Use and limits of ecosystem services valuations in the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans (LA): US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. 90 p. Agreement No.: M17AC00018. Report No.: OCS Study BOEM 2021-006

摘要: Ecosystem services are the material and energy outputs that are drawn from the natural environment and used by humans for their benefit. Despite their origin in the environment, ecosystem services are an anthropocentric concept. They include food supply, pollination, recreation, water treatment, soil formation, storm mitigation, and any other materials or processes supplied by natural or managed ecosystems. Though ecosystem services are, by definition, valuable to humans, they are not always valued by modern economies. This can lead to market failures. For example, crop pollination is often provided by insects but there is no market mechanism to ensure that this valuable but not valued ecosystem service is maintained. As a result, a large number of studies have emerged over the past four decades that have sought to put a monetary value on ecosystem services (eg, farmers benefit by $ X per year from wild insect pollinators). Likewise, marine ecosystems are able to dilute wastes from human systems, yet their ability to dilute wastes is neither infinite nor valued by economies. The purpose of this report is to critically review such studies with respect to three Gulf of Mexico (GOM) ecosystem services: recreation, fishing, and storm mitigation. We also perform an analysis to predict how one ecosystem service (fish provisioning) might be impacted by changes in oil and gas platform numbers. We find a number of limitations associated with the methods used to perform ecosystem service valuations and argue that this severely limits their usefulness for policymaking. We note that ecosystem service valuation is, at present, best understood as an …