Certification is intended to improve management of and environmental outcomes in developing country forests. Yet we know little about whether and how it actually generates such benefits.

Rising prices of fossil fuels, together with apprehension about the environmental harm created by them, have resulted in increasing efforts to search for alternative energy sources such as biofuels. Biofuels production is still a debatable issue regarding the opportunities it creates and the challenges it poses.

 In this work, we undertook an integrated assessment of water and forest ecosystem to develop the value-based sustainability indicators (VBSI) of watershed resource.

Visitors to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, located between Botswana and South Africa, are concerned about the kind of activities that take place within the park. This is not surprising, given the highly fragile Kgalagadi ecosystem. In our study, visitors assigned a monetary amount to the value they derive from pristine tourism opportunities. If this monetary value is greater than the amount that local communities assign to their livelihood activities in the park, then one group can compensate the other.