For the long-term development and maintenance, and thus financing, of the ESVD we developed a proposition with five Work Packages (see Fig. 1).
Funding could be provided in various ways:
a) Sponsoring by governmental organisations, NGO’s or other organisations who have an interest to provide open access to reliable data on ES-values. Sponsoring could be for further development of specific aspects of ESVD (see Fig 1) but could also be for establishing working-relations with related initiatives and platforms, like the FAO B-INTACT tool, EVRI, IPBES, OPPLA etc.
b) Payments for specific data: government agencies, consultants, business or the financial sector often need only a specific sub-set of data which can be made available for an appropriate user fee. If so desired an annual subscription fee could be offered so the user receives an annually updated version of (a subset of) the database at a reduced fee.
c) Payments for support and advise regarding specific applications. For example tailor made information (e.g. meta-analytic value functions for the purposes of estimating context specific ecosystem service values) or guidelines on how to use the database in a specific context (e.g. for assessing effects of nature conservation, cost-benefit analysis of land use change and restoration, business externalities, natural capital accounting and national conservation strategies).
d) Donations: some people or organisations might wish to support this effort by unconditional donations, or have a particular interest in supporting the improvement of valuation-data on a specific biome (e.g. coral reefs) or service (e.g. pollination). See how you can donate to the development of ESVD or other ESP projects here.
If you are interested to support ESVD please contact Dolf de Groot.
For examples of uses and partners, click here.
Comments and further suggestions for securing long-term funding for updating and maintaining the ESVD are very welcome.