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Incorporating environmental costs of ecosystem service loss in political decision making: A synthesis of monetary values for Germany.

ABSTRACT: Germany faces on-going degradation and biodiversity loss. As a consequence, goods and services provided by biodiversity for human well-being, so-called ecosystem services, are being lost. The associated economic costs and benefits are often unknown. To fill this gap, we conducted a literature review and developed a database of monetary values for the changes in ecosystem services that result from ecosystem change in Germany. In total, 109 monetary valuation studies of regulating and cultural ecosystem services were identified, with the majority focusing on forests and wetlands. In collaboration with valuation experts and the German Federal Environment Agency-Umweltbundesamt (UBA), we defined a set of criteria that economic valuation studies should meet in order to qualify for being used in decision making on national policies. Only 6 out of 109 valuation studies (5.5%) fulfilled the quality criteria for informing such decisions. Overall, monetary information on regulating and cultural ecosystem services is scattered and scarce compared to information on provisioning services, which is accounted for in detail in national statistics. This imbalance in information likely contributes to the distortion in land-use policies, giving preference to maximizing provisioning services in agricultural production and forestry, while neglecting the societal relevance of regulating and cultural services. Decision makers have to rely on only a few cost estimates that are scientifically robust, while being pragmatic to include also vague estimates in cases where data is lacking. The transferability of the monetary values included in our database depends on the biophysical and socio-economic site conditions as well as the decision context of the intended application. Case specific adjustments following guidance for benefit transfer are recommended. Given the lack of applicable studies, we call for more decision-relevant economic assessments. Even in cases where monetary estimates are available, we suggest decision makers to consider also other benefit information available to capture the multiple values ecosystems provide to humans.

SUBMITTER: Forster J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6373920 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The ecosystem services (ES) concept has emerged and spread widely recently, to enhance the importance of preserving ecosystems through global change in order to maintain their benefits for human well-being. Numerous studies consider various dimensions of the interactions between ecosystems and land use via ES, but integrated research addressing the complete feedback loop between biodiversity, ES and land use has remained mostly theoretical. Few studies consider feedbacks from ecosystems to land use systems through ES, exploring how ES are taken into account in land management decisions. To fill this gap, we carried out a role-playing game to explore how ES cognition mediates feedbacks from environmental change on farmers' behaviors in a mountain grassland system. On a close to real landscape game board, farmers were faced with changes in ES under climatic and socio-economic scenarios and prompted to plan for the future and to take land management decisions as they deemed necessary. The outcomes of role-playing game were complemented with additional agronomic and ecological data from interviews and fieldwork. The effects of changes in ES on decision were mainly direct, i.e. not affecting knowledge and values, when they constituted situations with which farmers were accustomed. For example, a reduction of forage quantity following droughts led farmers to shift from mowing to grazing. Sometimes, ES cognitions were affected by ES changes or by external factors, leading to an indirect feedback. This happened when fertilization was stopped after farmers learned that it was inefficient in a drought context. Farmers' behaviors did not always reflect their attitudes towards ES because other factors including topographic constraints, social value of farming or farmer individual and household characteristics also influenced land-management decisions. Those results demonstrated the interest to take into account the complete feedback loop between ES and land management decisions to favor more sustainable ES management.

Project description:Introduction. While use of (hepatitis C virus) HCV-viremic kidneys may result in net benefit for the average end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patient awaiting transplantation, patients may have different values for ESKD-related health states. Thus, the best decision for any individual may be different depending on the balance of these factors. Our objective was to explore the feasibility of sampling health utilities from hemodialysis patients in order to perform patient-specific decision analyses considering various transplantation strategies. Study Design. We assessed utilities on a convenience sample of hemodialysis patients for health states including hemodialysis, and transplantation with either an HCV-uninfected kidney or an HCV-viremic kidney. We performed patient-specific decision analyses using each patient's age, race, gender, dialysis vintage, and utilities. We used a Markov state transition model considering strategies of continuing hemodialysis, transplantation with an HCV-unexposed kidney, and transplantation with an HCV-viremic kidney and HCV treatment. We interviewed 63 ESKD patients from four dialysis centers (Dialysis Clinic Inc., DCI) in the Cincinnati metropolitan area. Results. Utilities for ESKD-related health states varied widely from patient to patient. Mean values were highest for -transplantation with an HCV-uninfected kidney (0.89, SD: 0.18), and were 0.825 (SD: 0.231) and 0.755 (SD: 0.282), respectively, for hemodialysis and transplantation with an HCV-viremic kidney. Patient-specific decision analyses indicated 37 (59%) of the 63 ESKD patients in the cohort would have a net gain in quality-adjusted life years from transplantation of an HCV-viremic kidney, while 26 would have a net loss. Conclusions. It is feasible to gather dialysis patients' health state utilities and perform personalized decision analyses. This approach could be used in the future to guide shared decision-making discussions about transplantation strategies for ESKD patients.

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Incorporating environmental costs of ecosystem service loss in political decision making: A synthesis of monetary values for Germany.

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