Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Service Valuation Database (GecoServ): Gathering ecosystem services valuation studies to promote their inclusion in the decision-making process

The main goals of the Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Service Valuation Database (GecoServ), an inventory of ecosystem services (ES) valuation studies applicable to the Gulf of Mexico, are to allow for the distribution and sharing of information about said studies and to identify current gaps in the ES valuation literature.The utility of GecoServ (http://www.gecoserv.org) lies in that it fills a void left by non-ES specific environmental databases, highlights the lack of studies for some ecosystems and associated services, and provides background information for future ES valuation studies.GecoServ functions as a uniquely centralized source of information for both researchers and natural resource managers. Researchers can find information for different study sites to be used in value transfer methods. For managers, instead, GecoServ is a tool that provides them with ES values to inform their decision-making process.     

Communicating research on the economic valuation of coastal and marine ecosystem services

Quantifying the monetary value of ecosystem services (ES) provided by coastal and marine resources can help policy makers assess the trade-offs and synergies inherent in ecosystem-based management of marine and coastal environments, thus increasing the social efficiency of decision-making processes. As shown by the valuation literature, the number of coastal and marine management settings where valuation researchers have attempted to make a contribution is rising fast. However, this rise in research activity has not been matched by the increase in the use of economic valuation (EV) in the actual management of coastal and marine resources. This raises an interesting question: is EV responding to the needs of policy makers? This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the knowledge base regarding the economic values for coastal and marine ecosystems. It then discusses how to improve the uptake of ES valuation research by focussing on two core issues which are thought to be essential for more effective communication with the policy community.     

Using choice models to inform large marine protected area design

During the last decade a number of Large Marine Protected Areas (LMPAs) – marine protected areas that exceed a minimum size threshold and are often in offshore or open ocean waters – have been designated in an effort to meet marine conservation objectives. Research on the human dimensions of LMPAs is limited, though comprehensive policy analysis requires an understanding of the full range of social, cultural and economic benefits associated with LMPA designation. This paper addresses this need by employing a stated preference choice experiment survey of U.S. west coast households to examine public preferences for different protected area designs sited off the U.S. west coast. Using data from over 3000 randomly selected households in California, Oregon, and Washington we estimate choice models and calculate economic values for a suite of LMPAs that vary in size and in the types of restrictions within area boundaries. Results show that the LMPA size yielding the highest value is ~15.6% of the west coast Federal waters. Results also underscore the importance of restriction type, as there are considerably different threshold sizes above which diminishing returns and negative economic values are derived from no-access reserves, no-take, and multiple-use designations. While the value of any specific configuration can be estimated using the model, results offer insight on optimal use designations from a public perspective for small (< 2.5% of west coast Federal waters), medium (2.5%–~10%) and large (> 10%) LMPAs sited off the U.S. west coast.     

Securing the benefits: Linking ecology with marine planning policy to examine the potential of a network of Marine Protected Areas to support human wellbeing

In line with international commitments to secure human wellbeing via conservation, many nations have set deadlines to implement ecologically coherent networks of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). However, progress towards achieving these targets is slow. To influence the discourse on the societal need for MPA networks a matrix approach is used to determine the potential for conservation features within the UK proposed network of 127 MPAs to deliver beneficial ecosystem processes and services. The results suggest a non-uniform distribution of ecosystem services across the network, with the majority of MPAs containing conservation features with the potential to deliver ecosystem processes. Designation of the full recommended network of MPAs may provide a form of ecological insurance against further decline in the delivery of beneficial ecosystem services and may also contribute to wider ecological health by supporting broadscale ecological processes. Non designation of MPAs that contain low frequency of occurrence beneficial ecosystem processes or services could result in their loss. Given the uncertainty about the connections between ecological function and the delivery of beneficial ecosystem processes, conservation policy and management must consider an ecologically coherent MPA network to be a minimum spatial requirement to secure the future delivery of ecosystem services.     

