The role of benefit transfer in ecosystem service valuation
Introduction
The articles that make up this special section of Ecological Economics all have one common feature. Either explicitly or implicitly, they address the need for valuing the services provided by the natural environment in order to achieve more informed resource policy decisions. It is not always possible or efficient to conduct an original valuation study for each specific geographic area or service of concern. This article addresses the potential for using benefit transfer to estimate the value of nonmarket environmental goods and services generated by ecosystem processes. We first discuss the growing demand for monetized values of ecosystem services, and the role of benefit transfer in meeting this demand. We then review accepted guidelines for conducting benefit transfers and discuss advancements in transfer methods and modeling techniques. Next, we discuss the role of web-based resources in the valuation of ecosystem services along with recent references that provide in-depth reviews of these resources. Finally, we offer suggestions for improving benefit transfers in the spirit of improving ecosystem service valuation for future project or policy analysis.
Section snippets
The Demand for and Supply of Ecosystem Service Valuation Research
Growth in human population or per-capita resource consumption, shifting public preferences, increasing resource scarcity, declining environmental health and many other pressures mean that policymakers across the globe face increasingly complex decisions about natural resource management. Coupled with recent global assessments of the status of ecosystems and the benefits they provide to society (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), 2011, UK
Benefit Transfer as a Method to Estimate Ecosystem Service Values
Benefit transfer is broadly defined as “…the use of existing data or information in settings other than for what it was originally collected” (Rosenberger and Loomis, 2003, p. 445). In the context discussed here, this involves the transfer of original ecosystem service value estimates from an existing ‘study site’ or multiple study sites to an unstudied ‘policy site’ with similar characteristics that is being evaluated. Benefit transfer is increasingly being used to meet the demand for
The Future of Benefit Transfer in Ecosystem Service Valuation
Benefit transfer has been widely practiced for several decades now. The motivation driving its use, namely, to supply information on ecosystem service values for use in policy decisions, is only growing. Given that economic analyses must be available in a timely manner to be policy-relevant, and often face budget constraints that prevent original study, the existing stock of welfare estimates will continue to be drawn on for valuation studies for new policy sites. Considerable advancements in
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