Tiziana Luisetti

Coastal zone ecosystem services : from science to values and decision making : a case study

This research is concerned with the following environmental research questions: socio-ecological system complexity, especially when valuing ecosystem services; ecosystems stock and services flow sustainability and valuation; the incorporation of scale issues when valuing ecosystem services; and the integration of knowledge from diverse disciplines for governance and decision making. In this case study, we focused on ecosystem services that can be jointly supplied but independently valued in economic terms: healthy climate (via carbon sequestration and storage), food (via fisheries production in nursery grounds), and nature recreation (nature watching and enjoyment). We also explored the issue of ecosystem stock and services flow, and we provide recommendations on how to value stock and flows of ecosystem services via accounting and economic values respectively. We considered broadly comparable estuarine systems located on the English North Sea coast: the Blackwater estuary and the Humber estuary. In the past, these two estuaries have undergone major land-claim. Managed realignment is a policy through which previously claimed intertidal habitats are recreated allowing the enhancement of the ecosystem services provided by saltmarshes. In this context, we investigated ecosystem service values, through biophysical estimates and welfare value estimates. Using an optimistic (extended conservation of coastal ecosystems) and a pessimistic (loss of coastal ecosystems because of, for example, European policy reversal) scenario, we find that context dependency, and hence value transfer possibilities, vary among ecosystem services and benefits. As a result, careful consideration in the use and application of value transfer, both in biophysical estimates and welfare value estimates, is advocated to supply reliable information for policy making.

Testing the Fundamental Assumption of Choice Experiments: Are Values Absolute or Relative?

A split sample experiment is conducted to test one of the most fundamental assumptions underpinning choice experiments in an environmental setting: whether stated values are absolute or relative. The test uses a natural experiment involving respondents at different home locations relative to potential new wetland sites. Respondents were presented with one of two ranges of distances. An absolute value interpretation requires that the functional relations with distance derived from these two ranges be consistent with each other. We reject a null hypothesis of no range bias, suggesting that respondents may perceive attribute levels in a relative rather than absolute sense. (JEL D81, Q26)

Steps toward a shared governance response for achieving Good Environmental Status in the Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean region is of fundamental importance to Europe given its strategic position. The responsibility for its overall ecosystem integrity is shared by European Union Member States (EU-MS) and other Mediterranean countries. A juxtaposition of overlapping governance instruments occurred recently in the region, with the implementation of both the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) for EU-MS and the Ecosystem Approach Strategy (ECAP) for all Mediterranean countries, including EU-MS. Both MSFD and ECAP are structured around vision-driven processes to achieve Good Environmental Status and a Healthy Environment, respectively. These processes have clear ecosystem-based, integrated policy objectives to guarantee the preservation and integrity of Mediterranean marine ecosystem goods and services. However, adoption of these instruments, especially those related to the new EUMS directives on marine policy, could result in a governance gap in addition to the well-known economic gap between the EU and the non-EU political blocs. We identify two complementary requirements for effective implementation of both MSFD and ECAP that could work together to reduce this gap, to ensure a better alignment between MSFD and ECAP and better planning for stakeholder engagement. These are key issues for the future success of these instruments in a Mediterranean region where discrepancies between societal and ecological objectives may pose a challenge to these processes.

Assessing Costs and Benefits of Measures to Achieve Good Environmental Status in European Regional Seas: Challenges, Opportunities, and Lessons Learnt

The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires Member States to assess the costs and benefits of Programmes of Measures (PoMs) put in place to ensure that European marine waters achieve Good Environmental Status by 2020. An interdisciplinary approach is needed to carry out such an assessment whereby economic analysis is used to evaluate the outputs from ecological analysis that determines the expected effects of such management measures. This paper applies and tests an existing six-step approach to assess costs and benefits of management measures with potential to support the overall goal of the MSFD and discusses a range of ecological and economic analytical tools applicable to this task. Environmental cost-benefit analyses are considered for selected PoMs in three European case studies: Baltic Sea (Finland), East Coast Marine Plan area (UK) and the Bay of Biscay (Spain). These contrasting case studies are used to investigate the application of environmental cost-benefit analysis including the challenges, opportunities and lessons learnt from using this approach. This paper demonstrates that there are opportunities in applying the six-step environmental cost-benefit analysis framework presented to assess the impact of PoMs. However, given demonstrated limitations of knowledge and data availability, application of other economic techniques should also be considered (although not applied here) to complement the more formal environmental cost-benefit analysis approach.

