VALUING NATURAL CAPITAL AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

To provide expertise for the development of professional and disciplinary skills in assigning sound economic value to natural capital and ecosystems services by means of concepts, methods and tools .

Lectures and exercises

The natural capital as asset. Ecosystem services. Classification of ecosystem services. Goals of economic valuation. Principles of welfare economics. The Total Economic Value paradigm. General overview of economic valuation methods. Valuation methods based on revealed preferences. Travel cost method (single sites and multiple sites approaches). Hedonic price method. Defensive behavior. Damage cost method. Valuation methods based on stated preferences. Contingent valuation. Choice Experiments. Secondary methods: Benefit Transfer. The environmental damage estimates in the European courts. Equivalence Analysis. Examination of selected valuation case-studies.

1. Boyle K.J., Brown T.C., Champ P.A. (eds.), A Primer on Nonmarket Valuation, 2nd edition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2016
2. Freeman A. M. III, Herriges J. A., and Kling C., The Measurement of Environmental and Resource Values, 3rd ed., RFF Press, Washington D.C., 2014
3. Signorello G. (ed.), Valuing Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services: Supplementary Material and Readings, Università di Catania, 2018