Valuation of natural marine ecosystems: an economic perspective

The Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) initiative seeks to develop a science basis for policy actions to address land degradation. The purpose of this chapter is to provide with a conceptual framework and sound and feasible methodological standards for ELD assessments at global and national levels. Only if some basic standards are identified and adhered to, comparative assessments can be conducted between countries and useful aggregation of findings, based on these case studies, can be achieved. Therefore, using the Total Economic Value (TEV) framework, the chapter identifies minimum core standards that need to be adhered to in all country case studies to generate comparable material for international assessment and ELD policy guidance.

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“…It consists of use and non-use values (Remoundou et al 2009). The use value is further divided into direct and indirect use.…”

Section: Cost and Benefits Of Action Versus Inaction Against Land Degmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concepts and Methods of Global Assessment of the Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement

Nkonya

Braun

Mirzabaev

et al. 2015

Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement – A Global Assessment for Sustainable Development

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“…Uncertainty is even more prevalent in the context of marine ecosystem services, particularly those services which are not so visible and removed from people's direct experience, e.g. climate regulation (Remoundou et al, 2009). …”

Section: Issues Related To the Knowledge About The Natural Science Bamentioning

confidence: 99%

On the environmental effectiveness of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive

Bertram

Rehdanz

2013

Marine Policy

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Abstract:Marine and coastal ecosystems -and thus the benefits they create for humans -are subject to increasing pressures and competing usages. For this reason, the European Union (EU) adopted the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which is to guide future maritime policy in the EU and aims at achieving or maintaining a good environmental status (GES) of the European seas by 2020. To this end, the MSFD requires the development of improvement measures, which have to be assessed inter alia by examining their cost-effectiveness and by carrying out cost-benefit analysis (CBA) before their implementation.In this paper, we investigate the applicability of environmental CBA in the marine context and identify and discuss problems that may hamper the environmental effectiveness of the MSFD. For example, marine ecosystem services are much less tangible than terrestrial ecosystem services. This implies greater challenges for the quantification of societal benefits in a marine context.One finding is that the limitations of environmental valuation methods regarding their ability to capture the whole total economic value of improvement measures are a potential source of problems, as the MSFD allows countries to disregard measures with disproportionately high costs. The transboundary nature of the main European seas adds to the complexity of the valuation task, e.g. due to the danger that benefits that occur outside of national territories are neglected. Moreover, the current state of knowledge on the functioning of complex marine ecosystems and the links to socio-economic impacts and human well-being seems insufficient to meet the MSFD requirements.

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“…The presence of a strong link between human welfare and the natural capital hosted by marine and coastal ecosystems is increasingly documented in the ecological and economic research and has come to serve as a robust argument in documenting the economic value of its benefits, or ecosystem services-for a review see Remoundou et al (2009), Barbier et al (2011) and Beaudoin and Pendleton (2012. More recently, the worldwide empirical analysis of coastal tourism demand and coastal recreation informs that natural assets, such as MPAs and biodiversity, play, at the margin, a significant role in explaining the market (and non-market) benefits derived from the tourism and recreational consumption activities-see Nunes and Onofri (2013) and Ghermandi and Nunes (2013), respectively.…”

Section: Valuing the Benefits Of Coastal And Marine Ecosystemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Economics of Marine Ecosystems: Reconciling Use and Conservation of Coastal and Marine Systems and the Underlying Natural Capital

Nunes

Ghermandi

2013

Environ Resource Econ

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Valuation of natural marine ecosystems: an economic perspective

Cited by 95 publications

References 26 publications

Concepts and Methods of Global Assessment of the Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement

Concepts and Methods of Global Assessment of the Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement

On the environmental effectiveness of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive

The Economics of Marine Ecosystems: Reconciling Use and Conservation of Coastal and Marine Systems and the Underlying Natural Capital

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