AP-PLAT Stakeholders meet & regional consultative Capacity Building Workshop, Kolkata, India

Pricing of Ecosystem Services (ESS): A Scientific Approach: Curriculum for Policy Planners, Stakeholders and Practitioners
Dr. Malancha Dey Director PFRI and senior scientist SAFE, has given an overview of the project following the welcome remarks. She gave a background and scientific view point of ecosystem services as well as information on their cost. She discussed the difficulties in valuing ecological services in her presentation as there is no clearcut framework for evaluating ecosystem services along with the work progress of this project so far in India, Bangladesh and Bhutan.
Keynote addresses was delivered by Prof. Dr. Md. Giashuddin Miah VC, BSMRAU, Prof. Joyasree Roy, AIT Thailand; JU, India and Dr. A. Arunachalam, ICAR-CAFRI, India. According to them this subject needs to be understand for valuing services. Observation of people in the society is that they understand the values of household water but they do not understand the role of wetland regulating flood. So, this is something important to introduce some innovative thinking for ecosystem, understanding the local landscape and its role they could design something. All these are going to be local on text specific. Because the ESS are very locally applicable. In continuing the moderator asked the panellists to say a few words on their perspective as they all belongs to different countries and sectors.
The main take away points of this workshop were

• Course curriculum has to be reframed, timewise, with more feasible objectives and in a practical credit-based system which can be implemented along with the present systems with the universities and colleges. But in the same time, we do feel that such an important topic is needs to be taken up right from the school stage. So, various degrees at various levels Parallel courses needs to be established.
• Employability of the course needs to be done.
• This Course should be empowering people, also that after knowing this they know about their rights, they know how to put it in the existing socio-political system to defend their lives or to defend the services.
• We will create a virtual platform of interactive interface to get inputs from different stakeholders.