Ten years of economic analyses for the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive: Overview of experiences and lessons learned

The European Marine Strategy Framework Directive, which came into force in 2008, requires from Member States inter alia to perform various (types of) economic analyses. In order to help Member States to implement this directive, the European working group on Economic and Social Analysis was initiated in 2009. This working group has developed various guidance documents which have been very useful in helping each other to understand the Directive and its requirements, to develop one language, to understand the pros and cons of various approaches, and to share experiences. However, up until now, outside of this working group this information is hardly known. Therefore, the authors of this article, considered the tenth anniversary of this working group a good opportunity to make the accumulated grey literature more accessible and to share information on experiences and lessons learnt from applying environmental economic theory and analyses in a policy context to a broader community, to increase the awareness of marine and social scientists on the progress made and remaining knowledge gaps, to enhance interdisciplinary science-policy dialogue, and to increase the value added of forthcoming research for policy making processes

The role of economics in ecosystem based management:The case of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive; first lessons learnt and way forward

The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) sets out a plan of action relating to marine environmental policy and in particular to achieving ‘good environmental status’ (GES) in European marine waters by 2020. Article 8.1 (c) of the Directive calls for ‘an economic and social analysis of the use of those waters and of the cost of degradation of the marine environment’. The MSFD is ‘informed’ by the Ecosystem Approach to management, with GES interpreted in terms of ecosystem functioning and services provision. Implementation of the Ecosystem Approach is expected to be by adaptive management policy and practice. The initial socio-economic assessment was made by maritime EU Member States between 2011 and 2012, with future updates to be made on a regular basis. For the majority of Member States, this assessment has led to an exercise combining an analysis of maritime activities both at national and coastal zone scales, and an analysis of the non-market value of marine waters. In this paper we examine the approaches taken in more detail, outline the main challenges facing the Member States in assessing the economic value of achieving GES as outlined in the Directive and make recommendations for the theoretically sound and practically useful completion of the required follow-up economic assessments specified in the MSFD

Benefits of a Reallocation of Nitrate Emission Reductions in the Rhine River Basin

In an attempt to improve ecological conditions of theRhine, emission reduction targets have been set fordifferent substances. For most substances targets havebeen met. However, nutrient emission reductions arebehind schedule. It may be clear from intuition, andhas also often been described in economic literature,that a flat reduction rate applied to all emittingsectors, though appealing because of equity reasons,may not be cost-effective. This paper explores theleast cost allocation of nitrate emission reductionsfor the Rhine river basin, analysing differentagricultural sectors and wastewater treatment plants.Results show that costs of meeting emission reductiontargets can be brought down by almost 20% through aclever allocation of these targets. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001cost-effectiveness, nutrients, Rhine, river basin policies, water quality,

Cost-Effective Nutrient Emission Reductions in the Rhine River Basin

Nitrogen and phosphorous emissions in the Rhine river basin and measures and quota restrictions to reduce them are distinguished between in an optimisation model which calculates how to reach a desired load to the North Sea in a cost-effective way. Nutrients are emitted by farm types (at most 10 per region) and wastewater and sewage treatment plants in 13 regions and nutrients are retained by wetlands at the basin level. Cost abatement curves are fitted for each agricultural sector using the output of a simulation model which describes the interaction between agriculture, industry and wetlands. The cost effective solution suggests to substantially abate emissions by constructing wetlands. A sensitivity analysis with the model shows that if the climate becomes wetter, possibly due to climate change, the emissions of agricultural sources gain importance and more measures should be taken at the farm level, reducing the total cost by 1.6% as compared to the case without climate change

Game theoretic analyses of nitrate emission reduction strategies in the Rhine river basin

Pollution of transboundary rivers requires cooperation between the countries involved in order to alleviate the consequences. This paper applies game theoretic analyses to nitrate emissions in the Rhine river basin. It assumes that the 50% emission reduction policy agreed upon by the International Rhine Committee is individually rational for each source. This enables the estimation of a revealed preference of the benefits involved. These are described by environmental damage functions. Emission reduction thus results in abatement costs, but also reduces environmental damage. The objective function is to minimise total costs, i.e. abatement costs and environmental damage. A number of different specifications for the environmental damage function are analysed to answer the question whether cooperation is individually rational for the negotiating partners in the International Rhine Committee. The analyses show that depending on the way the environmental damage function is derived, free riding is often, but not always, an interesting option.game theory; nutrients; river basin management.

Compiling preliminary SEEA Ecosystem Accounts for the OSPAR regional sea: experimental findings and lessons learned

Ecosystem Accounting provides a framework to measure and value relationships amongst ecosystems, society and the economy. The accounts measure ecosystem extent, condition and services, providing the means to identify and internalise ecological degradation, as well as understanding the risks and dependencies of economic activities on the environment and tracking progress towards sustainable development. The OSPAR Convention, which concerns the protection of the Marine Environment for the North-East Atlantic, has committed to accounting for natural capital and ecosystem services, where the UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) provides an international accounting standard for guidance in compiling accounts. Here, we describe the first attempt in compiling accounts aligned with SEEA EA at a Regional Sea scale. We: (i) identified existing open access data, (ii) produced accounts for selected ecosystems and valued their services and asset value and (iii) identified challenges and lessons learned. For ecosystem services, we measured fish provisioning, carbon sequestration and outdoor recreation from coastal and marine environments across OSPAR contracting parties. The exercise identified lack of fitting data at regional level, spatially-explicit linkages and harmonisation need to be overcome to further expand accounts. This work represents an initial step to progress on ecosystem accounting and demonstrates that even with limited data and incomplete time-series, accounts can start being compiled to identify data gaps and prioritising next steps

Compiling preliminary SEEA Ecosystem Accounts for the OSPAR regional sea: experimental findings and lessons learned

Ecosystem Accounting provides a framework to measure and value relationships between ecosystems, society and the economy. The accounts measure ecosystem extent, condition, and services, providing the means to identify and internalise ecological degradation, as well as understanding the risks and dependencies of economic activities on the environment and tracking progress towards sustainable development. The OSPAR Convention, which concerns the protection of the Marine Environment for the North-East Atlantic, has committed to accounting for natural capital and ecosystem services, where the UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) provides an international accounting standard for guidance in compiling accounts. Here, we describe the first attempt in compiling accounts aligned with SEEA EA at a Regional Sea scale. We (i) identified existing open access data, (ii) produced accounts for selected ecosystems and valued their services and asset value, and (iii) identified challenges and lessons learned. For ecosystem services, we measured fish provisioning, carbon sequestration, and outdoor recreation from coastal and marine environments across OSPAR contracting parties. The exercise identified lack of fitting data at regional level, spatially explicit linkages and harmonisation need to be overcome to further expand accounts. This work represents an initial step to progress on ecosystem accounting and demonstrates that even with limited data and incomplete timeseries, accounts can start compiling to identify data gaps, and prioritize next steps

Cost-effectiveness analysis for the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive

The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) prescribes cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) as an economic tool for the minimisation of costs when formulating programmes of measures to be implemented in the European river basins by the year 2009. The WFD does not specify, however, which approach to CEA has to be taken by the EU member states. In this paper the lack of a standardised approach to CEA for the implementation of the WFD is taken as the point of departure. The aim of the paper is to discuss and evaluate two pragmatic approaches to CEA based on case studies recently performed in The Netherlands and Denmark. The case studies allow for the comparison of a quantitative and a qualitative approach to CEA at the water body and river basin level and for an evaluation of the approaches in terms of their practical applicability, their transparency and the extent to which they render sound results for decision-making. Conclusions are drawn with regard to the suitability of the two approaches for the implementation of the EU WFD