Past and future challenges in managing European seas

Marine environments have undergone large-scale changes in recent decades as a result of multiple anthropogenic pressures, such as overfishing, eutrophication, habitat fragmentation, etc., causing often nonlinear ecosystem responses. At the same time, management institutions lack the appropriate measures to address these abrupt transformations. We focus on existing examples from social-ecological systems of European seas that can be used to inform and advise future management. Examples from the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea on long-term ecosystem changes caused by eutrophication and fisheries, as well as changes in management institutions, illustrate nonlinear dynamics in social-ecological systems. Furthermore, we present two major future challenges, i.e., climate change and energy intensification, that could further increase the potential for nonlinear changes in the near future. Practical tools to address these challenges are presented, such as ensuring learning, flexibility, and networking in decision-making processes across sectors and scales. A combination of risk analysis with a scenario-planning approach might help to identify the risks of ecosystem changes early on and may frame societal changes to inform decision-making structures to proactively prevent drastic surprises in European seas.

The Role of Economics in Ecosystem Based Management: The Case of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive; First Lessons Learnt and Way Forward.

The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) sets out a plan of action relating to marine environmental policy and in particular to achieving ‘good environmental status’ (GES) in European marine waters by 2020. Article 8.1 (c) of the Directive calls for ‘an economic and social analysis of the use of those waters and of the cost of degradation of the marine environment’. The MSFD is ‘informed’ by the Ecosystem Approach to management, with GES interpreted in terms of ecosystem functioning and services provision. Implementation of the Ecosystem Approach is expected to be by adaptive management policy and practice. The initial socio-economic assessment was made by maritime EU Member States between 2011 and 2012, with future updates to be made on a regular basis. For the majority of Member States, this assessment has led to an exercise combining an analysis of maritime activities both at national and coastal zone scales, and an analysis of the non-market value of marine waters. In this paper we examine the approaches taken in more detail, outline the main challenges facing the Member States in assessing the economic value of achieving GES as outlined in the Directive and make recommendations for the theoretically sound and practically useful completion of the required follow-up economic assessments specified in the MSFD.

Jellyfish Blooms and Their Impacts on Welfare Benefits: Recreation in the UK and Fisheries in Italy

Over the last decades, extensive jellyfish blooms have been recorded in several regions worldwide raising concern about a possible “jellification” of global seas. Potential causes of jellyfish blooms include overfishing, global warming, eutrophication, chemical pollution, the increase of artificial hard substrates, and the transport of exotic species in ballast water or for trade. Jellyfish blooms have negative impacts in a number of ways. Impacts on fisheries are the most frequently reported but the evidence base also includes impacts on aquaculture, energy production, tourism, and human health. Very few estimates of the welfare losses due to jellyfish blooms are available. We provide estimates of the potential welfare losses stemming from impacts of blooms on recreation in the UK and fisheries in Italy. Our estimates show that losses can be considerable. The evidence collected here and elsewhere in the literature warrants a consideration of increased efforts towards the monitoring and control of jellyfish blooms.

What Future for the English Coastline? Managed Realignment Benefits and Their Value Estimate Transferability

This chapter provides a study of two managed realignment cases in comparable estuarine systems located on the English North Sea coast: the Blackwater estuary and the Humber estuary. Two scenarios of salt marsh expansion and reduction in these estuaries are used to analyse the multiple research challenges that arise, including value transfer and stock and flow issues. The coastal ecosystems are complex and require a thorough natural science understanding of conflicting ecosystem services changes. Moreover, net economic benefits of managed realignment can be demonstrated, but they are context and scale dependent and valuation practices and results should reflect this. The chapter offers some solutions and suggestions for further research on these generic research challenges for coastal ecosystem management.

Why Value ‘Blue Carbon’?

This chapter intends examine the potential of blue carbon storage ecosystem services to contribute to a healthy climate and to support future protection for the coastal and marine habitats. Coastal ecosystems store ‘blue carbon’ but this provision is currently not protected by any international climate agreement or mechanism. Using scenario analysis, the chapter aims to develop a better understanding of the measurement and valuation of carbon stored and sequestered in coastal and marine ecosystems. Case studies of saltmarshes and seagrasses in England and Europe provide the main focus. Two main scenarios are presented. In one scenario, current environmental protection policies continue to be implemented. In a second scenario, a combination of factors (e.g. less environmental protection, more significant climate change impacts and increased marine pollution) lead to large habitat loss. The loss may be sufficient to lead to the functional extinction of some seagrass species, and hence the services they provide. The on-going debate about the definition of stock and flows of ecosystem services both in biophysical and economic terms and their related valuation issues are also explored based on a carbon cycle example.