Okavango Basin - Relative Importance of Ecosystem Services (ESS) Among Stakeholders

Abstract

Fig. 1: Boxplots representing the distribution of ranking among all respondents in the ORB (N=75). Ecosystem services are those contributions of the natural world which people value (adapted from Bateman et al. 2011). In other words, ESS are the " flow of services (outcomes of structure and processes) provided by ecological assets in some assessment period " (Bateman et al. 2011).While provided by Nature, ecosystem services are necessary and appreciated by people. Thus, ESS bring together issues of the environment and development, enabling decision-makers to view the two as interrelated. TFO selected 11 important ESS for its analysis. A 12th service (Fish) was added after a first round of pre-test interviews revealed its importance as an ESS in the Okavango River Basin (ORB). Thus, this analysis considers 12 important ESS provided by the Okavango River Basin ecosystem. Different people in the basin may have different perceptions about how important ESS are to them, depending on several factors such as the scale at which they interact with nature and their sector of activity. Perceptions and priorities for given ecosystem services may also vary depending on the local geographical characteristics of the basin. Thus, different perceptions exist among stakeholders of the different countries of the ORB. In the course of 90 interviews conducted from November 2012 to June 2013, 75 stakeholders of Angola, Namibia and Botswana who are active at the local, district/regional/provincial, national or basin scale in each country, ranked the 12 ESS from 1 to 12 by order of importance or priority from their own perception (1: highest and 12: lowest importance). Details on the methodology used are available in the Electronic Appendix.