A systematic quantitative review of coastal and marine cultural ecosystem services: Current status and future research

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are the non-material benefits obtained from ecosystems that contribute to human well-being. They are often under-represented in ecosystem services assessments due to difficulties identifying and valuing intangible attributes. This risks a lack of understanding and consideration of CES by decision-makers. A systematic review was done on coastal and marine CES to identify: geographic distribution of research; effective methods for assessing CES; specific habitats/ecosystems that supply CES; subcategories most frequently addressed; and knowledge gaps. Results revealed limited information exists about coastal and marine CES. There is a disparity in the global distribution of studies with little knowledge about CES in developing countries, as well as a disparity within developed countries; with most research undertaken in Europe and North America. There is a dearth of information on CES derived from specific coastal and marine habitats/ecosystems, reflecting a poor understanding of socio-ecological relationships and the different values people assign to these areas. There is a need to develop indicators with the capacity to measure and track changes in CES over time. Participatory approaches using qualitative methods were most effective in identifying CES; however, these lacked a deliberative element that would provide a comprehensive assessment of shared values in public areas. Overall, publications typically theorised about the usefulness of data on CES to inform and support decision makers, and more research is required on how qualitative data on CES can be represented for practical use by coastal and marine resource managers, and the value of these in the real world.     

Developing a co-management financing mechanism to enhance the financial sustainability of marine protected areas in Taiwan

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a cost-efficient and management-effective tool. Fishery Resource Conservation Zones (FRCZs) are one type of MPA in Taiwan, and they were designated to ensure the sustainability of fishery resources since 1976; however, government appropriations are the only financing source for FRCZs, leading to manpower and equipment shortages for FRCZ management. This study selected the Touching and Suao FRCZs in Yilan County of Taiwan as cases studies. To assess the feasibility of establishing a sustainable financing mechanism for MPAs, the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) was applied to examine respondents׳ willingness to pay (WTP) to setup a fund for FRCZ management. The empirical results indicated that approximately 90% of respondents would be willing to donate funding for MPAs, and the WTP per respondent is NT$586.51 (US$19.6). Thus, establishing an MPA fund is a feasible way to operate Taiwanese MPAs through a co-management framework involving the central government, local government, local communities and stakeholders. However, based on our empirical results, a co-management financing mechanism for MPAs should be established to ensure stable and diverse financing sources.     

Recreational boaters value biodiversity: The case of the California Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary

Marine ecosystems provide a range of valuable services, some of which come with market prices to quantify value and others for which markets have not set prices. Lacking perfect information, policy makers are at risk of undercounting non-priced values and services, leading to biases in policy decisions in favor of services valued through markets. Furthermore, understanding users’ valuation of specific site attributes, such as marine biodiversity, can contribute to effective policy decisions. This paper presents a non-market valuation of private recreational boaters (PRBs) in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary located in California, USA, using data from an intercept survey conducted in 2006 and 2007. A Random Utility Model is used to estimate PRBs’ daily trip values and the importance of specific site attributes. The average consumer surplus was estimated at $48.62 per trip, with a total non-market value of non-consumptive private recreational boating of $86,325 annually. PRBs show a preference for visiting locations with lower exposure to prevailing winds and greater species richness and abundance, which to the authors’ knowledge is the first time that PRBs have been found to value biological diversity in site choices. Furthermore, this suggests that improved biodiversity and productivity of marine ecosystems contribute to better recreational experiences. The results from this study reveal the importance of including non-market services and stakeholder's preferences into policy decisions.     

Estimating the potential impact of entry fees for marine parks on dive tourism in South East Asia

Marine reserves are increasingly being established as a mechanism to protect marine biodiversity and sensitive habitats. As well as providing conservation benefits, marine reserves provide benefits to recreational scuba divers who dive within the reserve, as well as to recreational and commercial fishers outside the reserve through spill-over effects. To ensure benefits are being realised, management of marine reserves requires ongoing monitoring and surveillance. These are not costless, and many marine reserve managers impose an entry fee. In some countries, dive tourism is major income source to coastal industries, and a concern is that high entry fees may dissuade divers. In this paper, the price elasticity of demand for dive tourism in three countries in South East Asia – Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia – is estimated using a travel-cost model. From the model, the total non-market use value associated with diving in the area is estimated to be in the order of US$4.5 billion a year. The price elasticity of demand in the region is highly inelastic, such that increasing the cost of diving through a management levy would have little impact on total diver numbers.     

