Social Preferences For Wetland Attributes And Its Implications For Agricultural Households Wellbeing In Oueme Delta In Benin

ABSTRACT

In Benin, Oueme Delta wetlands, as an ecological life support system, play a vital role in contributing to the local population’s livelihood, health and wellbeing. The paucity of knowledge about the value of the Oueme Delta wetlands and their attributes to society, especially to agricultural households undermines the ability of decision makers to develop and implement sustainable wetland use and management policies that maximize societal welfare. To fill that gap, this thesis has been undertaken to reveal to society and specifically to Benin’s wetland managers and policy makers, the value local populations attach to the Oueme Delta wetland attributes, so as to assist decision makers in the decision making process. Attribute-based discrete choice experiment (DCE) approach was used to unveil society preferences for Oueme Delta wetland attributes, from which welfare change implications were derived for agricultural households. The results and their analysis showed that the key Oueme Delta wetland attributes, ranged from the most to the least important based on their contributions to societal wellbeing are: species diversity; cropping area and irrigation facilities; recreation and tourism facilities; and wetland area and their state (habitat). More specifically, agricultural households’ welfare analysis has also indicated the same trends in terms of their preferences for the Oueme Delta wetland attributes. So, it appears that agricultural development, characterized by an increase in land use and irrigation facilities, is not the most important contributor to social welfare in Oueme Delta, rather species diversity. Moreover, the analysis of agricultural households’ welfare changes under different attribute-based wetland improvement policy scenarios reveals that there is an ever important need for policy makers to develop an integrated Oueme Delta wetland improvement policy, which might take into account both the ecological and socioeconomic values of these wetlands for local population wellbeing.