He’ll clean the air for you... at a price. (Internet photo)

The strange thing is that such machines already exist, all around us; they’re called trees. Yet if similar man-made machines would bring in a lot of money, then why not cash in on the natural ones operating on our soil?

That is the idea behind Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), a concept implemented worldwide to value such natural services and realize that value. The Rwanda Office for Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN) has also jumped on the bandwagon, and is preparing a study to examine how to cash in on the PES-potential of Nyungwe forest.

Indeed, even if Rwanda’s mountain protected areas such as Nyungwe are mainly known for their biodiversity, they also deliver a continued flow of ecosystem goods and services such as watershed protection, climate regulation, pollination and scenic beauty, on which a large proportion of the rural poor depend for survival through agriculture, collection of safe drinking water and the harvesting of forest products.

Moreover, they are also crucial to the sustainability of all primary industries, tea production, coffee washing stations, etc., and the country’s economy, through the provision of water and hydroelectricity as well as regulation of local and regional climate conditions.

Therefore, conserving biodiversity is about much more than just protecting wildlife and their habitats in protected areas. It is about the maintenance of fundamental ecological processes, such as hydrological cycles and soil structure and fertility, which are central to real progress toward achieving the Vision 2020 and the Millennium Development Goals.

Comprehensive approach

The PES approach aims exactly at realizing the monetary value of such ecosystem goods and services. In the case of Nyungwe, the study will serve two purposes toward decision-making.

First, they will reveal the magnitude of the benefits that Nyungwe forest provides for stakeholders and society at large, thus helping decision makers to take a comprehensive approach toward forest management, conservation, and economic development.

It will also help to design the required instruments to capture some of the monetary value of benefits and make them available to fund conservation activities and support local communities.

According to Michel Masozera, one of the researchers carrying out the study, in the case of Nyungwe the main ecosystem services to be exploited are in the first place carbon storage and sequestration. When sequestered, carbon dioxide is prevented from entering the atmosphere by becoming fixed in places where it can be stored for long periods of time.

Trees, especially those in tropical forests, have been found to be very effective at absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis. As the Earth’s lungs, healthy forests are able to capture and hold the greenhouse gases produced by our industries and our energy-intensive lifestyles.

Furthermore, Nyungwe also offers watershed protection services (keeping rainwater in the forest’s soil and gradually releasing it, thus preventing flooding and providing drinking water), maintenance of biodiversity and opportunity for recreation and tourism.