Sport fisheries: Opportunities and challenges for diversifying coastal livelihoods in the Pacific

High population growth rates and poverty are likely to elevate the vulnerability of many coastal communities in the Pacific region to climate change. Alternative livelihood strategies which can generate income and simultaneously conserve fish stocks and their habitats are a priority. This paper investigates the feasibility of ‘sport fishing’ (recreational catch and release angling for particular species of predatory game fish) as such a strategy. The limited research of sport fisheries in developing countries is augmented with a review of community-based ecotourism, integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) and common property management literature to propose design principles. Five pre-requisite principles for the success of sport fishery enterprises are suggested. First, adequate local capacity must be available to manage a tourism business and facilities, supported by cross-scale co-management amongst stakeholders. Second, appropriate governance arrangements must be in place to ensure the equitable dispersal of benefits to all members of the local community, and conflict resolution. Third, resource-ownership boundaries and rights must be clearly delineated before the enterprise begins in order to minimise the potential for future conflict. Fourth, social, biodiversity and ecosystem service co-benefits should result from the enterprise. These should include improvements in income, health, education, food security, the status of the target and non-target species and their habitat and non-fishery ecosystem services. Fifth, monitoring and evaluation of these principles is required within an adaptive co-management framework which takes a social–ecological systems approach and includes all stakeholders in social learning and power-sharing. Through this, broader impacts of the enterprise may emerge which go beyond the standard assessment of ecotourism and ICDP success in financial or biodiversity terms. These principles now need to be tested by researching the experiences of case studies of sport fishing enterprises in the Pacific.     

The state of legislation and policy protecting Australia's mangrove and salt marsh and their ecosystem services

Saline coastal wetlands, such as mangrove and coastal salt marsh, provide many ecosystem services. In Australia, large areas have been lost since European colonization, particularly as a result of drainage, infilling and flood-mitigation works, often starting in the mid-19th century and aimed primarily towards converting land to agricultural, urban or industrial uses. These threats remain ongoing, and will be exacerbated by rapid population growth and climate change in the 21st century. Establishing the effect of wetland loss on the delivery of ecosystem services is confounded by the absence of a nationally consistent approach to mapping wetlands and defining the boundaries of different types of coastal wetland. In addition, climate change and its projected effect on mangrove and salt marsh distribution and ecosystem services is poorly, if at all, acknowledged in existing legislation and policy. Intensifying climate change means that there is little time to be complacent; indeed, there is an urgent need for proper valuation of ecosystem services and explicit recognition of ecosystem services within policy and legislation. Seven actions are identified that could improve protection of coastal wetlands and the ecosystem services they provide, including benchmarking and improving coastal wetland extent and health, reducing complexity and inconsistency in governance arrangements, and facilitating wetland adaptation and ecosystem service delivery using a range of relevant mechanisms. Actions that build upon the momentum to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon – ‘blue carbon’ – could achieve multiple desirable objectives, including climate-change mitigation and adaptation, floodplain rehabilitation and habitat protection.     

Economic tradeoffs in the Gulf of Maine ecosystem: Herring and whale-watching

This research attempts to quantify some of the effects of localized depletion of herring by examining the search times of commercial whale-watching vessels. Whale-watching vessels are indirect users of herring; whales feed on herring and may disperse when prey availability is low. A dataset of daily whale-watching outcomes is combined with fishing effort and oceanographic data to test the hypothesis that intensive fishing effort increases the search time of whale-watching companies. Our results suggest that fishing may have a detrimental impact on search time; however, the magnitude of this effect is fairly small. We find policy that the recently enacted policy which prohibits fishing for herring in whale-watching areas would decrease search times by a small amount. We find some evidence of a localized aggregation effect; search times are the lowest when herring are spawning in the inshore areas. These results should be of interest to policymakers in determining future fishing regulations in an ecosystem-based fisheries management context.     

