This study assesses and analyses the ‘user cost’ and ‘net price’ methods of calculating the value of natural resource depreciation, thereby contributing to the continued quest for the most appropriate way to incorporate the degradation of natural capital into national income accounting procedures. On the basis of this assessment, the net price method is used to adjust the national accounts of Zimbabwe for depletion of forests, soils, and mineral resources, for the period 1980 to 1989.
This case study contributes to the incorporation of the concept of ecosystem services on the ground in concrete operational decision-making contexts. It does so by testing the use of open-source data and free tools as well as the adoption of a short-term participatory process, in the context of a project in the urban metropolitan area of Bordeaux, France.
This case study explores the decision-making process that led up to the design of Belize’s first integrated coastal zone management plan, officially approved by the government in August 2016. It involves ecosystem service modeling, stakeholder participation, and spatial planning, and it assesses risk to three coastal-marine habitats posed by eight human uses. The study quantifies current and future delivery of three ecosystem services: protection from storms, catch and revenue from lobster fishing, and tourism expenditures to identify a preferred zoning scheme.
This case study provides an overview of the debate ensuing from the United Kingdom (UK) aiming to leave the European Union (EU) and, with it, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The UK Government has announced its intentions to formulate a novel agricultural policy following the principle that public funding should be restricted to the provision of public goods. However, the acceptance, interpretation, and application of this principle is the subject of intense debate.
This study demonstrates how different payment mechanisms can stimulate the efficient delivery of key, high-value ecosystem services that are either not produced, or are under-produced, by the normal operation of the market. Two payment mechanisms are considered: payments from the public sector to private businesses and payments between private businesses.
This case study explores some of the large-scale programmes through which China has responded to a national land system sustainability emergency. The authors review 16 sustainability programmes, which invested US$378.5 billion (in 2015 US$), covered 623.9 million hectares of land, and involved more than 500 million people. The study finds overwhelming evidence that these programmes’ interventions improved the sustainability of China’s rural land systems and contributed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but the impacts are nuanced and adverse outcomes have occurred.
This case study advocates for the incorporation of natural and nature-based infrastructure (NNBI) methodologies into coastal infrastructure projects in the United States to ensure the dual goals of the safety of coastal communities and the sustainment and restoration of ecosystem functions along coasts.
This case study quantifies ecosystem services in several land use scenarios, relative to actual land use change, over a nine-year period. These scenarios were developed in an effort to maintain agricultural production while improving water quality and increasing water quantity in the watershed of the Miyun Reservoir—the only source of surface water currently available for domestic use in Beijing, China.
This report details a framework established by the United States Department of Interior (DOI) to evaluate the success of 162 of its resilience-focused projects. Building on a previous report that developed performance metrics to measure changes in ecological resilience resulting from the projects, this report focuses on the incorporation of metrics to address socio-economic impacts resulting from the DOI-sponsored projects. These metrics will be used to evaluate projects both individually and across larger scales, with the aim to inform best practices, address knowledge gaps, sustain and enhance improvements in coastal resilience, and further community competence and empowerment.
This case study applies an ecosystem services framework to understand how human activities affect the flow of benefits, including models that quantify services provided by corals, mangroves, and seagrasses. This information is then used within an extensive engagement process to design a national spatial plan for Belize's coastal zone. This process makes Belize's coastal spatial plan the first of its kind.