The Economics of Marine Ecosystems: Reconciling Use and Conservation of Coastal and Marine Systems and the Underlying Natural Capital

Abstract

The recognition of the degree to which human activities can affect and depend on the health and preservation of marine and coastal ecosystems, and their goods and services, is today an indisputable fact (Halpern et al. 2012). However, as recently as a few decades ago, the marine environment could still be regarded as an acceptable final sink for land-based activities because of its high resilience and adaptive capacity and consequently be treated as a “universal sewer”, in the words of Jacques-Yves Cousteau when addressing the US House Committee on Science and Astronautics on 28 January 1971. As of today, such out-of-sight and out-of-mind approach is patently no longer tenable. Human endeavors such as commercial fishing, offshore drilling, shipping, wind farms, recreational uses, and aquaculture have brought unprecedented change to marine and coastal ecosystems worldwide, either directly or indirectly—as in the case of anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases and land runoff. Rising water temperature, ocean acidification, sea level rise, fisheries collapse, threats and severe degradation of entire marine habitats (such as coral reefs), and the increase in frequency and cumulative impacts of oil spills, harmful algal blooms and invasive species all