Assessment of the Total Economic Value of Floral Diversity : Proposed Phulbari Opencast Coal Mining Activities in Dinajpur, Bangladesh

Total Economic Value (TEV) is a concept which consists of direct and indirect use value as well as non-use values and thus incorporates all sorts of benefits from any environmental assets. This study is aimed to assess the all market and non-market values of floral diversity to provide a picture for the policy makers that how much value the society should achieve for the loss of floral diversity from proposed open cast coal mining activities in Dinajpur, Bangladesh. To assess the floral diversity of the study area list-count quadrant method was applied. Then economic theory was set under an integrated valuation framework for each benefit depending upon its value characterization. The counting TEV of the floral diversity of the study area was found as 1824375.736 thousand Tk/year. Among the total value, direct use value is 1652372.122 (90%), indirect use value is 158724.434 (9%), and non-use value is 13279.180 (1%) thousand Tk/year.This study founds that 19% values of such types are ignored most of the time into the policy-making process. This ignorance ultimately hampers the marginal social benefit and in some cases provides marginal private benefit.