Coral reefs are one of the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth. The Mesoamerican Reef contains the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere. However, its health is threatened, so there is a need for a management and sustainable conservation. Key to this is knowing the economic value of the ecosystem. “Mainstreaming the value of natural capital into policy decision-making is vital” The value of environmental and natural resources reflects what society is willing to pay for a good or service or to conserve natural resources. Conventional economic approaches tended to view value only in terms of the willingness to pay for raw materials and physical products generated for human production and consumption (e.g. fish, mining materials, pharmaceutical products, etc.). As recognition of the potential negative impacts of human activity on the environment became more widespread, economists began to understand that people might also be willing to pay for other reasons beyond the own current use of the service (e.g. to protect coral reefs from degradation or to know that coral reefs will remain intact in the future). As a result of this debate, Total Economic Value (TEV) became the most widely used and commonly accepted framework for classifying economic benefits of ecosystems and for trying to integrate them into decision-making. This report estimates the economic value of the following goods and services provided by the MAR's coral reefs: Tourism & Recreation, Fisheries, Shoreline protection. To our knowledge, the inclusion of non-use values in the economic valuation of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System is novel, which makes the study more comprehensive.
Air navigation service providers ensure that aircrafts keep safely apart by prescribing vertical and horizontal distances to each other. In the European Union and its associated members, regulation is carried out via a performance scheme which measures and sets targets for the different key performance areas. For the environmental area, targets in terms of CO2 and other pollutants were set by assuming that there would be continuous improvements for the Key performance Environment indicator based on actual trajectory. However, although a higher Horizontal Flight Efficiency (HFE) measurement usually means a more direct flight trajectory, this does not necessarily translate into a climate optimal trajectory. Thus, vertical flight efficiency also needs to be considered. There is also an interdependency be¬tween airspace and Air Traffic Man¬agement Capacity and Environment: when the offered capacity falls short of the demand for flights, ground delays, holdings and traffic shifts to adjacent areas occur. This entails detours and a deterioration of the HFE-indicator. Results show that total climate costs for 2018 and 2019 may be as high as 1 bn EUR, of which about 34% is due to CO2 emissions. In particular, the climate costs of CO2 emissions due to capacity constraints range from 54 to 301 million EUR, depending on whether CO2 costs are measured in terms of avoidance costs or under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Following the first criterion and the short to medium run up to 2030, the estimated costs would amount to 112 million EUR. In the long run, from 2040 to 2060, these costs would amount to 301 Million EUR. With the estimates of the EU ETS, the cost by 2030 would be close to 54 million EUR and 153.5 million EUR for the long run. Volatility of carbon pricing may play a very significant role, but fortunately can be hedged. Therefore, a shortfall of capacity leads to delay costs and considerable environmental costs. As capacity is planned in the medium to long-term, traffic forecasts are a crucial element. This means that further research is warranted into the interdependency of traffic forecasts, capacity and environmental costs. Keywords: climate economic cost, aviation sector, capacity management
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