Part C. Applying the Research in an Economic Sense: To Sustain Biodversity

Biodiversity is a characteristic of its biological resource, and is a measure of the genetic variance contained within that natural resource (Ewel et. al. 1991). It is an asset, or an unknown treasure in the future. The asset may be sold to obtain the income in account right now, but actually, that just simply liquefies the natural resources and makes it unrenewable (Hubbell 1979). This research and economic project shows that the widely-used human economics could avoid the failure of market and play a central role to generate the incentives for preserving biodiversity. Through this project, we try to identify biodiversity as an economic commodity, and capture the social values with an economically efficient method.

Biodiversity is valuable. In abstract, biodiversity of plants and animals may have an intrinsic value to exist, which is independent of their anthropocentric values. In Lanyu, biodiversity also has cultural and aesthetic values. For example, flying fish and the specific trees become great symbols because they are part of the cultural identity and heritage. Biodiversity also supports the function and structure of the ecosystem, which maintains their life system everyday. Although not much is known about the details, but biodiversity gives the option to make better decisions (use it or continue to preserve it) as soon as better information is available. In practice, biodiversity is a valuable source of knowledge in biology. This project will apply our recent knowledge about tree ecology to enhance the plant plantation for the multiple utilities in the future, such as gardening, medicine, scientific research and education.

There is one main difficulty in achieving conservation of biodiversity: that is our society still lacks the market mechanism to reflect the true value of biodiversity. Biodiversity is a public good. That means the property right of biodiversity belongs to the whole society, and not to the landowners or the forest owners. Biological resources are not owned in the sense like private property. Most of time, even if landowners own the biological resources, they still cannot appropriate its market value which gives them the correct and significant price. A market system needs to be created so that the beneficial outcome will be feedback to the local communities. This is the reason for this project to strengthen the local capacity increasing the Yami people's knowledge, attitude and practice , and to care for the biodiversity in Lanyu. Our actions will include establishing appropriate training programs, maximizing the production of some horticultural and medical plants, getting benefits toward the involved communities, and developing a self-sustainable long-term project funding.

A socio-economic survey or market research is necessary to make sure the Yami's social and environmental issues are well understood, before we invest the resource, such as what we consume and the activities we undertake, labor, personnel, supplies, transport, etc. We should have a good sense of the needs of local villagers to ensure the project's feasibility, because this is a basic mean of determining a community's baseline situation and needs. Then we expect to generate the accountable result for producing horticultural and medical plants to supply the specific markets. We hope through this we can bring the economic incentives to the communities to conserve the biodiversity in tropical rain forest.