VALUING NATURAL CAPITAL AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

To provide theoretical concepts and methods for assigning to natural capital and ecosystems services economic values that can be used in Beneft Cost Analysys of investments in nature conservation and restoratio, and in Natural Resource Damage Assessment court cases.

Teaching includes n. 28 hours of frontal (or on line), particpatory and cooperative lectures, and n. 28 hours of various typologies of exercises, including in cass or on line practical exercise, team works, examination f relevant study cases, field visits, individual researchs and presentations, seminars.

In case of on line teaching, it may necessary to change some tipologies of exercises in order to comply with the outline

Learning assessment may also be carried out on line.

As a guarantee of equal opportunities and in compliance with current laws, interested students can ask for a personal interview in order to plan any compensatory and/or dispensatory measures, based on their specific needs and on teaching objectives of the discipline. It is also possible to ask the departmental contacts of CInAP (Center for Active and Participatory Integration - Services for Disabilities and/or DSAs), in the persons of professors Giovanna Tropea Garzia and Anna De Angelis.

Content of frontal (or on line) lectures:

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.

Exercises deal with the topics of frontal lectures.

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, 2021