Avaliação e modelação dos serviços ecossistémicos em moçambique

Abstract

Change in land use and cover has been negatively affecting the provision of ecosystems services (ES). The evaluation of ES can effectively avoid this tendency and preserve the natural capital. In this paper we used the data of GlobCover land use and cover to investigate the alteration in Mozambique biomass between 2005 and 2009. The economic valorization of the ES provided by the biomass was achieved by the transfer of benefits method. The results reveal that growing areas considerably increased their ES cost between 2005 and 2009 due to the increase of food production. The biomass prairie / pasture has considerably decreased to support the growth of forests and growing areas. Estimates performed with special modeling for 2025 confirm this national tendency, and the provinces of Niassa, Sofala and Manica are to have the biggest increase of growing areas by converting prairies / pastures into growing areas. Mozambique’s total ES was estimated in 5054.4x10^6 USD for 2009, i.e., a variation of-11,4% since 2005. One expect that this number decrease to 4722.2x10^6 USD in 2025, which represents a loss of-17.2% if compared to the cost of 2005. In spite of this reduction, the ES for 2009 still corresponded to the half of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for that year (10910x10^6 USD). These results can contribute to developing and monitoring the political instruments that manage the ES provision.