Abstract
The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires Member States to assess the costs and benefits of Programmes of Measures (PoMs) put in place to ensure that European marine waters achieve Good Environmental Status by 2020. An interdisciplinary approach is needed to carry out such an assessment whereby economic analysis is used to evaluate the outputs from ecological analysis that determines the expected effects of such management measures. This paper applies and tests an existing six-step approach to assess costs and benefits of management measures with potential to support the overall goal of the MSFD and discusses a range of ecological and economic analytical tools applicable to this task. Environmental cost-benefit analyses are considered for selected PoMs in three European case studies: Baltic Sea (Finland), East Coast Marine Plan area (UK) and the Bay of Biscay (Spain). These contrasting case studies are used to investigate the application of environmental cost-benefit analysis including the challenges, opportunities and lessons learnt from using this approach. This paper demonstrates that there are opportunities in applying the six-step environmental cost-benefit analysis framework presented to assess the impact of PoMs. However, given demonstrated limitations of knowledge and data availability, application of other economic techniques should also be considered (although not applied here) to complement the more formal environmental cost-benefit analysis approach.
Highlights
The importance of biodiversity in providing ecosystem services and human wellbeing is globally recognized (MEA, 2005; Haines-Young and Potschin, 2010; Mace et al, 2012), with international agreements and legislation introduced to address biodiversity loss (e.g., Convention of Biological Diversity, 1992)
The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD, 2008/56/EC) was promulgated in 2008 as a means to ensure that European marine waters achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) by 2020
The MSFD requires Member States to define environmental targets and associated indicators and to develop and implement Programmes of Measures (PoMs) that will ensure the achievement of GES
Summary
The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD, 2008/56/EC) was promulgated in 2008 as a means to ensure that European marine waters achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) by 2020 To this end, the MSFD requires Member States to define environmental targets and associated indicators and to develop and implement Programmes of Measures (PoMs) that will ensure the achievement of GES. To comply with MSFD, all EU Member States undertook a baseline assessment of the current state of the marine environment in their jurisdictions in 2012 These assessments were carried out considering the 11 MSFD Descriptors for defining GES in marine waters (Table 1), with each Descriptor, having an associated set of criteria (29 in total) and indicators (56 in total; EC, 2010). Prior to the implementation of the various PoMs the MSFD requires that each Member State undertakes an impact assessment, including environmental cost-benefit analysis (CBA), on any measure they are planning to implement to support the realization of GES (Article 13.3; EC, 2015)
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