Issues and challenges in spatio-temporal application of an ecosystem services framework to UK seas

The concepts of ecosystem services and human welfare provide strong integrative frameworks that can be used to inform marine policy and management decisions that support sustainable development. A theoretical framework has been developed and applied to create a model for UK seas to measure changes in final ecosystem services, in terms of human welfare. The model that has been developed is explicitly spatial and temporal to facilitate its use in supporting marine planning decisions. The development and application of this framework to UK seas necessarily requires many assumptions to be made. The paper describes the development and population of the framework and discusses the practical limitations and challenges in seeking to develop and apply such models. Significant differences in long-term values of different services were identified under the different scenarios. All scenarios highlight the projected decline in oil and gas revenues which provide particular intense values at sites of extraction. These values are partially replaced by revenues from offshore renewables in some of the scenarios. Values associated with carbon sequestration, maritime transport, tourism and pollution assimilation are also very significant but more spatially diffuse. The study has demonstrated that it is possible to develop spatio-temporal models to evaluate changes in final ecosystem service benefits using existing data, although the approach necessarily requires many assumptions to be made.     

Analysis of the economic benefits associated with the recovery of threatened marine mammal species in the Canadian St. Lawrence Estuary

This paper examines Canadians' willingness to pay to recover the populations of three marine mammal species found in the St Lawrence Estuary. The valuation approach utilized a stated preference tool that is somewhat a hybrid between contingent valuation and a choice experiment with multiple species recovery program options and choices framed as referenda. Program options involved the use of a marine protected area and restrictions on whale watching and shipping industries. The estimated willingness to pay (WTP) for different levels of marine mammal recovery ranged from $77 to $229 per year per household and varied according to the species affected and the recovery program effort. A series of tests revealed that people would be willing to pay more for programs that contribute to greater increases in marine mammal populations, but the additional value of programs that improve a species status beyond the “at risk” threshold is relatively small.     

Resilience to change in two coastal communities: Using the maximum dexterity fleet

Using whole-ecosystem dynamic simulation models fitted to local data, two coastal communities are described (temperate, northern British Columbia, Canada; tropical, Raja Ampat, Indonesia) where relatively poor fishers’ livelihoods are threatened by climate change and overfishing. A novel theoretical minimum bycatch scenario, the ‘maximum dexterity fleet’, is combined with a search algorithm specifying optimal fisheries to achieve economic and biodiversity goals. Potential gains made by approaching an optimal fleet configuration prove robust against increased risks from climate variability. Although fish, gear and way of life differ greatly, in both communities it is suggested that dexterity (adroitness in adapting fishing gear) could lead to improved benefits from fishing.     

Shortcomings in the European principles of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM): Assessing the implications for locally orientated coastal management using Biome Portfolio Analysis (BPA)

EU policy geared towards the sustainable development of European coastal areas has incorporated Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) as one of its primary mechanisms to achieve its goal. However, critical shortcomings in the ICZM paradigm have emerged. In particular, incoherence in the European Commission's ICZM principles with respect to local and strategic objectives remains an issue. Additionally, a lack of scientific certainty about environmental processes when determining the environmental pros and cons of alternative coastal-management decisions undermines environmentally protective decisions that may otherwise hinder local regional development. With these issues in mind, a Biodiversity Portfolio Analysis (BPA) is applied to Iarras Aithneach, a peninsula on the west coast of Ireland, to test its suitability as tool for ICZM. In addition, the paper uses the BPA methodology to explore the contrast between scientific/strategic and local attitudes towards the management of a coastal area of environmental importance. Pronounced differences between the two are found and the implications for both BPA and ICZM are discussed. The spatial and participatory nature of the BPA process and the explicit treatment of risk the framework exhibits suggest there is scope for it to become a useful tool for ICZM. It also has the potential to act as a routine way of quantifying the “attitude gap” between the scientific community and the local community when managing a unique coastal area.     

