept the idea of
payment for ecosystem services (PES). This then is
the justification for marine park fees from which
the revenues can be used to fund environmental
protection. Do you know that there are no Park
Rangers patrolling reefs in Tobago? Not even Buccoo
Reef !
Fisheries
Coral reef-associated fisheries have amuch smaller
economic impact, but provide other important values
including jobs, cultural value, and a social safety net.
The annual direct economic impact of coral reef
associated fisheries is estimated at US$0.7 – 1.1million
for Tobago. Additional indirect impacts from the
need for boats, fuel, nets, etc. were estimated at about
US$0.1 – 0.2 million for both islands, resulting in a
total economic impact of about US$0.8 – 1.1 million
per year in Tobago. I take this data with a grain of salt
because it sounds too conservative to me, because no
one has yet figured out a way to properly value the
nursery function of coral reefs. I am handing solving
this problem over to Dr Farahnaz Solomon who is an
expert on fisheries biologymanagement and protected
areas.
Shoreline Protection
Coral reefs play a vital role protecting the
shorelines of Tobago. This project developed an
innovative method for estimating the monetary
value of coral reefs in protecting the shoreline. It
was noted that the erosion rate on the shoreline is
less when there is a coral reef offshore and greater
when there is not. The difference can then be used
to estimate land saved from erosion by coral reefs
and the land price in that area can be used to convert
land saved into dollars.
It was found that coral reefs contribute to the
protection of about 50 percent of the shoreline of
Tobago from wave-induced erosion. The annual
value of shoreline protection services due to
potentially avoided land erosion damages was
estimated to be between US$18 and 33 million for
Tobago.
