This document discusses the role of valuation work in conservation decision making. It introduces ecosystem services and describes how valuing these services can help reconcile conflicts between nature and economic development. Examples are given where valuation of services like flood control, water purification, and fisheries have influenced decisions to invest in conservation over costly infrastructure. The document argues that a systems approach which values all the benefits nature provides can help maximize services from landscapes in a way that benefits both the environment and human well-being.

1. The role of valuation work in
driving conservation decisions
Dr Mark Everard
Associate Professor of Ecosystem Services
Reconciling nature and prosperity: a new paradigm

2. • Conflicts with today’s market model
• Ecosystem services
• What is valuation?
• Where has valuation helped?
• Why has valuation helped?
• A new paradigm of reconciliation
The role of valuation

3. Ecosystems: living (geodiversity) and non-living (biodiversity) elements
Ecosystem functions: physical, chemical, biological, etc.
Ecosystem services: benefits to people
Values: economic and non-economic
The economy: subset of traded services
Ecosystems, functions, services, values and the economy
From Everard, 2003

5. • Conflicts with today’s market model
• Ecosystem services
• What is valuation?
• Where has valuation helped?
• Why has valuation helped?
• A new paradigm of reconciliation
The role of valuation

6. Background to ecosystem services
• What’s a wetland worth?
o First world economy crops
o Subsistence/informal economy
o Spiritual, cultural, aesthetic values, etc…

7. What are ecosystem services?
“Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems”
UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. (2005). Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis.
(http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdf)
• Anthropocentric
• Systemic interconnections
– All services
– All beneficiaries (sectors of society)
– All economic contexts (including uses)

8. Provisioning services
Fresh water
Food (eg crops, fruit, fish, etc)
Fibre and fuel (eg timber, wool, etc)
Genetic resources (used for crop/stock breeding and biotechnology)
Biochemicals, natural medicines, pharmaceuticals
Ornamental resources (eg shells, flowers, etc)
Regulatory services
Air quality regulation
Climate regulation (local temp. /precipitation, GHG sequestration, etc)
Water regulation (timing/scale of run-off, flooding, etc)
Natural hazard regulation (ie storm protection)
Pest regulation
Disease regulation
Erosion regulation
Water purification and waste treatment
Pollination
Cultural services
Cultural heritage
Recreation and tourism
Aesthetic value
Spiritual and religious value
Inspiration of art, folklore, architecture, etc
Social relations (eg. fishing, grazing, cropping communities)
Supporting services
Soil formation
Primary production
Nutrient cycling (water recirculation in landscape)
Water recycling
Photosynthesis (production of atmospheric oxygen)
Provision of habitat
UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Addenda services
PROVISIONING: Energy harvesting
REGULATORY: Salinity control, fire control
Integrating value systems

9. Ecosystem services (MA classification)
Provisioning (‘stuff’)
Regulatory
(‘maintains’)
Cultural (‘enriches’)
Supporting
(‘internal life support processes’)

10. Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing

11. What happens if we don’t value all services?
UK National Ecosystem Assessment. (2011). Synthesis of the Key Findings.
(http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/Resources/tabid/82/Default.aspx)

12. • Nature is critically important to wellbeing and the economy
• The natural world is consistently undervalued
• Ecosystems and services have changed markedly over 60 years
• Some services (e.g. food production) have increased…
• …many other ecosystem services have declined
• About 30% of services are declining, and others degraded
• The UK population and its demands are growing
• This will place greater pressures on ecosystems
• Actions and decisions now have long-term consequences
• We need to recognise the value of ecosystem services
• Moving to sustainable development require a mix of responses
• We need to involve a range of different actors
Some key message from the UK NEA (2011)
UK National Ecosystem Assessment – Synthesis of the Key Findings
http://sd.defra.gov.uk/2011/06/national-ecosystem-assessment-synthesis-report/

13. The Natural Choice White Paper (11th June 2011)
• Driving principles
– Nature is of huge but generally overlooked value
– It is important to recognise these values
– It is necessary to ‘mainstream’ them across society
• Economic threads
– Ecosystem Markets Task Force (EMTF)
– Natural Capital Committee (NCC)
– General ‘mainstreaming’
– Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)
‘Mainstreaming’ the value of nature

14. • Conflicts with today’s market model
• Ecosystem services
• What is valuation?
• Where has valuation helped?
• Why has valuation helped?
• A new paradigm of reconciliation
The role of valuation

15. • ‘Putting a price on nature’
• Accountancy
What is economic value?
• What nature DOES
• Integrated value systems
o “Apples with apples”
o Big/small, positive/negative?
• The default is ZERO!

16. • Conflicts with today’s market model
• Ecosystem services
• What is valuation?
• Where has valuation helped?
• Why has valuation helped?
• A new paradigm of reconciliation
The role of valuation

17. Managed realignment
Declining value farmed land
Costly ‘hard’
defence
‘Coastal
squeeze’ Sea level rise
Unsustainable
benefit:cost
Smaller set-back
defence
Example ecosystem service benefits:
• Natural energy dissipation
• Flood storage
• Carbon sequestration
• Habitat for wildlife
• Fish recruitment
• Resilience
• Shellfish/Salicornia harvesting
Multiple benefits for
smaller costs
Some loss of farmed land
• WAREHAM HARBOUR coastal defence scheme options
 EFTEC study (see Defra 2007 An introductory guide to valuing ecosystem services)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-introductory-guide-to-valuing-ecosystem-services
• ALKBOROUGH FLATS – Everard, M. (2009). (http://publications.environment-agency.gov.uk/pdf/SCHO0409BPVM-E-E.pdf)
• STEART PENINSULA – Da Silva, L.V. (2013). MSc Thesis (http://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/thesis/consci/2012/daSilva.pdf)

