Economic Evaluation of the Effects of Reducing Environmental Water Requirement of Anzali Wetland on the Livelihood and Income of the Local Communities

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Ph.D. Student, Department of Water Engineering, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran

2 Professor of Water Engineering Department, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran

Abstract

Wetlands, because of their direct and indirect services to the human community, are of vital importance and attract growing consideration for rehabilitation and maintenance. To preserve the wetlands’ environmental values and henceforth guaranteeing the welfare of the stakeholders, it is essential to provide them with their required water necessary for presenting proper ecological services to the related aqua creatures and stakeholders. In the present research, the international Anzali wetland was selected as the case study and a conceptual model, developed based on IWRM principals, was employed to evaluate the economic loss due to its ecological condition deterioration. Defining the favorable and minium acceptable ecological conditions in Anzali wetland, the economic values of its services in an IWRM framework were calculated. To quantify the ecological condition of Anzali wetland, the economic values of direct and indirect use-values and the non-use values of the wetland was calculated as much as 10,222,220 million Rials. Then, through using the lost benefit method, the reduced values of the present condition of the wetland’s ecological services compared with the suitable and minimum conditions were determined. In this paper, by introducing some indices for the main careers of the stakeholders, the impacts of unbalanced hydrological conditions on the wetland’s tangible ecological services and through which on the system’s integrated water resources management were revealed.

Keywords

References

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Iranian journal of Ecohydrology
Volume 7, Issue 2
July 2020
Pages 481-496

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History

  • Receive Date: 04 January 2020
  • Revise Date: 21 May 2020
  • Accept Date: 21 May 2020
  • First Publish Date: 21 June 2020
  • Publish Date: 21 June 2020

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