Economic Reasons for Conserving Wild Nature

Balmford, Andrew; Bruner, Aaron; Cooper, Philip; Costanza, Robert; Färber, Stephen; Green, Rhys E.; Jenkins, Martin; Jefferiss, Paul; Jessamy, Valma R.; Madden, Joah R.; Munro, Kat; Myers, Norman; Naeem, Shahid; Paavola, Jouni; Rayment, Matthew; Rosendo, Sérgio; Roughgarden, Joan; Trumper, Kate; Turner, R. Kerry

doi:10.1126/science.1073947

Cited by 1,226 publications

(807 citation statements)

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“…Two highly controversial studies, both with natural scientists as lead authors, have made claim to have assessed the monetary value of the World's ecosystems (Costanza et al, 1997) and all remaining wild Nature (Balmford et al, 2002). In the United States, the ecosystems services approach has been promoted, amongst others, by ecologists Paul Ehrlich and his student Gretchen Daily (e.g., Daily, 1997;Daily et al, 2000).…”

Section: A Developing Pragmatic Financial Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasingly, Nature has become capital, ecosystem structure and functions have become goods and services, and what was valued in its own right requiring protection has become instrumental for providing consumers with utility. Simple money numbers, ideally large and aggregated (e.g., Balmford et al, 2002;Costanza et al, 1997), are seen as using the economic language of business and politics. The UNEP, European Commission and branches of various governments (German, Norwegian, Swedish, Japanese) have supported a major international initiative to establish a dominant monetary value discourse under the title of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), with the central aim of "mainstreaming the economics of Nature" (TEEB, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Re-establishing an ecological discourse in the policy debate over how to value ecosystems and biodiversity

Spash

Aslaksen

2015

Journal of Environmental Management

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Section: A Developing Pragmatic Financial Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-establishing an ecological discourse in the policy debate over how to value ecosystems and biodiversity

Spash

Aslaksen

2015

Journal of Environmental Management

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“…Despite their limited extent (approximately 0.7 % of tropical forests), they are globally important carbon sinks because of their efficiency in carbon assimilation and below-ground storage (Donato et al 2011). The gap between the economic value of intact mangrove ecosystems and the value captured by standard market economics (i.e., the market failure) is one of the widest for any ecosystem (Balmford et al 2002). Mangroves are recognized as providing a wide-range of provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services that could be combined with carbon sequestration in marketing ''high value'' carbon payments in putative PES projects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turning the Tide: How Blue Carbon and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) Might Help Save Mangrove Forests

Locatelli

Binet

Kairo

et al. 2014

AMBIO

149

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In this review paper, we aim to describe the potential for, and the key challenges to, applying PES projects to mangroves. By adopting a ''carbocentric approach,'' we show that mangrove forests are strong candidates for PES projects. They are particularly well suited to the generation of carbon credits because of their unrivaled potential as carbon sinks, their resistance and resilience to natural hazards, and their extensive provision of Ecosystem Services other than carbon sequestration, primarily nursery areas for fish, water purification and coastal protection, to the benefit of local communities as well as to the global population. The voluntary carbon market provides opportunities for the development of appropriate protocols and good practice case studies for mangroves at a small scale, and these may influence larger compliance schemes in the future. Mangrove habitats are mostly located in developing countries on communally or state-owned land. This means that issues of national and local governance, land ownership and management, and environmental justice are the main challenges that require careful planning at the early stages of mangrove PES projects to ensure successful outcomes and equitable benefit sharing within local communities.

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“…1997), yet they are particularly at risk from anthropogenic change (Balmford et al. 2002; Dudgeon et al. 2006; Abell et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From species to communities: the signature of recreational use on a tropical river ecosystem

Deacon

Shimadzu

Dornelas

et al. 2015

Ecology and Evolution

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Disturbance can impact natural communities in multiple ways. However, there has been a tendency to focus on single indicators of change when examining the effects of disturbance. This is problematic as classical diversity measures, such as Shannon and Simpson indices, do not always detect the effects of disturbance. Here, we instead take a multilevel, hierarchical approach, looking for signatures of disturbance in the capacity and diversity of the community, and also in allocation and demography at the population level. Using recreational use as an example of disturbance, and the freshwater streams of Trinidad as a model ecosystem, we repeatedly sampled the fish communities and physical parameters of eight pairs of recreational and nonrecreational sites every 3 months over a 28‐month period. We also chose the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) as the subject of our population‐level analyses. Regression tree analysis, together with analysis of deviance, revealed that community capacity and community species richness were greater at sites with higher levels of recreational use. Interestingly, measures of community diversity that took into account the proportional abundance of each species were not significantly associated with recreational use. Neither did we find any direct association between recreational use and proportion of guppy biomass in the community. However, population‐level differences were detected in the guppy: Sex ratio was significantly more female‐biased at more disturbed sites. Our findings emphasize the importance of considering multiple levels when asking how disturbance impacts a community. We advocate the use of a multilevel approach when monitoring the effects of disturbance, and highlight gaps in our knowledge when it comes to interpreting these effects.

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Economic Reasons for Conserving Wild Nature

Cited by 1,226 publications

References 20 publications

Re-establishing an ecological discourse in the policy debate over how to value ecosystems and biodiversity

Re-establishing an ecological discourse in the policy debate over how to value ecosystems and biodiversity

Turning the Tide: How Blue Carbon and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) Might Help Save Mangrove Forests

From species to communities: the signature of recreational use on a tropical river ecosystem

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