Economic valuation platforms for ecosystem services of oceans/seas/general marine resources

Invited lecture - ISA Topic 2022

  • Date: 29 SEPTEMBER 2023  from 16:00 to 18:00

  • Event location: Dept. Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, Sala Lauree, via Selmi 3, Bologna - In presence and online event

  • Type: ISA Topic

This Lecture refers to the presentation of our tools for the valuation of European, Marine and Fresh Water Ecosystem Services. Using meta-regression approaches, we estimate the Annual Willingness to Pay (WTP) for several classifications of the ecosystem services and various biogeographical and marine regions across all twenty-seven EU markets. Moreover, we explore the correlation between WTP and the national level of achievement of the 17 SDGs,
with particular focus on SDG 14 - Life Below Water. Results indicate that regulating services of marine and freshwater ecosystems are ranked high and that in almost 63% of the European countries, the WTP for the improvement of the marine & freshwater ecosystem is high and exceeds estimates for terrestrial ecosystems. Valuing ecosystem services and link them to the Sustainable Development Goals, we find that marine ecosystems are mainly positively correlated to SDGs 2,12,13, 14 and 17, while a high MWTP value is assigned to specific SDG14 individual indicators like fish caught from overexploited or collapsed stocks and fish caught that are then discarded. Overall, results indicate that societies attributing greater value to ecosystem services mark greater progress towards the implementation of SDGs and SDG 14 in particular.

Speaker

Dr. Conrad Landis

Senior Researcher, Adjunct Lecturer
Athens University of Economics & Business, Athens, Greece