Environmental economic assessment of the soil resource of three rural parishes of the Riobamba Canton

Abstract

Estimating a monetary value for natural resources allows us to understand the importance of their conservation and helps to build a vision that allows proper management. A positive assessment of the inhabitants of the rural area for environmental services facilitates decision-making regarding the resource. The objective of this study was to assess the soil resource of three rural parishes economically and environmentally in the Riobamba canton. To obtain the information, 17 communities from the parishes Cubijies, Licto and Pungalá were selected using the criteria of current use of land, area and population, 1066 surveys calculated using the Canavos formula were applied; 10 ecosystem services were selected from the list of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment using "stakeholders", which were evaluated using the Likert scale where 0 is "Not Important" and 10 "Very Important", the total economic assessment VET was performed using 3 three methods, i ) Willingness to pay, your payment vehicle, and in case of not assigning a value, the definition of the reasons; ii) direct use value based on the calculation of production income and iii) hedonic price method used to calculate the economic value of the goods. As a result, provision and support services show a greater perception of importance, followed by regulatory and cultural services; all ecosystem services were scored with values equivalent to "Important" and "Very Important". In the analysis of direct use value, it is observed that the parish with the greatest diversification of agricultural production is Licto. In the DAP method, the refusal to pay is 56%, a result that is linked to low economic income and distrust in the administration of resources. Finally, the residents would use the Parish GAD as a payment vehicle.