18. New York City water supply
• 1.2 billion US gallons (4.5 billion litres) water daily to 9 million people
– In 1905, Catskills Mountains identified as a prime source
– In 1927, to additional sources in Delaware County
• By 1980s, pressures from
– Agriculture, forestry, tourism, residential and industrial development
• Filtration plant
– Capital: $US 4-6 billion (£2.1 and £3.2 billion) in 1990 prices
– Operational: >$US 200 million (£160 million)
• CBA suggested ‘watershed protection programme’
– Urban-rural watershed protection partnership
– By 1997, comprehensive Memorandum of Agreement
• Total cost $US1.3 billion (£700 million)
– True rural-urban partnership-based approach
– Largest naturally filtered water supply in the world

19. New Zealand: Nga Whenua Rahui
• New Zealand losing ESs to urban-based economy
• Maori cultural values land differently to Western economies
– Kaitiakitanga: safeguarding past legacy, current needs and future generations
• North Island Maori landowners
– Markets to maintain livelihood and culture
• Maori Nga Whenua Rahui conservation reserve program
– Enables landowners to retain/revert to native bush
– Markets for biodiversity, erosion, water and carbon
– Offsets impacts of urbanising economy
• Tribal cooperatives benefit from ES markets
– Significant element of Maori economic growth
Funk, Jason. (2006). Maori farmers look to environmental markets in New Zealand. Ecosystem Marketplace, 24th January 2006.
(http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/dynamic/article.page.php?page_id=4097&section=home&eod=1)

20. • South West Water £9million programme, 2010-2015
– Funding farmers to take additional measures
– Cleaner water at source, less ‘clean-up’ downstream
– Water carrying less silt up to 20% cheaper to treat
– OFWAT agree 65:1 benefit-to-cost ratio
• A ‘payments for ecosystem services’ (PES) scheme
– ‘Beneficiary pays’, additional to ‘polluter pays’
– Administered by the Westcountry Rivers Trust (NGO)
• Exploring multiple ‘packaged’ services…
– Erosion/dredging, metaldehyde, water storage, etc.
‘Upstream Thinking’
www.upstreamthinking.org

21. Maximum Sustainable Yield
• Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY)
– Scientific meaning: theoretical maximum
– Legal meaning: best science to underpin evolving management
• Historic untrammelled public right to fish
– Open access; inexhaustibility of stock
• United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS)
– Extends coastal state sovereign rights (UK to 12 nautical miles)
– Exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to 200 nautical miles
– Duty to restore stocks to levels supporting MSY within EEZs
• EU commitment to manage to MSY
– Historic over-allocation: 75% EU fish stocks overfished
• Ecosystem Approach (CBD, 1995)
– Legal MSY can consider multiple services provided by fishery
– Shifts focus from fishery as commercial resource to broader benefits
Appleby, T., Everard, M., Palmer, R. and Simpson, S. (2013). Plenty More fish in the Sea? http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/22111/1/pmf_final2%20(3).pdf

22. • Conflicts with today’s market model
• Ecosystem services
• What is valuation?
• Where has valuation helped?
• Why has valuation helped?
• A new paradigm of reconciliation
The role of valuation

23. Everyone’s on the side of the angels!

24. From silos to systems
Provisioning services
Fresh water
Food (eg crops, fruit, fish, etc)
Fibre and fuel (e.g. timber, wool, etc)
Genetic resources (used for crop/stock breeding and biotechnology)
Biochemicals, natural medicines, pharmaceuticals
Ornamental resources (e.g. shells, flowers, etc)
Regulatory services
Air quality regulation
Climate regulation (local temp. /precipitation, GHG sequestration, etc)
Water regulation (timing/scale of run-off, flooding, etc)
Natural hazard regulation (ie storm protection)
Pest regulation
Disease regulation
Erosion regulation
Water purification and waste treatment
Pollination
Cultural services
Cultural heritage
Recreation and tourism
Aesthetic value
Spiritual and religious value
Inspiration of art, folklore, architecture, etc
Social relations (eg. fishing, grazing, cropping communities)
Supporting services
Soil formation
Primary production
Nutrient cycling (water recirculation in landscape)
Water recycling
Photosynthesis (production of atmospheric oxygen)
Provision of habitat

25. What we need from our landscapes
7.2  9.5-10.5 billion
0.21% pa = 740  756 million
C Fuel, feedstock, drugs, etc…

26. • Conflicts with today’s market model
• Ecosystem services
• What is valuation?
• Where has valuation helped?
• Why has valuation helped?
• A new paradigm of reconciliation
The role of valuation

27. • Strengths
o Bringing into the market
o Co-benefits
PES and other approaches
• Risks of narrow application
o Potential for siloed ‘new’ markets
o Commodifying nature
• Integrated values
o Valuing the system (not just fragmented products)
o Valuing what nature does
o Nature as the source of multiple benefits

28. The land sparing model

29. Co-existing with nature… and its benefits

30. Ecosystem services (MA classification)
Provisioning (‘stuff’)
Regulatory
(‘maintains’)
Cultural (‘enriches’)
Supporting
(‘internal life support processes’)

31. A practical example from the Tamar, UK
Westcountry Rivers Trust (www.wrt.org.uk)
• Potential service production
o Overlaying multiple data layers
• Highlighting service ‘hotspots’?
o Where multiple services are provided
o The most critical places for nature
• Overlaying on this current land uses
o Where are land uses degrading services?
• Where could be farmed intensively?
• Sparing more beneficial services
• ‘Sustainable intensification’?
• Visual representation to guide policy
• Uptake into the policy environment
• More services from the same landscape?

32. The role of valuation work in
driving conservation decisions
Dr Mark Everard
Associate Professor of Ecosystem Services
Reconciling nature and prosperity: a new paradigm