The role of non-commercial intermediate services in the valuations of ecosystem services: Application to cork oak farms in Andalusia, Spain

Abstract

This research applies and compares the Agroforestry Accounting System (AAS) and the lightly revised System of National Accounts (SNA) in five cork oak farms in Andalusia, Spain, in 2010. We value eighteen economic activities, eleven of which are managed by individual farmers and seven of which are overseen by government. Our objectives are to measure and compare ecosystem services (ES), gross value added (GVA) and environmental income (EI). The comparison takes into account the valuation of products at producer, basic and social prices. Our most noteworthy novelty is that the AAS proposal incorporates the environmental income as a variable which serves as a reference value for the condition of economic sustainability of ecosystem service consumption. Our results show that ES and GVA estimates vary depending on the omission/measurement of auto-consumed/donated non-commercial intermediate services and nature based activity with zero ES value represents nature's free physical service contribution to the farms net value added. Farms AAS ecosystem services at social prices contribute to 64% of final product consumption, and ES at basic prices represent 1.2 times the ES at social prices. Farm revised SNA ecosystem services at basic prices are 0.5 times the AAS ecosystem services at social prices.