Environmental economic methods for ecosystem service valuation and quantification

Background/Question/Methods

Ecosystem service valuation has garnered attention with the United Nations backed report The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) as well as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) recent update of Performance Standard 6 (PS6) on biodiversity which requires a systematic assessment of ecosystem service dependencies and impacts for associated projects. The analysis compares various environmental economic methods that may be used in an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) to value the “with” and “without” project impacts (including secondary, cumulative and higher order) over time. The analysis shows how some quantitative methods using monetary and non-monetary metrics may be used to appropriately scale potential mitigation offsets.

Results/Conclusions

Environmental economic methods can be used to value changes in ecosystem services over time using monetary and non-monetary metrics to estimate project impacts and scale potential mitigation offsets.