Nils Droste

Neglected Values of Major Water Engineering Projects: Ecosystem Services, Social Impacts, and Economic Valuation

Major water infrastructure projects like dams can provide substantial benefits such as food and drinking water security, hydropower generation, and flood control. But these benefits may come at a (too) high cost of large scale ecological alterations or adverse social impacts such as involuntary resettlements. If these costs are neglected, an investment decision will hardly be efficient. In this chapter, we will stress the necessity to make these “neglected values” visible and demonstrate how this can be achieved through economic valuation.

Ecosystem services in infrastructure planning – a case study of the projected deepening of the Lower Weser river in Germany

We consider how ecosystem services can be incorporated into water infrastructure planning by studying the projected deepening of the Lower Weser river channel in Germany. We recalculate the projects benefit–cost ratio by integrating the monetary value of changes in different ecosystem services, as follows: (1) the restoration costs of a mitigation measure for a loss in fresh water supply for agricultural production in the estuary region, (2) the costs of a loss in habitat services, transferring the willingness to pay from a contingent valuation study to the area assessed in the environmental impact assessment, and (3) the benefits of emissions savings induced by more efficient shipping, taking a marginal abatement cost approach. We find that including monetary values for ecosystem service changes leads to a substantial drop in the benefit–cost ratio. On this basis, we argue for a reform of the standard cost–benefit analysis to facilitate more complete welfare assessments.

The Green Economy: Pragmatism or Revolution? Perceptions of Young Researchers on Social Ecological Transformation

The Green Economy is a strategic development concept of the United Nations incorporating a broad array of potential meanings and implications. It is subject to academic conceptualisation, operationalisation, reflection and criticism. The aim of our paper is to conceptualise a subset of the multi-faceted and at times polarised debate around the implications and applications of the Green Economy concept, and to provide reflective grounds for approaches towards the concept. By using qualitative content analysis and a participatory approach, we investigate perceptions of young researchers from various disciplines working on issues related to the Green Economy. The spectrum of disparate perceptions observed among the respondents is accommodated within a two-dimensional model. The dimensions are 1) the degree and nature of desired societal change in relation to the current economic model and set of institutions; and 2) the role of research in delivering such change. We discuss the model in light of the existing literature.

Implementing Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Areas: Financing and Governance Aspects

Fostering nature-based solutions in urban areas is an issue that receives increasing attention on the political agenda. But in many cases, only insufficient financial resources are available for the implementation of such solutions. A central issue in this context is the structure of municipal revenues, which stem from either municipal tax revenue, fees for municipal services, or fiscal transfers from other governmental levels. Many of these revenues are however absorbed by specific tasks, especially social expenditure; thus there is little room left for autonomous investments, e.g. into nature-based solutions and green infrastructure. In this chapter we elaborate on the structure of the problem such as the corresponding fiscal and constitutional restrictions and analyse which solutions are possible to allow for greater investments into multifunctional urban nature-based solutions.

Where communities intermingle, diversity grows – The evolution of topics in ecosystem service research

We analyze how the content of ecosystem service research has evolved since the early 1990s. Conducting a computational bibliometric content analysis we process a corpus of 14,118 peer-reviewed scientific article abstracts on ecosystem services (ES) from Web of Science records. To provide a comprehensive content analysis of ES research literature, we employ a latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm. For three different time periods (1990–2000, 2001–2010, 2011–2016), we derive nine main ES topics arising from content analysis and elaborate on how they are related over time. The results show that natural science-based ES research analyzes oceanic, freshwater, agricultural, forest, and soil ecosystems. Pollination and land cover emerge as traceable standalone topics around 2001. Social science ES literature demonstrates a reflexive and critical lens on the role of ES research and includes critiques of market-oriented perspectives. The area where social and natural science converge most is about land use systems such as agriculture. Overall, we provide evidence of the strong natural science foundation, the highly interdisciplinary nature of ES research, and a shift in social ES research towards integrated assessments and governance approaches. Furthermore, we discuss potential reasons for observable topic developments.

Exploring the policy mix for biodiversity financing: opportunities provided by environmental fiscal instruments in the EU: Carbon Taxes, Energy Subsidies and Smart Instrument Mixes

Existing public funding for biodiversity conservation is widely acknowledged to be inadequate to finance the actions required to meet the EU’s biodiversity conservation targets, contributing to the global targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity. Consequently, access to funding from other sectoral funding streams of the public domain, including through new and innovative means, is needed both in order to close the funding gap for biodiversity and to internalise the costs of conservation into sectoral activities that drive biodiversity loss. Environmental fiscal reform is considered to create several opportunities for complementing and mobilising resources for biodiversity funding. Environmental taxes, which either directly or indirectly support biodiversity, biodiversity-related environmental fees and charges (e.g. hunting charges and nature park entrance fees), and environmental tax relief mechanisms that reward certain biodiversity-friendly activities or behaviour are examples of fiscal instruments that can be used to mobilise more funding for biodiversity. Furthermore, redistributing tax revenue among government levels according to ecological criteria (i.e. ecological fiscal transfers) can also be used to support the delivery of conservation objectives. All of these instruments have so far not been widely explored in the EU and its Member States but have a potential to complement the existing policy mix for biodiversity finance. This chapter provides a review of these fiscal instruments, highlighting a number of successful examples, and explores their possible role within the context of the overall framework for biodiversity financing.