David N. Barton

Transferring the benefits of avoided health effects from water pollution between Portugal and Costa Rica

Two very similar contingent valuation surveys eliciting willingness-to-pay (WTP) to avoid eye irritation, gastroenteritis, and coughing episodes due to seawater pollution were conducted on visitors to beaches in Portugal and Costa Rica. Various forms of the hypothesis regarding the transfer of mean WTP between the two countries were rejected, as was the hypothesis that model parameters were drawn from the same pooled sample across countries for three different illness episodes. When compared to on-site studies in Costa Rica, benefit transfer from Portugal leads to errors typically of the order of 100 per cent. Adjusting WTP for declared income or other easily accessible socio-demographic variables does not reduce transfer error. This study shows that transfer of health benefit estimates can be potentially quite unhealthy for policy analysis, questioning whether the time and resource savings are justified in this particular transfer context.

Use of Stochastic Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis to Support Sustainable Management of Contaminated Sediments

Sustainable management of contaminated sediments requires careful prioritization of available resources and focuses on efforts to optimize decisions that consider environmental, economic, and societal aspects simultaneously. This may be achieved by combining different analytical approaches such as risk analysis (RA), life cycle analysis (LCA), multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA), and economic valuation methods. We propose the use of stochastic MCDA based on outranking algorithms to implement integrative sustainability strategies for sediment management. In this paper we use the method to select the best sediment management alternatives for the dibenzo-p-dioxin and -furan (PCDD/F) contaminated Grenland fjord in Norway. In the analysis, the benefits of health risk reductions and socio-economic benefits from removing seafood health advisories are evaluated against the detriments of remedial costs and life cycle environmental impacts. A value-plural based weighing of criteria is compared to criteria weights mimicking traditional cost-effectiveness (CEA) and cost-benefit (CBA) analyses. Capping highly contaminated areas in the inner or outer fjord is identified as the most preferable remediation alternative under all criteria schemes and the results are confirmed by a probabilistic sensitivity analysis. The proposed methodology can serve as a flexible framework for future decision support and can be a step toward more sustainable decision making for contaminated sediment management. It may be applicable to the broader field of ecosystem restoration for trade-off analysis between ecosystem services and restoration costs.

Use of multicriteria involvement processes to enhance transparency and stakeholder participation at Bergen Harbor, Norway

Use of participatory stakeholder engagement processes could be important to reduce the risk of potential conflicts in managing contaminated sites. Most stakeholder engagement techniques are qualitative in nature and require experienced facilitators. This study proposes a multicriteria involvement process to enhance transparency and stakeholder participation and applies it to a contaminated sediment management case study for Bergen Harbor, Norway. The suggested multicriteria involvement process builds on the quantitative principles of multicriteria decision analysis and also incorporates group interaction and learning through qualitative participatory methods. Three different advisory groups consisting of local residents, local stakeholders, and nonresident sediment experts were invited to participate in a stakeholder engagement process to provide consensual comparative advice on sediment remediation alternatives. In order for stakeholders or residents to be able to embrace a complex decision such as selection of remediation alternatives, the involvement process with lateral learning, combined with multicriteria decision analysis providing structure, robustness and transparent documentation was preferable. In addition, a multicriteria involvement process resulted in consistent ranking of remediation alternatives across residents, stakeholder, and experts, relative to individual intuitive ranking without the multicriteria involvement process.

Valuing irrigation water using a choice experiment: an ‘individual status quo’ modelling of farm specific water scarcity

We use a choice experiment to evaluate a hypothetical irrigation water pricing regime in Karnataka State, India. The proposed regime includes increasing the availability of water in the dry season, increasing irrigation frequency, water sharing with downstream water users, set against the introduction of a semi-volumetric irrigation price. The majority of farmers chose the status quo (SQ) option. Given the large heterogeneity in farmers’ SQ water availability, irrigation practices and current water tax payments, the SQ could not be given a unique baseline interpretation. This poses a potential problem for choice model estimation. By coding the individual SQ situation of farmers, we observed considerable increase in the explanatory power of the choice experiment models. The results may be of general interest for choice experiments of environmental goods and services with heterogeneous spatial distribution, heterogeneous respondents and/or contentious policies that are expected to elicit considerable SQ response.

Valuation of Ecosystem Services from Nordic Watersheds : From awareness raising to policy support? (VALUESHED)

The emergence of the ecosystem services concept suggests that economic valuation studies are already fulfilling a role in raising awareness by demonstrating the loss of nature’s goods and services ...

Nordic Urban Nature Recreation

The Nordic countries continue to experience growth of urban areas, which provides benefits like economic growth, but also imposes economic costs in terms of reduced ecosystem services. This report ...