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| Valuing Nature in Texas |
Located on the easternmost part of the Texas-Mexico border near the Gulf of Mexico, the Texas Lower Rio Grande Valley (the Valley) lies in one of the most biodiverse regions in all of North America. This fragile ecosystem is facing unprecedented pressure from economic activities in the region. The water needs of the ecosystem are rarely considered as agricultural production, industry and a rapidly growing urban population use all but a trickle of the Rio Grande's water. A recently completed four-year HARC study of water and sustainable development in the region concluded that, unless water management changes to reflect ecological needs, not enough water will be allocated to sustain the ecosystem, which will continue to deteriorate.
One of the major obstacles to more widespread recognition of the ecosystem's water needs is that the value of water to sustain the ecosystem has never been quantified in the Valley. To overcome this obstacle, our project proposes an innovative approach for providing economic representation of the ecosystem in water use decisions in the Valley, with the objective of preserving and restoring the region's unique ecology of unparalleled biodiversity. This approach includes:
- a state-of-the-science analysis of the under-explored role water plays in the Valley's burgeoning ecotourism sector;
- an economic analysis that will, for the first time, estimate the dollar value that people place on water use to sustain the Valley's ecosystem; and
- a rigorous examination of how values for water used to sustain the ecosystem can be incorporated, along with values of other uses of instream flows such as recreation or aesthetics, into a practical decision-making tool that can be used in water management and policy.
Without "economic representation" of water's value of ecosystem sustenance, it is extremely difficult for water managers and planners to consider the ecosystem along with agriculture, industry and municipalities when making water use decisions.
We expect the project to yield the following specific results: (1) compelling economic rationale for allocating sufficient water to sustain the ecosystem in the richly biodiverse Lower Rio Grande Valley, and (2) a carefully designed education and outreach effort that targets non-governmental organizations, local, state and national government officials, water managers, individuals from the Valley ecotourism industry, local chambers of commerce, local stakeholder groups and other organizations.
With this work we hope to initiate important and lasting changes in the management and use the Valley's scarce water that will help preserve and restore the region's unique ecosystem. Moreover, we hope that the unique approach developed through this project will serve as an innovative model for establishing "economic representation" of the ecosystem in other regions. Based on the anticipated success of the proposed project, our aim is to move beyond this "pilot" stage and apply this approach to other areas in Texas where nature is under stress from the impact of human activities on its water supplies.
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| Page Updated/Reviewed: 06/20/2008 2:23 PM |
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