Wetlands are highly productive ecosystems, providing a number of functions (products and services) that are of value to people. The open-access nature and the public-good characteristics of wetlands often result in wetlands being undervalued in decisions relating to their use and conservation. There is now a substantial literature on wetland valuation, including two meta-analyses. These meta-analyses examine subsets of the available wetland valuation literature, focusing on temperate wetlands, a limited set of wetland functions, and a limited set of valuation techniques. We collect over 190 wetland valuation studies, providing 215 value observations, in order to present a more comprehensive meta-analysis of the valuation literature that includes tropical wetlands (e.g., mangroves), estimates from diverse valuation methodologies, and a broader range of wetland functions (e.g., biodiversity value).We also aim for a more comprehensive geographical coverage. We find that socioeconomic variables, such as income and population density, that are often omitted from such analyses are important in explaining wetland value. We also assess the prospects for using this analysis for out of sample value transfer, and find average transfer errors of 74%, with just under one-fifth of the transfers showing errors of 10% or less. This overall performance is, however, dominated to a considerable extent by transfer to small sites. The performance of value transfer for medium to large wetlands on average shows transfer errors smaller than 30%.

In this article we investigate the complex relationship between environmental risk, poverty, and vulnerability in a case study carried out in one of the poorest and most flood-prone countries in the world, focusing on household and community vulnerability and adaptive coping mechanisms. Based upon the steadily growing amount of literature in this field we develop and test our own analytical model. In a large-scale household survey carried out in southeast Bangladesh, we ask almost 700 floodplain residents living without any flood protection along the River Meghna about their flood risk exposure, flood problems, flood damage, and coping mechanisms. Novel in our study is the explicit testing of the effectiveness of adaptive coping strategies to reduce flood damage costs. We show that, households with lower income and less access to productive natural assets face higher exposure to risk of flooding. Disparity in income and asset distribution at community level furthermore tends to be higher at higher risk exposure levels, implying that individually vulnerable households are also collectively more vulnerable. Regarding the identification of coping mechanisms to deal with flood events, we look at both the ex ante household level preparedness for flood events and the ex post availability of community-level support and disaster relief. We find somewhat paradoxically that the people that face the highest risk of flooding are the least well prepared, both in terms of household-level ex ante preparedness and community-level ex post flood relief.

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Several economic reviews demonstrate the substantial costs related to climate change and consequently call for early action. These reviews, however, have been limited to measuring 'objective' risks and expected material damage related to climate change. The 'subjective' perceived risk of climate change and society's willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid these risks are expected to provide an important additional motivation for direct action. We investigate whether and why air travel passengers-an increasingly important source of greenhouse gas emissions-are supportive of measures that increase the cost of their travel based on the polluter pays principle and compensate the damage caused by their flight. Compared to the results of the few previous studies that have elicited WTP estimates for climate policy more generally, our results appear to be at the lower end of the scale, while a comparison to estimates of the social cost of carbon shows that the average WTP estimate in this study is close to the estimated marginal damage cost. Although significant differences are found between travellers from Europe, North America, Asia and the rest of the world, we show that there exists a substantial demand for climate change mitigation action. The positive risk premium over and above the expected property damage cost assessments should be accounted for more explicitly in economic reviews as it will add to the burden of proof of direct action. Measurements of passenger WTP will help policy makers to design effective financial instruments aimed at discouraging climate-unfriendly travel activities as well as to generate funds for the measures directed at climate change mitigation and adaptation. Based on stated WTP by travellers to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, funds in the order of magnitude of €23 billion could be generated annually to finance climate change mitigation activities.

Coral reefs are highly productive ecosystems that provide a variety of valuable goods and services, including recreational opportunities. The open-access nature and public good characteristics of coral reefs often result in them being undervalued in decision making related to their use and conservation. In response to this, there now exists a substantial economic valuation literature on coral reefs. For the purposes of conducting a meta-analysis of this literature, we collected 166 coral reef valuation studies, 52 of which provided sufficient information for a statistical meta-analysis, yielding 100 separate value observations in total. Focusing on recreational values, we use US$ per visit as the dependent variable in our meta-analysis. The meta-regression results reveal a number of important factors in explaining variation in coral reef recreational values, notably the area of dive sites and the number of visitors. Different valuation methods are shown to produce widely different values, with the contingent valuation method producing significantly lower value estimates. Using a multi-level modelling approach we also control for authorship effects, which proves to be highly significant in explaining variation in value estimates. We assess the prospects for using this analysis for out-of-sample value transfer, and find average transfer errors of 186%. We conclude that there is a need for further high-quality valuation research on coral reefs.

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[1] The values of goods and services provided by wetland ecosystems are examined through a meta-analysis of an expanded database of wetland value estimates and with a focus on human-made wetlands. This study extends and improves upon previous meta-analyses of the wetland valuation literature in terms of the number of observations, geographical coverage, wetland class and integrity, and the measurement of the effects of scarcity and anthropogenic pressure. We find that water quality improvement, nonconsumptive recreation, and provision of natural habitat and biodiversity are highly valued services. Substitution effects are observed through the negative correlation between values and abundance of other wetlands. Wetland values are found to increase with anthropogenic pressure. An extended metaregression model with cross effects shows that the valuation of specific services varies with the type of wetland producing them. Humanmade wetlands are highly valued for biodiversity enhancement, water quality improvement, and flood control.

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