In a democratic system, policy makers have to take the preferences of the citizens into account. Since we live in a world with scarce resources, one is asked to make choices regarding the use and management of these resources. In this context, if policy makers decide to invest in the protection of marine ecosystems, less financial resources will be available for other policy areas, for example national health. Moreover, the investment in the protection of marine ecosystems brings along with it the provision of a wide range of benefits to humans though most are not priced in the existing markets - for example climate regulation and provision of habitat for biodiversity. Given that most human activities are priced in one way or other, in some decision contexts, the temptation exists to downplay or ignore these important marine ecosystem benefits on the basis of the non-existence of prices. The simple and simplistic idea in the minds of many policymakers is that a lack of prices is equivalent to a lack of values. Clearly, this is a biased perspective. Against this background, this paper explores the motivation for an economic valuation of this complex resource. The state-of-the-art economic valuation methodologies follow the guidelines proposed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, taking into account the existing scientific knowledge on the functioning of marine ecosystems, marine ecosystem goods and services and its impacts on human welfare. Finally, we critically review some economic valuation studies, arguing that the economic valuation of marine ecosystem services and biodiversity can make sense if and only if important guidelines are observed.

By using ad hoc value transfer protocols, this paper offers a methodological contribution and provides accurate per hectare estimates of the economic value of some selected ecosystem services for all forest biomes in the world, identified following the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment taxonomy MEA. The research also estimates potential total economic losses from policy inaction in year 2050. Final results show that total losses are significant. The total figure is €78 billion, the greatest losses coming from North America and Mexico, followed by Africa, Russia and some Asiatic countries. Most of this loss is attributable to provisioning services and carbon sequestration, while only a minor part is due to loss of cultural services. In terms of biomes the greatest losses are from boreal and warm mixed forests, followed by tropical forests. These results may be surprising to some who argue that it is the loss of tropical forests, particularly the Amazon, that is the most significant. A detailed analysis, shows, however, that this is not the case. The best estimates point to greater losses in areas where use and non-use values are highest, which includes North America.

This paper reports an original economic valuation of the impact of climate change on the provision of forest regulating services in Europe. To the authors' knowledge the current paper represents the first systematic attempt to estimate human well-being losses with respect to changes in biodiversity and forest regulating services that are directly driven by climate change. First, selected 34 European countries are grouped by their latitude intervals to capture the differentiated regional effects of forests in response to climate change. Moreover, the future trends of forest areas and stocked carbon in 2050 are projected through the construction and simulation of global circulation models such as HADMC3 following four different future developing paths described by the four IPCC scenarios. Finally, the valuation exercise is anchored in an ecosystem service based approach, involving the use of general circulation models and integrated assessment models. Our findings address two dimensions in the evaluation of climate impacts on European forests: Firstly, future projections yield different states of the world depending upon the IPCC scenario adopted. Secondly, spatial issues matter in an assessment of the distributional impacts of climate change, as these impacts are not distributed in a uniform way across the European countries under consideration.

In this paper we discuss how a Decision Support System (DSS) for managing the marine environment can be set up. We use the Driving force-Pressure-State-Impact-Respond (DPSIR) framework to analyze which are the major driving forces impacting upon the marine environment in the North Sea. Moreover, a number of potential responses are identified. Furthermore, a preliminary and simplified optimization model has been set up and can be used in a DSS to decide on the best location of marine reserves for the protection of species. The model is based on a bio-economic metapopulation model that can be used to decide which parts of the sea should be opened for fisheries and which should be protected as marine reserve. It accounts for the dispersal of fish and considers both the economic returns from fisheries and the ecological value of marine biodiversity. A number of suggestions are given on how to extend and improve the DSS.

This paper explores the use of a micro-economic model to analyse the provisions and parties of bioprospecting contracts. It focuses on the pharmaceutical industry as the representative biodiversity buyer, presenting an original theoretical framework that explains the main contract characteristics or stylised facts. Against this background, it considers the main contractors involved in these private contracts, i.e. biodiversity sellers and biodiversity buyers, analysing both the magnitude and distribution of the respective payoffs. Particular attention is devoted to the different, mixed impacts of bioprospecting contracts and patenting on social welfare. The positive welfare impacts delivered by bioprospecting contracts are associated with the potential discovery of a new drug product, i.e. productivity gains, non-monetary benefit-sharing or transfers and royalty revenues. The negative welfare impact results from the legal creation of a monopoly and the related well-known effect on the consumer surplus. Finally, the potential redistribution effects are limited, and a potential enforcement of this objective may jeopardise the desirability of the contracts since this action would lead to a significant increase in the transaction costs.

In this paper we present a systematic attempt to assess economic value of climate change impact on forest ecosystems and human welfare. In the present study, climate change impacts are downscaled to the different European countries, which in turn constitute the elements of our analysis. First, we anchor the valuation exercise in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) Approach and therefore the link between the different forest ecosystem goods and services, including provisioning, regulating and cultural services, human well-being and climate change. Second, climate change is operationalized by exploring the different storylines developed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and applied, downscaled, for each of the European countries under consideration. Third, and bearing in mind the different nature of the benefits provided by the different types of forest ecosystems under examination, we shall explore different economic valuation methodologies so as to shed light on the magnitude of the involved welfare changes. According to the estimation results the four different IPCC scenarios, i.e. A1F1, A2, B1 and B2, are associated to different welfare impacts. First, these reveal to depend on both the nature of the forest ecosystem service. For example, cultural values reveal to be more sensitive to the four IPCC scenarios than the other ones, with the wood forest products being more resilient to climate change. Second, the distributional impacts of climate change on the provision of these goods and services do also depend on the geo-climatic regions under consideration. For the Scandinavian group of countries, B1 is ranked with the highest level of provision of carbon sequestration services, amounting to 46.3 billion dollars. In addition, we can see that cultural services provided by forest ecosystems have their highest levels in the Mediterranean countries, ranging from 8.4 to 9.0 million dollars, respectively in the B2 and B1 scenarios. Finally, we can see that the total value of wood forest products ranges between 41.2 and 47.5 million dollars for Central Europe to 5.4 and 7.2 million dollars in Northern Europe, respectively A1 and A2 scenarios. For this service, Mediterranean Europe provides a relatively weak role in the provision with values ranging from 6.4 million dollars in A1 scenario to 8.7 million dollars in the B2. In short, and to conclude, the valuation results (1) may contribute to a better understanding of the potential welfare loss in the context of climate change and the economic trade-offs between potential mitigation or adaptation strategies; and (2) confirm that climate change will be responsible for a re-distribution of welfare among the European countries, signalling the potential for a(n) agreement(s) among these same countries focus on the re-allocation of potential trade-offs among the countries.