Proposed framework for quantifying ecosystem services and their economic benefits

摘要: Purpose: This document lays out a framework to assess the social benefits of management actions to preserve or restore ecosystem goods and services and discusses how the framework might also be applied to assess the value of a stock or flow under static policy conditions. Through this framework, we aim to clarify definitions of ecosystem services, ecological endpoints, and economic benefits to improve communication among ESRP researchers. A primary goal is to explain how ecological endpoints can be created that support economic assessments.Brief Background: The methods needed to estimate the benefits lost or gained as a result of a change in an ecosystem good or service are different from methods used to value a total stock of an ecosystem’s goods and services. We focus here primarily on evaluating changes since analysis of expected change supports a wide variety of policy questions and is consistent with assumptions needed to conduct most valuation, such as assuming a resource change is a relatively small portion of the entire stock. Many ESRP researchers have expressed interest in valuing stocks of natural resources, as an extension of efforts to quantify extent and condition of ecosystems. Although it is less common than change analysis, the need to value a stock of a resource can arise when someone wants to sell that stock or evaluate trends in total value over time.