Wetland economic valuation approaches and prospects in China

Abstract

Ecosystem services valuation seeks to increase the social relevance of ecosystem characteristics, the underlying biological mechanisms that support services, by making the contribution of ecosystems to human well-being explicit. Economic valuation can help management by clarifying the full range of benefits and costs of proposed management actions. In the past two decades, economic valuation of wetland ecosystem services has become one of the most significant scientific priorities for wetland protection. In this paper, we provide an overview of ecosystem services, and summarize the main interdisciplinary approaches to measure and value wetland ecosystem services. We identified four main methodological gaps preventing progress on wetland valuation of ecosystem services in China, which are: 1) confusion on terminology like intermediate and final ecosystem services, 2) lack of ecological production functions to link ecosystem characteristics to final ecosystem services, 3) static valuation making it difficult to evaluate the trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services, and 4) lack of clear guidance on relating ecological compensation programs to conservation targets. Overcoming these gaps is important to inform wetland compensation mechanisms and conservation policies. We propose future research on wetland ecosystem services in China should be focused on: 1) defining final ecosystem services based on beneficiary preferences and underlying biophysical mechanisms, 2) establishing wetland monitoring programs at specific sites to collect data on final ecosystem service indicators and ecosystem characteristic metrics to create ecological production functions for economic valuation and rescaling techniques, and 3) incorporating wetland ecosystem service values into decision-making processes to inform wetland management.