Roy Brouwer

Environmental value transfer: state of the art and future prospects

Abstract The main objectives of the paper are to (1) give an overview of the state of the art of environmental value transfer, (2) discuss its prospects and potential role in CBA as a decision-support tool, and (3) provide further guidelines for proper use and application. Environmental value or benefit transfer is a technique in which the results of studies on monetary environmental valuation are applied to new policy contexts. The technique is controversial, not least because of academic and political reservations over the usefulness and technical feasibility of economic valuation tools to demonstrate the importance of environmental values in project or programme appraisals. Testing of environmental value transfer so far has been unable to validate the practice. Taking into account the conditions set out in the literature for valid and reliable value transfer, most transfers appear to result in substantial transfer errors. This paper discusses why and addresses the question of which factors may have been overlooked. It is argued that the problem is much more fundamental than previously acknowledged. Strict guidelines in terms of quantitative adjustment mechanisms to valid value transfer are meaningless if the more fundamental issue of differences in the very nature of the values elicited is not addressed at the same time.

The Validity of Environmental Benefits Transfer: Further Empirical Testing

This paper provides further empirical evidence of the validity of environmental benefits transfer based on CV studies by expanding the analysis to include control factors which have not been accounted for in previous studies. These factors refer to differences in respondent attitudes. Traditional population characteristics were taken into account, but these variables do not explain why respondents from the same socio-economic group may still hold different beliefs, norms or values and hence have different attitudes and consequently state different WTP amounts. The test results are mixed. The function transfer approach is valid in one case, but is rejected in the 3 other cases investigated in this paper. We provide further evidence that in the case of statistically valid benefits transfer, the function approach results in a more robust benefits transfer than the unit value approach. We also show that the equality of coefficient estimates is a necessary, but insufficient condition for valid benefit function transfer and discuss the implications for previous and future validity testing.

Ecosystem services value, research needs, and policy relevance: a commentary

The purpose of this note is to provide constructive suggestions for future research on ecosystem services valuation following recent attempts by a multidisciplinary team to estimate service values on a global scale. The position adopted in this note is that while there are limits to the economic calculus, i.e. not everything is amenable to meaningful monetary valuation, economic valuation methods and techniques can and should play a significant role in the project, programme and policy appraisal process which leads to the setting of relative values (including environmental assets values). Costanza et al. (1997) estimated the current economic value of 17 ecosystem services on a biosphere-wide basis at between US

Towards an integrated environmental assessment for wetland and catchment management

16–54 trillion (10)/year, giving an average annual value some 1.8 times the current global Gross National Product. The rationale behind this valuation exercise could be based on a number of arguments. x93 Due to a lack of adequate market price data (or absence of data), together with inadequate (or absent) property rights regimes which ensure that resource values can be practicably appropriated, ecosystem services are assigned too little or zero value and weight in policy decisions. x93 Some important environmental science research and debate, together with related policy making (i.e. international agreements and conventions) necessarily takes place at the global scale. There is a need therefore for social science research to ‘engage’ science and policy at this scale. But such an engagement must, in our view, encompass analysis which will show clearly why globally aggregated social science data/estimates are often not meaningful, if the objective is to move beyond mere dialogue towards a more rational policy process. x93 It is important to prove how valuable ecosystem services really are and to formulate mechanisms by which such function-based values can be realistically captured. Such capture must be relevant for everyday socio-economic and political activity and decision taking, through national income/resource accounting and project cost–benefit appraisal, down to the grass roots level in developed and developing countries.

Public Perception of Overcrowding and Management Alternatives in a Multi-purpose Open Access Resource

This paper develops a decision support system for evaluation of wetland ecosystem management strategy and examines its, so far partial, application in a case study of an important complex coastal wetland known as the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, in the east of England, UK. Most managed ecosystems are complex and often poorly understood hierarchically organized systems. Capturing the range of relevant impacts on natural and human systems under different management options will be a formidable challenge. Biodiversity has a hierarchical structure which ranges from the ecosystem and landscape level, through the community level and down to the population and genetic level. There is a need to develop methodologies for the practicable detection of ecosystem change, as well as the evaluation of different ecological functions. What is also required is a set of indicators (environmental, social and economic) which facilitate the detection of change in ecosystems suffering stress and shock and highlight possible drivers of the change process. A hierarchical classification of ecological indicators of sustainability would need to take into account existing interactions between different organization levels, from species to ecosystems. Effects of environmental stress are expressed in different ways at different levels of biological organization and effects at one level can be expected to impact other levels, often in unpredictable ways. The management strategy, evaluation methodologies and indicators adopted should also assess on sustainability grounds whether any given management option is supporting, or reducing, the diversity of functions which are providing stakeholders with the welfare benefits they require.

A meta-analysis of wetland contingent valuation studies

This paper presents an analysis of overcrowding problems in the Norfolk Broads and the role this plays in overall concern about declining environmental quality and, as a consequence, tourism demand. The analysis is based on interviews with the two main user groups of the periodically congested Broads waterways: boat hirers and private boat owners. The main objectives of the study are to assess these user groups perceptions of overcrowding of the Broads, and to explore their attitudes to and preferences for different ways of managing the actual and perceived problems. A combination of quantitative and qualitative social research formats, including face-to-face interviewing and group discussions, are used to reveal the views these user groups hold. In these interviews and discussions, a variety of issues are explored related to the future management of the Broads waterways. Overcrowding appears to be related to the quality of boat usage as much as the total number of boats. Issues such as trust in the authority responsible for managing the area, public right of access and fairness play a major role in the results.