Discussion on Marine Eco-Compensation Standard of Land Reclamation from Sea: A Case Study of Dadeng Sea Area, Xiamen, China

Abstract

This paper chooses a land reclamation project of Dadeng sea area, Xiamen as a case, and put emphasis on discussing how to calculate the marine eco-compensation standard of land reclamation from sea based on the losses of ecosystem services. It starts with the classification of coastal ecosystem services and the analysis of adverse impacts caused by the reclamation project, and then builds the relevant valuation models of ecosystem service losses under the above classification framework and estimates the losses of coastal ecosystem services incurred by the project. On the basis of these, the paper puts forward a method for calculating the theoretical compensation standard and applies it to the case study. The results show that, the total loss of ecosystem services caused by the land reclamation project amounts to 40.88 million yuan/a, in which the loss of space resources (i.e. mariculture space) in provisioning services is the largest, amounting to 30.71 million yuan/a, and the loss of per unit sea area is about 4.19 yuan/m2a. The estimated compensation standards are 209.6 yuan/m2 with discounting rate of 2% and 93.2 yuan/m2 with discounting rate of 4.5%, respectively. It is proposed that the compensation amount can be determined through bargaining between compensators and compensation receivers in practice, based on the theoretical compensation standard as well as the compensation receivers’ willingness to accept, the economic level of land reclamation area, and the local cultures et al.