This document discusses valuing the goods and services provided by wetlands to inform better management and decision making. It notes that while some ecosystem services like crops are easy to observe and quantify, many important services like climate regulation are undervalued. When wetlands are degraded, the costs of losing these services often go unnoticed. The document examines studies that have economically assessed wetland services, finding regulating services like flood prevention and wastewater treatment provide the most substantial benefits. It advocates combining different valuation approaches to better represent the full value of wetlands and inform their protection and sustainable use.

1. Executive Summary Near East & NorthAfrica Land and Water Days Majdi Gouja
Amman,Jordan(15-18 December2013)
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Economic valuation of wetland goods and services: an
approach for better management and decision making
processes
For better understanding the interdependencies between natural resource
systems and human development and well-being, special attention should be
paid to the challenging concept of Ecosystem Services and the importance of an
approach for their valuation.
As defined by many scholars and by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,
ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from nature (MEA 2005).
Many of these benefits are quite easy to observe and quantify like production
services such as crops or livestock. Other ecosystem services such as climate
change regulation, flood and erosion control or water regulation and purification
are difficult to detect and therefor they are undervalued or not considered in
decision making processes or policy change.
The costs of losses in those ecosystem services can go mostly unnoticed
because the missing awareness of decision makers and resource managers about
the true value of natural capital and the lack of indicators and market prices.
When wetlands for example are drained, converted or degraded a cost can be
incurred by society if the ecosystem services that were previously provided (at
no cost) by wetlands may be needed to be replaced by building infrastructures
such as water treatment plants. Examples of increased cost are: illness and
health care costs (water contamination); infrastructure costs such as costs for
construction, operation, maintenance, and monitoring; threats to biodiversity and
increased carbon emission in to the atmosphere; decreased property value of the
land due to the degraded aesthetic qualities; decreased recreational
opportunities; increased insurance costs due to the high flooding risks; and the
decreased income from tourism activities associated with healthy ecosystems.
Indeed identifying, understanding, and valuating these services provided by
wetlands can lead to well sound decision making, and avoid unexpected or
unintended impacts from development decisions or policy changes.
Many empirical studies on valuating different ecosystems services in different
regions in the world have been conducted. They helped revealing the relative
importance of several ecosystem services, especially those which are not traded
in conventional market like the regulating services. For example the economic
assessment of the ecosystem services provided by a coastal wetland in North Sri
Lanka (Emerton and Kekulandala 2003) revealed that the most substantial
benefits, which accrue to a wide group of the population as well as to economic
actors, are related to the regulating services like the flood preventing capacity of
the native wetland (1907 US$ per hectare and year) and the industrial and
domestic wastewater treatment (654 US$ per hectare and year), whereas the

2. Executive Summary Near East & NorthAfrica Land and Water Days Majdi Gouja
Amman,Jordan(15-18 December2013)
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several provisioning services such as agriculture, fishing and firewood, which
directly contributed to the local income presented only 150 US$ per hectare and
year.
Thus, recognizing the values of wetlands in the case study area, needs
basically assessing the dependence on ecosystem services for social, economic
and human well-being, identifying the benefits received from the ecosystem
services, determining where those services are generated on the landscape and
what are the main drivers that could impact them. The linkage between social,
economic and environmental outcomes will help to demonstrate the society’s
dependence on the provided ecosystemservices and to address trade-offs among
current uses of wetland resources and between current and future uses.
Particularly important trade-offs involve those between agricultural production
and water quality, land use and biodiversity, water use and aquatic biodiversity,
and current water use for irrigation and future agricultural production
(Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005).
A challenging concept for identifying ecosystem service opportunities for
ecosystem management is the TEEB1 six-step approach, which focuses on: (1)
specifying and agreeing with the stakeholders on the problem to be addressed,
which could emerge for example from a change in policy; (2) identifying the
most relevant ecosystem services in relation to the decision to be made; (3)
identifying the needed information and selecting the appropriate methods, in
accordance with the design of the case study; (4) assessing the expected changes
in availability and distribution of ecosystem services; (5) identifying and
appraising policy options based on the analysis of expected changes in
ecosystem services; and (6) assessing social and environmental impacts of
policy options, as changes in ecosystem services affect people differently
(TEEB 2013).
An improved understanding of the ecosystem functions and the flow of
ecosystem services leads in general to a better management of water and
wetlands. This could be achieved through better hydrological, biophysical and
socio-economic data that meet the requirements of stakeholders and decision
makers. Valuating ecosystem services in monetary form could significantly help
demonstrate the important role of wetlands in society and economy and thereby
enhance their protection, restoration and sustainable use. Indeed, there is no
single methodological approach that could reflect all values embedded in water
and wetland related ecosystem services. Therefore, combining different
approaches such as bio-physical indicators, monetary valuation and participatory
methods like, travel cost method, contingent valuation or hedonic pricing is a
precondition for getting representative results.
1 The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is an initiativeinspired fromideas developed in the
MillenniumEcosystemAssessment (MEA 2005) and aims to promote a better understandingof the true
economic valueof ecosystem services and to offer economic tools that take proper accountof this value(TEEB
2008).