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- Title
Accounting for Ecosystems.
- Authors
Mäler, Karl-Göran; Aniyar, Sara; Jansson, Åsa
- Abstract
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment documented the importance of ecosystem services. It is therefore important to include these services in the national system of economic accounts. This requires estimation of “accounting prices” for ecosystems, that is, the marginal value of a change in the size of the system. This raises a number of questions: What do we mean by the “size” of the system? What is the dynamics of the system? How do we quantify the impacts on services from a change in the size of the system and finally how do we value these impacts? We discuss these questions in a few examples of ecosystems, and valuation as such is not the major problem. The major problem is the lack of information of the appropriate dynamic model for most systems. We therefore suggest that economists and ecologists should set priorities on which ecosystems should be the first objects for study for these; we should test the possibilities of estimating the accounting prices.
- Subjects
ENVIRONMENTAL auditing; ECOLOGY; ENVIRONMENTAL policy; ENVIRONMENTAL impact charges; ECOSYSTEM management; ECONOMISTS
- Publication
Environmental & Resource Economics, 2009, Vol 42, Issue 1, p39
- ISSN
0924-6460
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10640-008-9234-8