The value of marine biodiversity to the leisure and recreation industry and its application to marine spatial planning

The incorporation of the ecosystem approach into marine planning requires that all aspects of value associated with marine biodiversity are incorporated into the decision making process. An ecosystem services approach to valuing marine biodiversity is recognised as a framework by which economic, ecological and social values may be incorporated into the decision making process. There are sectors of the marine leisure and recreation industry (sub-aqua diving, sea angling and wildlife watching), which depend on the presence of natural marine resources in order to carry out their activity. Estimating the value of this direct use can provide an evidence base for the sustainable use of marine biodiversity when set against other competing economic interests in marine spatial planning. In the case study area of Lyme Bay, the marine leisure and recreation industry has been valued using both monetary and non-monetary methods. The results show that the leisure and recreation industry is dependent on the diversity of sites (many of which are currently unmanaged) and that the industry is of economic significance and an area which has recently been closed to trawling activity enables the protection of some of the most valuable sites but has limited benefits for protecting the full resource base upon which this local industry depends.     

Economic evaluation of vessel traffic service (VTS): A contingent valuation study

Maritime safety has become a major concern in Korea. As an alternative to improve maritime safety, the Korean government is considering enhancing infrastructure associated with maritime safety, in the form of a vessel traffic service (VTS) facility for high density waterways. This study estimates the public value of a VTS facility construction project using the contingent valuation (CV) method. A CV survey using person-to-person interviews was administered to 400 randomly selected households to elicit their willingness to pay (WTP) for the project. Overall, the respondents accepted the contingent market, and on average, Korean households were willing to pay a significant amount toward the project. The mean WTP for the project is estimated to be approximately KRW 4149.5 (USD 3.7) per year per household, which is statistically significant. The estimate of the fiduciary benefit to Korean households is approximately KRW 11.07 billion (USD 9.91 million) per year for five years. The results are expected to be useful for policy-makers in determining the economic feasibility of a VTS.     

Incorporating the visibility of coastal energy infrastructure into multi-criteria siting decisions

Concern about the visibility of large infrastructure development often drives public opposition to these projects. However, insufficient analytical tools to assess visibility across a large number of alternate sites prior to siting typically results in the omission of visibility in multi-criteria siting processes, leading to inferior site selection and often costly litigation. This paper presents an approach for deriving visibility maps based on the location and duration of viewing by residents and visitors and demonstrates its use in illuminating tradeoffs by comparing these maps to wind energy value maps in the context of offshore wind energy development in the Northeastern United States.     

Hurricane damage along natural and hardened estuarine shorelines: Using homeowner experiences to promote nature-based coastal protection

Growing coastal populations, rising sea levels, and likely increases in the frequency of major storm events will intensify coastal vulnerability in coming decades. Decisions regarding how and when to fortify estuarine shorelines against coastal hazards, such as erosion, flooding, and attendant property damages, rest largely in the hands of waterfront-property owners. Traditionally, hard engineered structures (e.g. bulkheads, revetments, seawalls) have been used to protect coastal properties, based on the assumption that these structures are durable and effective at preventing erosion. This study evaluates the validity of these assumptions by merging results from 689 surveys of waterfront-property owners in NC with empirical shoreline damage data collected along estuarine shorelines after Hurricanes Irene (2011) and Arthur (2014). The data show: 1) homeowners perceive bulkheads to be the most durable and effective at preventing erosion, but also the most costly; 2) compared to residents with revetments and natural shorelines, property owners with bulkheads reported double the price to repair hurricane damage to their property and four times the cost for annual shoreline maintenance; 3) 93% of evident post-hurricane shoreline damage was attributable to bulkheads or bulkhead hybrids and a higher proportion of surveyed homeowners with bulkheads reported having property damage from hurricanes; and, 4) shoreline hardening increased by 3.5% from 2011 to 2016 along 39 km of the Outer Banks. These results suggest that bulkheads are not meeting waterfront property-owner expectations despite continued use, and that nature-based coastal protection schemes may be able to more effectively align with homeowner needs.