The Benefits to People of Expanding Marine Protected Areas

This study focuses on how the economic value of marine ecosystem services to people and communities is expected to change with the expansion of marine protected areas (MPAs). It is recognised, however, that instrumental economic value derived from ecosystem services is only one component of the overall value of the marine environment and that the intrinsic value of nature also provides an argument for the conservation of the marine habitats and biodiversity

The global costs and benefits of expanding Marine Protected Areas

Marine ecosystems and the services they provide contribute greatly to human well-being but are becoming degraded in many areas around the world. The expansion of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) has been advanced as a potential solution to this problem but their economic feasibility has hardly been studied. We conduct an economic assessment of the costs and benefits of six scenarios for the global expansion of MPAs. The analysis is conducted at a high spatial resolution, allowing the estimated costs and benefits to reflect the ecological and economic characteristics and context of each MPA and marine ecosystem. The results show that the global benefits of expanding MPAs exceed their costs by a factor 1.4–2.7 depending on the location and extent of MPA expansion. Targeting protection towards pristine areas with high biodiversity yields higher net returns than focusing on areas with low biodiversity or areas that have experienced high human impact

Review of the Evidence Linking Climate Change to Human Health for Eight Diseases of Tropical Importance

As human societies are beginning to feel the early effects of 21st Century climate change, adaptation is becoming an increasingly important area of enquiry across a range of human sectors and activities. This is particularly true for the health sectors of tropical developing countries, as many of these countries will be some of the first to experience the impacts of global warming. Given this, it is important to understand the mechanisms through which climate change may impact on human health, and thus on the social welfare in tropical developing countries and the resourcing requirements of their health sectors. This paper reviews and synthesizes the published literature on the causal links between climate change and human disease for eight diseases of tropical importance: malaria, dengue fever, gastroenteritis, schistosomiasis, leptospirosis, ciguatera poisoning, meningococcal meningitis, and cardio-respiratory disease

Rapid Integrated Assessment of Climate Change-Induced Disease Burdens under Uncertainty

This paper contributes to research on projecting and valuing the impacts of climate change on human health by proposing and implementing a methodology that allows for rapid integrated assessment of climate change-induced disease burdens to be used in environments characterized by cumulating uncertainty relating to data gaps and the accuracy of downscaled projections. The approach is important because the countries most vulnerable to the early effects of climate change need to start laying the foundations for their adaptation policies now, regardless of the quality of their national health and environmental data sets. The methodology consists of a series of specifically delineated, iterative steps that helps to identify hierarchy of variables driving the quantitative results. The method also helps to identify key data gaps, thereby providing an important focus for subsequent research, monitoring, and data collection efforts. The paper demonstrates this methodology by applying it to the projection and valuation of the excess disease burden in Montserrat and Saint Lucia for two climate change scenarios. We illustrate their utility in the context of adaptation planning. This paper also highlights that investment in data collection and information systems is a “no regrets” action that should be considered integral to national and regional adaptation efforts, particularly in instances where current data do not facilitate the implementation of best practice health impact assessment methods

A Review of the Marine Economic Valuation Literature 1975 – 2011: Classifying Existing Studies by Service Type, Value Type, and Valuation Methodology

There is a long history of the application of economic valuation methods to marine environments, changes to marine environments, and changes to marine management. Increasingly, however, there is an interest in analyzing the economic consequences of changes in marine ecosystem service provision resulting from changes in marine management and marine ecosystem state. In turn, this requires either that researchers conduct new, primary valuation studies focused on particular marine ecosystem services, or that researchers use existing studies and transfer values from one research and policy context to another (also known as benefits transfer). This study presents the result of a review of the marine economic valuation literature that was conducted as a part of an EU-FP7 project with the goals of understanding 1) the state of the marine economic valuation literature in certain countries, 2) the potential for this literature to support benefits transfer-based analyses, and 3) gaps in the existing literature. The review was also intended to support the undertaking of new, gap-filling primary non-market valuation studies. The results indicate that there are many gaps in the existing marine valuation literature with respect to the individual ecosystem services valued, the valuation methodologies that have been utilized, and the types of economic value captured

Stakeholder-focused cost-benefit analysis in the water sector : guidance report

An accompanying synthesis report can also be found at http://pubs.iied.org/16523IIED.htmlThese guidelines are intended to show how economic tools can be used for a stakeholder-focused approach to planning and evaluating adaptation to climate change. Using cost-benefit analysis (CBA) as an overall framework, this guidance document presents the basic steps of an approach that enriches traditional economic analysis by focusing on stakeholders in the water sector. The case studies, all located in areas facing the impact of climate change in the water sector, used stakeholder approaches to undertake economic analyses of adapting to climate change. Outcomes will be determined by specific needs, which will vary from one setting to another

Indian summer monsoon during the last two millennia

The monsoon is a large-scale feature of the tropical atmospheric circulation, affecting people and economies in the world's most densely populated regions. Future trends due to natural variability and human-induced climate changes are uncertain. Palaeoclimate records can improve our understanding of monsoon dynamics and thereby reduce this uncertainty. Palaeoclimate records have revealed a dramatic decrease in the Asian summer monsoon since the early Holocene maximum 9 ka BP. Here we focus on the last 2 ka, where some records indicate an increasing trend in the summer monsoon. Analysing Globigerina bulloides upwelling records from the Arabian Sea, we find the weakest monsoon occurred 1500 a BP, with an increasing trend towards the present