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The ecosystem services (ES) framework was developed to articulate and measure the benefits humans receive from ecosystems. Cultural ecosystem services (CES), usually defined as the intangible and nonmaterial benefits ecosystems provide, have been relatively neglected by researchers and policy-makers compared to provisioning, supporting, and regulating services. Although valuing CES poses several conceptual and methodological difficulties, it is of huge interest and importance because of the linkages between cultural values, valuation methods, and the individual and collective decision-making that influence ecosystems and human wellbeing. This review is not a how-to guide, but rather examines key conceptual issues and maps critical areas of debate. There is a range of potential approaches to assessing CES; however, choices regarding valuation methods and their role in decision-making are shaped by cultural and political dynamics. CES are at a crossroads. They can potentially act as a fruitful conceptual container for a broad range of interdisciplinary research into human-environment relations and transform how decisions regarding the environment are made, but they can also be used to legitimize and entrench modes of decision-making that marginalize and undermine the very values they are intended to protect.

As many countries, regions, cities, and states implement emissions trading policies to limit CO2 emissions, they turn to the European Union's experience with its emissions trading scheme since 2005. As a prominent example of a regional carbon pricing policy, it has attracted significant attention from scholars interested in evaluating the effectiveness and impacts of emissions trading. Among the key difficulties faced by researchers is isolating the effect of the EU ETS on industry operation, investment, and pricing decisions from other dominant factors such as the financial crisis, and establishing credible counterfactual scenarios against this backdrop. This article reviews the evidence, focusing on two intended effects (emissions abatement and investment in low‐carbon technologies) as well as two side‐effects (profits and price impacts). We find that the EU ETS cut CO2 emissions by 40–80 million t/year on average, or 2–4% of the total capped, while the evidence on innovation and investment impacts is inconclusive. There is strong empirical support for cost‐pass through in electricity (20–100%), in diesel and gasoline (>50%), and some preliminary evidence of pricing power in other industrial sectors. Windfall profits have amounted to billions of Euros, and concentrated in a few large companies. This article is categorized under: Climate Economics > Economics of Mitigation The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Policies, Instruments, Lifestyles, Behavior Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance

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