The Theory and Practice of Ecosystem Service Evaluation

Watch this FREE webinar to learn from Dr. Tobias Börger on the valuation of marine and coastal ecosystem services. PEMSEA's webinar series, together with its partner, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), aims to share knowledge about ecosystem services valuation and its application at the local level.

The increasing use of the coastal and marine environment requires better spatial planning and coordination of human activities in these environments. Different activities such as fishing and aquaculture, recreation and tourism, oil and gas extraction, energy generation and shipping produce different economic costs and profits and at the same time have different impacts on marine and coastal ecosystems. Taking into account all such impacts and making them comparable on one scale is the objective of economic valuation of ecosystem services and their benefits. This webinar course will touch upon the theory of economic valuation approaches and the need for valuation of these outside of the market. The concept of value in economics and different value motivations in the framework of total economic value (TEV) will be discussed. The idea of environmental cost-benefit analysis to support decision-making and planning will be introduced. The webinar will then give an overview of relevant methods, both revealed and stated preferences approaches. Revealed preference methods include the use of market prices, the production function approach, hedonic pricing and the travel cost method. Stated preference methods are contingent valuation and discrete choice experiments. Some of these methods will be illustrated by exemplary applications in the coastal and marine environment to support planning and decision-making.  

Dr. Tobias Börger is an environmental economist in the Sea and Society Group at Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) in the UK. From 2007 to 2012 he worked as research assistant at the University of Hohenheim (Germany). Tobias completed a Master in economics at the University of Bonn (Germany) in 2007 and received a doctorate in economics from the University of Hohenheim in 2012. His main field of research is environmental valuation. He has experience in the use of the contingent valuation method (CVM), discrete choice experiments and the travel cost method. In his positions at PML and Hohenheim he has been involved in projects which applied a number of environmental valuation methods in both Europe and Asia as well as cost-benefit analysis of environmental management measures. In his doctoral research he studied to what extent stated preferences for environmental improvements in a rural town in Southwest China are impacted by social norms and the social desirability of certain outcomes. During his time at PML Tobias worked in several UK and EU funded research projects dealing with the valuation of marine ecosystem services. His wider research interests lie in the improvement of environmental valuation methods and the use of the ecosystem services approach. With a background in economics he applies behavioural, psychological and experimental concepts to increase the validity of environmental valuation techniques.