Activities and Outputs TWG 6

An important planned activity of the WG is the development of guidelines for integrated ES valuation to be presented and discussed within the ESP community.

Furthermore, the WG will assist in collecting information on the main existing ES-valuation databases and support the development of the Ecosystem Valuation Toolkit (see the ESP Service “Data and Knowledge Sharing” )

More detailed information about the activities and outputs of this TWG will follow soon.

• 2016 European ESP conference: The economics of crop wild relatives (CWR) – refining valuation techniques and bringing the wild relatives of crops into the ecosystem services framework
• 2015 8th World conference: Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services in science-policy-practice   Book of abstracts, Presentations

Call for special issue: “Integrated valuation of ecosystem services: challenges and solutions” – DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Integrated valuation is the challenge of consistently combining a diversity of value systems to inform resource use decisions. A central aim of ecosystem services assessments is to raise awareness and inform decisions on a more equitable distribution of benefits and burdens from the use of nature, within and across societies and generations. Therefore, effective ecosystem service assessments integrate a multitude of values, taking into account ecological and social, local and planetary boundaries of natural resource use. Valuation methodologies however affect the final outcomes and hence the entire concepts’ effectiveness to produce sustainability and environmental justice. This special issue aims at making the consequences of valuation choices more explicit in ecosystem services assessments, and providing theoretical frameworks and hands-on guidance for integrated valuation in practice.

We welcome contributions which:

• clarify conceptual aspects of integrated valuation of ecosystem services, or -more broadly- natural capital contributions to human well-being.
• demonstrate the importance of integrated valuation (and consequences of non-integrated valuation) in practice.
• reveal the challenges arising when integrating different value systems in concrete assessments
• propose frameworks and tools to practically apply integrative ecosystem services valuations and assessments
• apply methodologies to examine trade-offs and synergies between different ecosystem services values
• link integrated valuation to operational decision-support tools for ecosystem services management

This special issue is a collaboration between the ESP working group on Value Integration (www.ES-partnership.org) and the EU OpenNESS project (http://www.openness-project.eu). Managing guest editor: Sander Jacobs ([email protected]), Guest editors: Nicolas Dendoncker, Berta Martin-Lopez, Erik Gomez-baggethun and David Barton.
Submission deadline: May, 1st 2015. submit at http://ees.elsevier.com/ecoser/default.asp and be sure to select “SI:Integrated Valuation”

Short report: Session 30 at the 7the ESP conference in Costa Rica

“Value integration in ecosystem service science and policy”

Value Integration is the challenge of consistently combining a diversity of value systems in resource use decisions. An effective ecosystem service assessment includes the multitude of values of nature, taking into account local and planetary boundaries of natural resource use. The central aim of ecosystem service assessments is to raise awareness and inform decisions on more equitably spread benefits and burdens from the use of nature within and across societies and generations. Valuation methodologies and allegedly neutral technical choices affect the representation of equity, efficiency, ecological sustainability and procedural legitimacy in the final outcomes and hence the entire concepts’ effectiveness to produce sustainability and environmental justice. In our session we focused on the integration of these aspects.

Our working group session was very well attended, and the discussion during the session and also within the conference clearly showed the need for this debate in Ecosystem Service Science and in general. The next milestones are compilation of a special issue (see earlier) and developing a framework for Integrated Valuation for ES assessments.

All presentations are soon to appear on the ESP website, here’s a concise overview of the program and the contributors:

Part 1: The importance of value integration: introduction and case studies (Chair: David Barton) Sander Jacobs – Research Institute Nature and Forest INBO: Introduction: The importance of value integration: aims of the session
Kati Vierikko – University of Helsinki: Bottom-down with values – a conceptual framework for mapping values and ecosystem services of an urban pond in Helsinki, Finland
Takahiro Ota – Ritsumeikan University: Exploring potential factors affecting the long-term change in the monetary value of coastal ecosystem services: A case in Japanese coastal areas
Joachim H. Spangenberg – UFZ: Farmers’ value assessments – a case study from Scania, Sweden
Anna Phelan – Queensland University of technology: Evaluating social sustainability of regional communities affected by major gas projects from an ecological economics perspective
Lola Flores – Earth Economics: Integrating Ecosystem Services: accounting for natural capital and return on investment analysis
Berta Martin-Lopez – Universidad Autonoma de Madrid: Human preferences towards biodiversity and ecosystem services: a comparative analysis of monetary and non-monetary valuation techniques

Part 2: Methodological perspectives and conclusion: Building a framework for value integration (Chair: Nicolas Dendoncker)
David Barton – Norwegian Institute for Nature: Research framework for integration of valuation methods to assess conservation policies: methodological approach to using “hybrid” valuation methods in the assessment, design and implementation of incentive-based conservation policies
Fanny Boeraeve – ULG-Gembloux: How (not) to perform integrated ecosystem service valuations – Pricing gorillas in the mist
Augustin Berghöfer, Bernd Hansjürgens – UFZ: Can deliberative methods of biodiversity valuation improve knowledge integration?
Nicolas Dendoncker – University of Namur: Reconciling views and values of ecosystem services for sustainability? Thoughts and tools from the Belgium Ecosystem Services Community of Practice

Discussion / conclusion: Building a framework for value integration?