Ecosystem Services Charting a Path to Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Research Team Summaries (2012) / Chapter Skim
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IDR Team Summary 6: Develop appropriate methods to accurately value natural capital and ecosystem services.
IDR Team Summary 6: Develop appropriate methods to accurately value natural capital and ecosystem services.
Pages 55-72
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From page 55... ...
One way to give incentives for sustained provision is to assess the value of ecosystem services in a common monetary metric and provide payments for provision. Valuing ecosystem services requires both the ability to quantify the amount of a service produced and methods of nonmarket valuation.
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From page 56... ...
• At the global and regional level how can ecosystem service delivery be assessed through time utilizing remote sensing technology? • Should we attempt to estimate monetary values for ecosystem services and natural capital?
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From page 57... ...
Please be sure to review each write-up, which immediately follow this one. IDR TEAM MEMBERS -- GROUP 6A • Clyde F
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From page 58... ...
With economists, ecologists, an urban planner, and two industry representatives in the group, IDR Team 6A was well-equipped to address the problem of valuing ecosystem services. Then the question became, with so many existing frameworks for valuing ecosystem services, what could IDR Team 6A contribute?
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From page 59... ...
To eliminate some of the dizzying array of options, the team focused on quantitative valuation of ecosystem services and elected not to tackle qualitative valuation problems. Within the world of quantitative valuation, there are still a number of methods to consider, including the market price method, productivity method, hedonic pricing method, travel cost method, substitute cost method, contingent value method, contingent choice method, and benefit transfer method.
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From page 60... ...
The group considered the possibility of standardized methods for valuing ecosystem services but decided that would be intractable. They settled on a framework that centers on ecosystem service indicators to improve benefits transfers.
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Developing and Applying Ecosystem Service Indicators IDR Team 6A's final product was a conceptual, iterative framework for developing ecosystem service indicators that could be used for more reliable benefit transfers between sites (Figure 1)
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From page 62... ...
Trout habitat requirements could become a proxy for other ecosystem services. Trout depend on the temperature regulation afforded by forest cover over streams; they depend on aquatic invertebrates, which are intolerant of polluted water and they depend on clear water that is not contaminated with sediment from runoff.
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From page 63... ...
At the 2011 National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Conference on Ecosystem Services, IDR Team 6B was especially interested in putting quantitative values on ecosystem services such as erosion protection and water quality, in the hope that such values might translate into fuller, truer prices on shrimp or any other consumable item. The team was composed of ecologists, economists, and a computer scientist.
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From page 64... ...
Also, people's decisions about their money don't always follow rational economic models, and valuing ecosystem services is no exception. Primary surveys are a static snapshot of an ecosystem service's worth at a moment in time.
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From page 65... ...
This saves time and money since primary research is not necessary, but a potential weakness is that the ecosystem to be valued using benefit transfer methods is not similar enough to any ecosystems for which we already have values. A Better Model IDR Team 6B's imagined model would amend many of primary surveys' weaknesses.
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From page 66... ...
Beyond Valuation Valuation is one of many ways of encouraging the protection of ecosystem services, and all ways are useful in different situations because different people respond to different strategies. If IDR Team 6B's model successfully made the leap to actually influence prices in stores, it would target consumers looking for the best bargains they can find.
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From page 67... ...
Wainger, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science • Stephen L Young, University of Nebraska-Lincoln IDR TEAM SUMMARY -- GROUP 6C Rose Eveleth, NAKFI Science Writing Scholar New York University The problem IDR Team 6C set out to solve was creating a functional and accurate valuation system for ecosystem services.
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From page 68... ...
. The Problem The tradeoffs that the Brazilian government considered to make the decision to build the dam are a perfect example of the challenge of integrating quantitative and qualitative ecosystem services.
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From page 69... ...
Therein lies the true problem that IDR Team 6C tackled: to achieve a valuation based on more qualitative ecosystem services requires more citizen participation and that participation can be difficult to effectively and efficiently facilitate.
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From page 70... ...
Monetary values for services might be associated with ecosystem goods and services by requiring players to make tradeoffs among alternative outcomes that have monetary consequences in terms of taxes, job opportunities, or economic outputs. Further, the gaming could shortcut the process of identifying ways to characterize ecosystem services that are meaningful to people to improve results from contingent valuation surveys that are used to monetize squishy outcomes.
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From page 71... ...
71 IDR TEAM SUMMARY 6 don't have the time, or don't feel strongly enough to attend public meetings could suddenly be provided a voice in the decision making process. Of course, gaming has its own issues, both logistic and conceptual.
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